Analysis 3 min read
Why a litigation funder must be a technology company.
Studying every case by hand makes costs grow with volume. Public data, software and serial processing change that calculation.
Valentin PETITCLERC, founder and president Updated
A litigation funder receives cases, studies them one by one and funds some of them. This model works, but each new case costs as much to study as the last. To grow, the funder has to hire in line with its volume. We believe that in France, the change of scale in litigation funding will come through technology. Hello Justice was built on that conviction.
The limit of case‑by‑case funding.
In this model, the constraint is analysis more than capital. Each case received takes hours of legal and financial analysis, whether it is funded or not. Many cases received without prior screening are not funded.
The cost of the rejected cases then weighs on the funded ones, and it grows with volume. Doubling the activity means doubling the team. The business remains a services business.
Detection through data.
Hello Justice looks for cases first where they leave traces, in public sources. France has been putting its court decisions online since 2021, in stages and in pseudonymised form. We describe this in our article on court decision open data.
Vigie™, our proprietary litigation detection algorithm, reads these decisions. It spots the legal questions that recur and flags possible series from their first decisions. A case found through data costs less to find than a case sorted by hand. It also arrives earlier, when the series is starting.
Preparing cases online.
An online journey then organises the preparation of each case. It asks the decisive questions first, then lists the documents specific to the dispute. At each step, the client’s space shows the documents received and those still to be provided.
The file reaches the analysis complete and in order, and email exchanges shrink. The legal analysis does not change. Specialised partner lawyers analyse the eligibility of each case. They look at the characteristics of the dispute, limitation (the time limit for bringing a claim), the completeness of the documents and the reasonable chances of success. Technology reduces the cost and time of everything around that analysis.
Monitoring the portfolio.
Hello Justice follows more than 500 live cases, engaged since 2024. Each one has its procedural stage, deadlines, documents and lawyer. A new decision can change the reading of many similar cases.
A monitoring platform keeps this information up to date, case by case, through to judgment and collection. Reports to the fund’s investors draw on this data.
What stays human.
Funding decisions are still taken by people. The legal analysis remains that of the specialised partner lawyers. The litigation strategy belongs to the client’s lawyer, and the terms of each case are those of the signed agreement.
The law also governs how court decisions are used. People are pseudonymised in them. Article L. 111-13 of the French Code of Judicial Organisation prohibits reusing judges’ identities to assess or predict their practices. Our analyses are therefore made by court, never by judge.
What volume teaches.
Every case handled leaves something useful behind: standard documents, sharper qualification questions, durations observed court by court, documented reasons for failure. As a result, the next case is analysed faster and selected more finely.
Why France lends itself to this.
Several conditions make this model possible in France. Court decisions are published online, which allows detection through data. The legal framework has existed since 2025, with article 16 of the law of 30 April 2025 and the decree of 10 December 2025. We analyse it in a dedicated article.
The large listed funders target bigger cases. Burford Capital, for example, takes on cases of at least $5 million. Hello Justice focuses on disputes with €100,000 to €1m at stake.
This organisation is in place. Vigie spots the series, the platform prepares and monitors the cases, specialised partner lawyers analyse each case, and then the client’s lawyer argues it. The Hello Justice Capital 1 fund, managed by Hello Justice SAS, funds the cases that are accepted. Our method is described on the method page, and the algorithm on the Vigie page.
