James Little is the founder and CEO of Drumcliffe LLC, the world’s only litigation finance fund dedicated exclusively to recovering assets for the victims of fraud. Jim has overseen investment portfolios of asset recovery and judgment enforcement claims since pioneering the sector in 2008. Prior to founding Drumcliffe, he held senior positions in the private equity, defense and national security industries.

Which skills are key to success as a funder, and how does your previous experience enhance your practice in the space?

I’ve found that all successful litigation funders are simultaneously talented quantitative analysts, project managers, legal underwriters, and negotiators. I’m fortunate that my professional background has exposed me to all of these business skills.

What are the greatest challenges currently facing funders in the market, and how can these challenges be effectively addressed?

I understand there is increased competition for good investments amongst commercial dispute funders, which is driving down overall returns. That said, we count ourselves as lucky because the types of investments we make are still unique to the overall litigation funding space.

What types of disputes are becoming more prevalent from your view point, and what is behind this growth?

We’ve seen more crypto-currency frauds and bankruptcies come across our desks recently, and we have some amazing resources at our disposal to be able to assist clients with these types of recoveries. This could merely be the product of a boom/bust cycle which could occur in any industry, although the crypto space seems particularly ripe for fraud.

How do you prepare for a funding process?

All inquiries we receive must satisfy our gating criteria before we decide to do any work on them. If a claim is worthy of further underwriting, we ensure we have the correct in-house and external resources to provide us with the best assessment of the merits of a claim and the reliability of our counterparties. Our funding contracts are fairly standard at this point, so once we have agreed financial terms in principle, it’s only a matter of completing our own internal due diligence process before we invest.

Some litigation specialists report that approval for litigation funding from funders is now easier to come by. Do you agree?

We pride ourselves on our underwriting being rigorous and efficient, but that’s a product of our experience more than anything else. In other sectors of litigation funding I would be concerned that swifter funding approvals are more a product of increased competition than of new efficiencies, which could lead to poor investment decisions.

If you could introduce one reform to aid third party funding's role in international disputes proceedings, what would it be and why?

If jurisdictions continue to attempt to impose regulations on litigation funding without some sort of uniformity, it could hinder funders from assisting clients in most cross-border disputes. I would prefer to let market forces continue to lead to price discovery in litigation funding, rather than some arbitrary caps mandated by bureaucrats.

What excites you most about the future of third-party funding?

It’s easy to justify the investments we make because our adversaries are clearly bad actors, but I’m happy to see that there is also less stigma to third-party funding in general from an ethics and public policy standpoint. Access to justice requires access to capital, so I hope the trend of understanding the value third party funding provides continues.

You have enjoyed a very distinguished career so far. What would you like to achieve that you have not yet accomplished?

In the future I’d like to raise a large pool of permanent capital for financing asset recovery and enforcement claims. If retail investors could see the good that these investments do in holding fraudsters to account, we could turn the tables on our adversaries, who use the very money they’ve stolen to avoid paying restitution to victims.