Lawyer Monthly - August 2021 Edition

16 WWW.LAWYER-MONTHLY.COM | AUG 2021 THE NEW WAVE OF GROUP LITIGATION FIRMS: AMBULANCE CHASERS OR PURVEYORS OF JUSTICE? Collective redress has seen an enormous spike in the last 3-4 years. Group Litigation Orders are on the rise. 2021 promises to be a vintage year in this area. The Merricks decision has unlocked a long queue of potential opt-out collective actions being pursued in the Competition Appeals Tribunal. The legal world eagerly awaits the decision of the Supreme Court in Lloyd v Google, which is as important to the back door opt-out class action regime found within CPR 19.6 as it is to data protection law. Cases cover areas as broad as Dieselgate claims, data beach claims, privacy, foreign exchange rigging, shareholder claims, truck cartels, train ticket overcharging, equal pay and worker rights. The list goes on, and is growing. There is no doubt that the lawyers (and the litigation funders behind them) are set to profit from these claims. Headline values run into the hundreds of millions of pounds, some into the billions. The truck cartel claims and the Merricks claim against Mastercard have headline claim values that exceed £10 billion. A 30% return to a law firm on a damages-based agreement or to a litigation funder represents a healthy return, even when the time cost of money over a typical case lifecycle of 4 years plus (often longer) is taken into account. But is this wrong? Is it only the lawyers that profit, or is this new breed of litigation also to the benefit of the (often) consumer victims and, maybe, even society as a whole? Three years or so ago, I was asked what I thought of the group litigation landscape in England and Wales. Was there space in the market for a new breed of firm that would recruit well from traditional defendant firms, embrace technology and really take the fight to the well-resourced corporate defendants and their squadrons of lawyers from Magic and Silver Circle firms? I thought the answer was yes. At that time there were a limited number of focussed claimant-side firms, especially those representing the interests of consumers. There was the opportunity to apply technology to drive efficiency in the generation, aggregation and ongoing management of large groups of claimants. The need to embrace the collective redress mechanisms available and the necessary evil of litigation funding was becoming better appreciated by the Courts. And, most of all, there was no shortage of corporate wrongdoing, and therefore corporates that need to be brought to account. Many of the cases cited above are on behalf of groups of corporates (small, medium and large) or investment funds of different types, but many more are on behalf of consumers. It is the latter group who have historically been under-serviced by the legal profession. In late 2019, we therefore set about establishing Keller Lenkner UK, a sister firm of Keller Lenkner LLC, a Chicago based claimant side firm itself set up in early 2018 by the three founders of Gerchen Keller Capital (ironically the litigation fund originally behind the Merricks case). We would apply the same ethos – great people, heavy use of technology and a razor-sharp focus on the The NewWave of Group Litigation Firms: Ambulance Chasers or Purveyors of Justice? Collective redress has seen an enormous spike in the last 3-4 years. Andrew Nugent Smith, Managing Director Keller Lenkner UK 81 Chancery Lane, London, WC2A 1DD Tel: +44 (0)208 057 7480 Email: Andrew.nugentsmith@kellerlenkner.co.uk www.kellerlenkner.co.uk Andrew Nugent Smith Andrew Nugent Smith is managing director at Keller Lenkner UK and is responsible for the firm’s success and growth nationwide. He is also a seasoned commercial litigator with a deep understanding of group litigation and litigation finance. Keller Lenkner UK Keller Lenkner UK is a client-side firm whose team boasts exceptional credentials and expertise in a range of commercial, employment and consumer litigation across England and Wales.