Litigation Funder Vetting Report

Overview

A Litigation Funder Vetting Report is a paginated, twelve-section due-diligence document on a defendant entity (and the case opportunity context where the caller has supplied it) for a litigation-investment decision. It is generated on demand from public registry filings, court records, regulator enforcement releases, prior similar-case outcomes, audited financial filings, and the defendant’s own enriched profile. It takes three to five minutes to produce, costs 1,50 credits (about $20 USD), and is delivered as a shareable HTML report with a printable PDF view.

It is intended for an investment committee at a litigation finance fund (Burford Capital, Bentham IMF, Longford Capital, Validity Finance, equivalent), an insurance carrier offering litigation insurance, or an in-house legal department evaluating outside counsel + case viability.

The report is not a verdict on the case. It is a structured presentation of the public record across the four litigation-investment axes — defendant solvency, liability strength, damages quantum, and collection probability — for the funder’s investment committee to evaluate themselves. Every claim cites a public URL or is flagged as insufficient evidence. Every probability is expressed in the seven-band UK PHIA Yardstick vocabulary plus an analytical-confidence rating.

The Four Frameworks We Adopt

ICD 203 — Analytic Standards (Office of the Director of National Intelligence)

The U.S. Intelligence Community’s Directive 203 defines nine tradecraft standards: properly described sources, proper expression of uncertainty, distinction between intelligence and assumptions, incorporation of alternative analysis, judgement of consequences, customer-relevant focus, logical argumentation, accurate reflection of source content, and clear language. We treat these as binding for every Litigation Funder Vetting Report. The discipline of expressing uncertainty explicitly — rather than presenting investment-relevant probability claims as facts — is the single most important discipline for litigation-funding Due Diligence.

UK PHIA Probability Yardstick (UK Defence Intelligence)

The Professional Head of Intelligence Assessment publishes a seven-band probability yardstick — Remote chance (under 5%) / Highly unlikely (10-20%) / Unlikely (25-35%) / Realistic possibility (40-50%) / Likely (55-75%) / Highly likely (80-90%) / Almost certain (over 95%). Every probabilistic claim — defendant settlement probability, liability finding probability, collection probability, damages quantum range — is expressed using these seven bands paired with a separate analytical-confidence rating (High / Moderate / Low). PHIA-banded probability is the right vocabulary for litigation-investment work because it forces explicit ranges rather than false-precision point estimates.

ABA Best Practices for Third-Party Litigation Funding

The American Bar Association’s Working Group on Litigation Funding has published guidance for the bar on disclosure, conflict-of-interest management, and ethical handling of third-party-funded litigation. While the ABA guidance addresses counsel rather than funders directly, several principles map cleanly to funder-side Due Diligence: the requirement to evaluate the merits of the matter independently of the funder’s economic interest, the discipline of separating investment-decision rationale from legal-merits analysis, and the obligation to surface conflicts of interest among funders, counsel, and named plaintiffs. Section 7 (Opposing Counsel Quality) and Section 8 (Plaintiff Counsel Quality) of every report are specifically informed by these principles.

ALCOA — FDA Data Integrity Principle

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s ALCOA principle (Attributable / Legible / Contemporaneous / Original / Accurate) is the data-integrity standard adopted across regulated industries. Every Litigation Funder Vetting Report carries an ALCOA Methodology footer: each factual claim is attributable to a cited source, presented in legible plain language, marked with the date it was contemporaneously verified, sourced from the original primary record where available, and accurately reflects the underlying evidence with explicit uncertainty flags where evidence is thin.

The Twelve Sections of a Litigation Funder Vetting Report

ABA Best Practices for Third-Party Litigation Funding — How We Apply Them

The American Bar Association’s Working Group on Third-Party Litigation Funding published its Best Practices framework after multi-year consultation across the litigation-finance industry, plaintiff-side and defense-side bars, and judicial commentary. The framework focuses on counsel obligations, but its underlying principles map directly to funder-side investment-committee Due Diligence:

1. Independent merits evaluation. The ABA guidance reminds counsel that funder economics must not drive merits assessment. The mirror discipline for funders is to evaluate liability strength independently of the desired investment thesis. Section 4 (Liability Strength Signals) is built around this discipline — prior similar-case outcomes for the defendant, public regulatory findings, public admissions in 10-K risk-factor disclosures.
2. Conflict-of-interest surface. The ABA guidance highlights conflicts among named plaintiff, counsel, and funder. Section 7 (Opposing Counsel Quality) and Section 8 (Plaintiff Counsel Quality) surface counsel-track-record signals that bear on whether the funder, plaintiff, and counsel economic interests align.
3. Proportional disclosure to court. Some jurisdictions require disclosure of third-party funding to the court. Where the funder operates in a disclosure-mandatory jurisdiction, Section 9 (Judicial Assignment Signals) surfaces whether the assigned judge has prior rulings on funded-litigation disclosures or has issued protective orders that bear on funder confidentiality.
4. No interference with counsel judgement. The ABA guidance prohibits funder interference with counsel’s independent legal judgement. The Due Diligence report’s investment-rationale framing intentionally separates "is this a fundable opportunity" (the funder’s decision) from "is this a winnable case" (counsel’s decision). Both decisions inform each other; neither substitutes for the other.

PHIA Yardstick in Litigation Investment

Litigation outcomes are inherently probabilistic. The PHIA seven-band yardstick is the right vocabulary for litigation-investment Due Diligence because it forces explicit probability ranges paired with confidence tiers, rather than the false-precision point estimates that have historically plagued the industry. Every probabilistic claim in a Litigation Funder Vetting Report follows this format:

Format example: "Likely (~65%) defendant settles before trial within 18-24 months of filing (Confidence: Moderate — based on N=14 comparable matters against this defendant where the matter was resolved at the procedural stage of the current case; range adjusted for current docket congestion)."

The seven bands:

• Remote chance (under 5%)
• Highly unlikely (10-20%)
• Unlikely (25-35%)
• Realistic possibility (40-50%)
• Likely / probably (55-75%)
• Highly likely (80-90%)
• Almost certain (over 95%)

Confidence tiers (per ICD 203):

• High Confidence: claim rests on multiple independent authoritative sources, recently re-verified.
• Moderate Confidence: claim rests on one authoritative source OR multiple secondary sources.
• Low Confidence: claim is inferred from indirect evidence or relies on uncited assumptions.

Banned in this report: "may be" / "could be" / "perhaps" / "possibly" / "might" / "presumably". Each is replaced with a PHIA band term plus a confidence tier. Numeric probabilities outside the seven bands are anchored to the band; numeric ranges are paired with a band.

Honest Limits — what we do not do

Corrections Policy

Three commitments modeled on the BBC editorial corrections process:

1. Identification window. Errors flagged within thirty days of report generation are corrected on the canonical view URL within five business days. Errors flagged after thirty days are evaluated and corrected at our discretion.
2. Re-publication, not silent edit. Corrections do not overwrite the prior text silently. The report’s view page preserves a redline diff between the original and corrected text, time-stamped, with a one-line explanation.
3. Subject right of reply. The defendant entity named in any Vetting Report may submit a one-paragraph factual rebuttal to corrections@mentionfox.com. Verifiable rebuttals attach to the report alongside the original section. Where the defendant and our research disagree on a public-record claim, both views are surfaced.

Data integrity floor — ALCOA. Every Litigation Funder Vetting Report carries an ALCOA Methodology footer: each factual claim is Attributable to a cited source, presented in Legible plain language, marked with the date it was Contemporaneously verified, sourced from the Original primary record where available, and Accurately reflects the underlying evidence with explicit uncertainty flags where evidence is thin.