Insights

Washington – June 1, 2022: Chambers and Partners has ranked 70 Crowell & Moring lawyers in 84 rankings across 40 categories in the Chambers USA 2022 guide. In addition, 37 practice areas were also ranked in the guide. The regional and national rankings are driven by independent interviews of clients and lawyers.

Washington, D.C. – October 29, 2021: BTI Consulting Group has named Crowell & Moring a Litigation Leader in Complex Commercial Litigation and Securities and Finance Litigation in its "BTI Litigation Outlook 2022: Post Pandemic and Beyond" report. The list highlights law firms that general counsel and other high-ranking corporate decision-makers identified as “the firms best suited to meet their most pressing litigation needs.”

In R (on the application of PACCAR Inc & Ors) v Competition Appeal Tribunal & Ors [2023] UKSC 28, the U.K. Supreme Court has declared litigation funding agreements based on a cut of damages to need to comply with the Damages-Based Agreements Regulations 2013, while the Court of Appeal in Evans & O’Higgins v Barclays [2023] EWCA Civ 876 expands the scope of likely competition opt out litigation approval.

On May 23, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in a unanimous opinion in Morgan v. Sundance, No. 21-328 that the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) serves to make arbitration agreements as enforceable as other contracts; it does not permit the courts to “devise novel procedural rules” to foster arbitration. Specifically, prior to this ruling, almost all federal circuits used an arbitration-specific waiver rule requiring a showing of prejudice to one party in order to demonstrate that the opposing party waived its right to compel arbitration. Under this new ruling, a party seeking to demonstrate that the opposing party waived its right to compel arbitration by litigating for too long need not make a showing that it was prejudiced, which is consistent with federal waiver law.

Over the last several years, investors of all stripes had been flocking to the novel asset class of litigation finance. Litigation finance is the art of deploying capital today in order to benefit from a favorable litigation outcome in the future. The ability of litigation finance to generate high, non-market correlated returns during the recent period of record low interest rates and record high equity market values made the area especially appealing to investors and led to a large influx of capital. But much has changed in the past few months. This article discusses the current pandemic and the macroeconomic forces affecting the future of the litigation finance industry.

ACI’s renowned forum on Controlling Litigation Costs returns, this time in New York City, on October 23-24, with a brand new faculty and novel case studies and strategies designed to help you (1) get more value from the firms you use in litigation matters or (2) keep existing corporate clients and ensure you are at the top of the “go to” list when matters arise.