Trial Lawyer View Podcast | PI Practice, Operations & Growth
Trial Lawyer View features long-form conversations with experienced plaintiff trial lawyers, firm leaders, and industry experts. The show is built for legal professionals who want to lead stronger, more efficient personal injury firms by learning from peers who have built, managed, and evolved successful practices in the real world.
New episodes of Trial Lawyer View are released every 2nd and 4th Monday at 5am EST.
Learn more here: https://sholink.to/synergycontact
Trial Lawyer View Podcast | PI Practice, Operations & Growth
Why Plaintiff Firms Lose to Big Defense Without Outside Capital ft. William Marra & Asim M. Badaruzzaman | Trial Lawyer View Ep. 95
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Plaintiff firm leaders who treat litigation funding and operations as back-office afterthoughts are structuring themselves to lose.
The specific failure mode is simple: smaller contingency firms keep competing on talent and hustle alone while well-capitalized defendants play a long game with infinite resources. Will Marra and Asim Badaruzzaman of Certum Group, a platform that funds fewer than 5% of cases it reviews, reveal how vertically integrated litigation finance and MSO infrastructure, covering everything from case intake through lien resolution, give growth-focused plaintiff firms the same structural advantages that only billion-dollar defense shops have historically enjoyed.
Will explains that litigation funding spans three markets: commercial disputes, mass tort dockets, and consumer claims. Portfolio-level deals, where Certum contracts directly with the law firm rather than the claimant, lower funder risk and reduce the cost of capital compared to single-case arrangements. Asim details how Certum's vertically integrated MSO collapses handoff friction between case milestones, with medical record retrieval, lien resolution, and AI-assisted review running inside one platform. On AI, Asim describes measurable efficiency gains in medical record review and explains that running a full docket through an AI model eliminates random sampling during mass tort settlement negotiations, surfacing the complete picture of every matter with higher accuracy and lower cost.
Listeners running plaintiff or mass tort practices should pressure-test three structural questions in the next 12 to 24 months: whether portfolio-level funding fits their growth model better than single-case deals; whether vertically integrating lien resolution and medical record review inside one platform eliminates costly handoff gaps; and whether AI is being deployed beyond efficiency into case valuation by replacing random sampling with full-docket analysis at settlement. Will's core warning connects directly to the episode's premise: firms without long-term capital infrastructure cannot match the technology investments non-law competitors are already funding through conventional capital markets, and that gap compounds annually.
Connect with Will and Asim:
LinkedIn (Will)
LinkedIn (Asim)
Certum Group
Certum Group (Legal Solutions)
Learn more about Synergy’s approach to healthcare lien resolution and firm operations.
Trial Lawyer View features long-form conversations with experienced plaintiff trial lawyers, firm leaders, and industry experts. The show is built for legal professionals who want to lead stronger, more efficient personal injury firms by learning from peers who have built, managed, and evolved successful practices in the real world.
New episodes of Trial Lawyer View are released every 2nd and 4th Monday at 5am EST.
Learn more here: https://sholink.to/synergycontact
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William MarraWhat we are typically doing is servicing smaller firms that would like to compete with the incumbent player. And what do we generally believe more competition does? It results in better services and less expensive services.
Asim BadaruzzamanWhat it requires is capital and it requires some operational expertise or an interest in developing tools and workflows that can accomplish that goal, right? And I think the people who are tapping into a structure like ours, there will always be an advantage to that.
Jason LazarusThat's William Mara, Director of Certum Group, and Asim Badaruzzaman, CEO of Certum Legal Solutions. They believe that the firms gaining ground are not just buying more tools. They're building the operational systems, workflows, and team buy-in that allow smaller personal injury firms to compete with the bigger players and deliver better outcomes.
Asim BadaruzzamanThe thesis is that it needs to be a fully vertically integrated platform, right? Where you can take your case from inception to resolution in terms of the core delivery of legal services, right, through the lifecycle of that case and plug into all of these different things, but do it in a way that's seamless. But once you have that fully integrated inside your organization, then the handoff between, well, I just settled a case, now I need to resolve the liens, but I need to use a third party. If it's within your organization, that's far more seamless.
Jason LazarusIn this episode, you'll learn how to choose tools, workflows, and operating models that help your team move cases forward instead of adding another layer of friction. I'm Jason Lazarus, and this is trial or review.
Are capital and operations converging to reshape plaintiffs law?
Jason LazarusI wanted to start out with a thesis because I want to test this with you guys. And that is, you know, capital and operations are converging in plaintiff's law. And the firms that treat that as a strategic question instead of a back office one, I think is going to outpace everyone else over the next five years. Am I overstating that? Or because it seems like we're at this inflection point with the kind of movement with MSOs and private equity and finance converging in plaintiff's law.
William MarraYeah, I I agree with you. Uh I think it starts with a pretty fundamental access to justice, access to the courts problem, which is what litigation is extraordinarily expensive. It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions of dollars to bring a plaintiff's idea. Law firms traditionally have not had access to the capital markets that non-legal businesses have had. Part of that is hardwired in through some of the legal ethics rules. And for plaintiff's law, a lot of the time you're representing claimants that don't have a lot of capital. What we have, I think, happily seen over the past 10 to 20 years is a recognition that there are, in fact, significant ways to get capital to lawyers who are trying to help clients pursue their plaintiff's eye cases. And we're seeing that across a range of structures that include litigation funding, that include some of the MSO structures that Awesome is very familiar with. And you're going to have clients that are demanding law firms that have access to the capital they need to help finance their cases. And so I think that's exactly right that you're moving towards an increasing amount of capital in the legal sphere. And the firms that are able to efficiently and effectively access and deploy that capital are the ones that are going to win.
Asim BadaruzzamanI was going to add, you know, I think the way that Will framed it as an access to justice issue, I think that's extreme exactly right. At the beginning of the process, taking it one step further, you know, and especially from my perspective as somebody who's leading an MSO, I also look at it as on the other side of that spectrum or the end of that spectrum, which is delivering good outcomes, right? And I think both of those things sort of marry together with having access to the capital and then having an operationalized uh piece that can get you from the foot in the door from having access to justice and then actually getting the justice by getting a good outcome for your client.
Jason LazarusHi, quick question for you. Does lean resolution administration feel like a quiet bottleneck inside your firm? Medical liens, Medicare compliance follow-ups, and documentation can drag on long after the case is resolved, tying up capital and attention your team can be using elsewhere. This is where Synergy can help. We partner with personal-grew law firms to handle complex healthcare lien resolution and compliance work, helping firms move cases to resolution more efficiently without adding internal burden or more overhead. If that sounds like something your firm is dealing with, you can learn more by clicking the link in the show notes or scanning the QR code on the screen. Now back to the conversation. And so
What trial lawyers must know before taking on outside capital
Jason Lazarusthat that was kind of where I wanted to start, Will, with a question for you. For a trial lawyer that's thinking about growth capital for the first time, what are the biggest misconceptions about litigation funding and what hard questions should a trial lawyer ask before bringing out outside capital into their practice?
William MarraSure. So so maybe to orient um folks to the market as we as we respond to that. On the litigation finance side, and and I spend most of my time leading the litigation finance vertical here at certain, you can think about three principal markets for litigation funding. There's the commercial market, which are the financing of business-to-business disputes, breach of contract, intellectual property disputes, antitrust suits, bankruptcy, and the like. That's category one, commercial funding. Category two, mass tort funding, financing of law firms that are pursuing mass claims, mass wrongs allegedly committed by the defendants. Category three, consumer funding, typically smaller dollar financing directly to the claimant. For a law firm that is considering funding, and for a claimant that may have a good claim that is considering funding, I think there's a few things that they should understand. I think first is the capital is non-recourse. That's sort of the north star of the industry, which is basically if the case loses, the law firm or the client, whoever took the funding, doesn't owe anything back. Second, and this is important, funders are not controlling the litigation. They're not controlling the law firm's exercise of its ethical duties, they're not controlling settlement. And I think one overlay, and we at CERDAM especially were built by and composed of litigators, not investors, though we are investors. We recognize that the legal system and law firms are simultaneously two things. The law is a profession governed by legal ethics rules and other rules. And it is also we don't recognize a business. You cannot practice that profession in a way that is helping your clients unless you're recognizing and trying to optimize the business side so that you can actually effectively provide those legal services. I think the other thing that I would just say, and and then I'll pause, is these are multi-year relationships. And it's really important as you think about which funder to work with, to recognize that this isn't an in-and-out transaction. You're gonna you're gonna be working together essentially for years, even if a funder's just in this pat in this passive role. And I think folks should put a lot of time and energy, not just the cost of capital, but to the identity of who's providing that capital.
Jason LazarusGood, well, good segue into the question I was gonna ask you about, because it seems like uh what we are seeing in the
How portfolio funding changes risk, control, and upside for law firms
Jason Lazaruslitigation funding world is more of uh equity style arrangements and longer-term partnerships. So, how does that change the risk profile control dynamics and potential upside for law firms considering that arrangement?
William MarraYeah, so there's two general types of arrangements you can enter into, even across the different verticals that I discussed. There's claimant side funding, where the funder is contracting directly with the claim holder to litigate the plaintiff. That's typically what we would call single event or single case funding, where the firm is providing the fees and costs to support a single matter, getting the return only from that matter. And a lot of law firms use that and just pursue single case funding. But other law firms who are using litigation finance to grow their businesses are also working with us on a portfolio basis. What does that look like? In that case, we're entering into a funding transaction directly with the law firm. We are not in privity with the claim holder. The law firm is then litigating the case on a full contingency. And we are funding part of the fees and the case expenses on behalf of the law firm. So, what does that do? That allows law firms to then approach new clients and offer them a full contingent fee arrangement, both clients that have strong cases but can't afford or don't have the risk appetite to take on litigation expense. And that can be a very effective way for law firms to grow their practices, you know, serve a greater number of clients and to your to your question and maybe your point in there. If a funder is investing on something on a portfolio basis, the funder's risk in principle should be lower, and thus the returns that they demand are going to be lower as well.
Jason LazarusSo, how do you guys go about the underwriting process and evaluating those
What law firms should expect from the litigation funding underwriting process
Jason Lazarustypes of relationships? What should a law firm understand and expect in that kind of a process?
William MarraSo it's a pretty extensive underwriting process. And law firms should understand that, claimants should understand that. And hopefully they'll view that as a good thing, right? I mean, if you think about the impact that funding has on the civil justice system broadly, it actually operates as a screen for the merit of cases before they even get filed. Cases that are funded by a third-party financier have probably gone through more extensive diligence than any other case that's filed in the federal appeal court. That's point number one. What the process looks like is typically a pretty extensive underwriting process done by counsel internal to our team or the team at another funder. And then frequently we are also hiring outside lawyers, even outside experts, to help us evaluate the likelihood of success for a case. At that point, we are not only evaluating whether it is a good case for us to invest in, but also helping the client make their case even stronger. We just had that with a case we were working on last week where we found some new evidence and the claimant was delighted, right? The claimant hadn't found it online, the law firm hadn't found it, and we help them build their case, make their case even stronger. And so, although it is a relatively extensive diligence process, we we fund less than 5% of cases that we see just to provide folks that kind of a context. At the end of the day, whether we're funding your case or not, hopefully you're coming away from that conversation with a with a stronger case. And if it's not a great case, with a view that, hey, maybe you shouldn't be investing your time or money into the matter either. Yeah. Great points.
Jason LazarusSo, Will, I know you've been involved from an advocacy standpoint around regulatory issues
How should policymakers weigh restrictions on litigation finance against access to justice?
Jason Lazaruswith uh this part of the industry. And I'm curious if litigation finance functions as a capital market for small and mid-sized businesses that otherwise lack access to traditional financing, how should policymakers weigh restrictions on funding against the broader economic impact on competition and access to justice? Because it seems like it's a it's a difficult issue.
William MarraYeah. So part of the way that I think about this and approach this issue is the practice of third parties funding litigation is everywhere in our legal system, the same way that it's everywhere in our capitalist economic system. We call that the capital markets, right? If you want to grow your company, hire new employees, invest in RD, most people don't have cash on hand, retained earnings to finance that themselves. If you want to go buy a house or buy a car, people rely every day on third parties to help them pursue legitimate life activities. Litigation is, for better or worse, unfortunately, one of those activities that is sometimes necessary. All of those traditional forms of capital markets are not available to everyone, right? Large companies have access to very liquid equity and debt markets on Wall Street. There's a lot of times when it makes sense for them to call me or awesome to get litigation funding, but they don't have to. The companies that call us are disproportionately small and medium-sized businesses or impercunious, not wealthy individuals that need the capital to effectively pursue their case. And so part of the way that I think about this from a regulatory perspective is you need to think one, what is our impact on the civil justice system? And two, what is our impact on the capital markets, right? And we should be crafting regulations, and this is debated in front of judges, in front of legislatures. We should be crafting regulations that are always geared towards promoting access to our civil justice system, and I would say promoting access to efficient capital markets.
Jason LazarusWell, isn't it too about balancing the scales to some extent? Because uh, I wanted to ask you about, you know,
Are proposed regulations creating a structural advantage for large corporate defendants?
Jason Lazaruswhen these proposals surface to tax or regulate litigation finance, lawmakers really understand its role as a productive capital supporting meritorious claims. Because the alternative to that is that, you know, perhaps with trying to regulate, they're creating a structural advantage for large corporate defendants in both the marketplace and the courtroom. Because, you know, when you're talking about access to justice and you know, the the plaintiff side is always underfunded when compared to their adversaries, which can be billion-dollar corporations.
William MarraYou're exactly right. And and there's been a lot of scholarly commentary and a lot of political commentary that's exactly consistent with that, right? Our litigation system, for example, typically pits repeat player defendants against one-shotter plaintiffs. That creates a whole series of incentives where the system ends up getting tilted towards the defense side and towards the interests of repeat players who tend to be the wealthier large, large corporate defendants. Litigation finance now presents itself as an as a way, as a means for those smaller one-shotters to access to courts in a way that they have not been able to before. Some people don't like that, right? Some people don't want to change in the status quo. And part of what we try to do on the advocacy side is make the case to judges, lawmakers, and other policymakers that if you think about the kind of civil justice system that you want and the kind of capital market that you want, who should have access to both of those, that you should think about and craft regulations that are going to promote responsible access to litigation funding, not discourage access to it. Because if you're going to discourage access to it, you're going to have a lot of folks that have really strong legal claims and are not going to be able to vindicate those rights.
Jason LazarusYeah. And restricting capital markets in that way just seems unfair in general. It just to me, uh it there's a fundamental fairness issue there.
William MarraCompletely agree. And, you know, I'm I'm making this point in an article that that um should be published in the NYUR review in connection with a symposium that I recently co-organized there, which is if you think about a federal rule, for example, that would require disclosure of third-party litigation funding, our federal rules are supposed to be what's called transubstantive. They're supposed to apply equally to all causes of action, all litigant types. And we're talking about on Capitol Hill and in some of these advisory committees disclosure rules and taxes that do not apply equally on their face and in their effect to small litigants and large litigants. They're imposing unique burdens on smaller litigants with strong plaintiff-side cases, seeking monetary damages. And that's the kind of disparate impact, you could say, differential impact that we should be resisting in these, in certainly in the federal rules, and I would say in federal statutes as well.
Jason LazarusYeah, it seems unfortunate with our political environment, you know, there and I think there's just a bit of general bias against plaintiffs. Yeah, uh just depending on which side of the political spectrum you said. Of course, having been involved on the plaintiff side for 20 plus years now, maybe I'm biased, but I I just hate that mentality that somehow, you know, there should be more, there should be more of an onerous burden on the plaintiff side versus on the defense side. Because there's already an equity built in.
William MarraYeah. And that's that's partly why in in some of my writings, especially an article that was in the Southern California Law Review last year, I've I tried to make this case that it is not just about plaintiffs versus defendants, it's about small businesses. Right? The folks who need these, this particular corner of the capital markets, they are small businesses. And I think helping small businesses and allowing free and equal access to the capital markets, hopefully that is something that can more approach bipartisan consensus than framing something as simply plaintiff versus defendant.
Jason LazarusWell, uh, I want to pivot to talk a little bit about MSOs because it it just
Why are mass tort and personal injury firms the ground zero for MSOs in legal?
Jason Lazarusis a fascinating area to me to see it now coming to fruition in the legal space because you've seen it uh a lot in medical practice over the last uh 10 years. Uh I mean, it's crazy to see how consolidated that's become. And Mass Tort and personal injury firms seem to be the ground zero for MSOs in the legal space so far. What is it about high-volume, high complexity dockets that make it especially attractive for uh a service platform like an MSO?
Asim BadaruzzamanYeah, look, I mean, I think it starts from um plaintiff's lawyers specifically, but any lawyers recognizing that there is a lot of value in operationalizing how they deliver services to their clients, right? Um what I was saying earlier, ultimately it comes down to um at the end of the day, what kind of outcome you're achieving for your client. Uh and if you have a platform that can uh handle large volumes of cases, especially if you're a mass toward practitioner like I am, uh, since I still also practice law, um, or you're a single event uh personal injury firm that wants to do more trucking cases or MVA cases or premises liability cases. Uh I think a lot of lawyers understand, uh, and I don't think it's a new rev revelation. I think uh it's something that they didn't really have access to uh in terms of having the capital availability to to do something like this before. Um, but now that there are products and services in the market and Vehicles that they can use to operationalize and increase the capacity and the bandwidth for them to handle higher volumes at better and deliver better outcomes. I think those are all the things that are probably attracting most people. I mean, those are the conversations that I have been having uh with folks. And that's the value that I have always seen in an MSO model where you can uh deliver high efficiency uh legal services, uh, which ultimately I always see this as if you can do something in terms of delivering outcomes to your client uh that's faster and cheaper, that's my job as their lawyer, right? Get them the best possible outcome for the best possible price. Um and I think uh MSOs are a very, I mean, clearly, you know, that's the course that we're charting, um, that they have the ability to provide that sort of a platform to lawyers to deliver their services.
Jason LazarusIt's funny because you're making the same argument I make to law firms about why their staff spends time on administrative tasks around identification, verification, and resolution of healthcare liens, something they don't get paid to do, something they have no expertise in, and takes away from high-level legal tasks that the firm can be engaging in. And it seems to me that the MSO is the same exact thing. All those things that a law firm has to manage as a business, if those are operationalized in MSO and they just are plugging in to that model, that's such a huge advantage to the operational efficiency and profitability long-term.
Asim BadaruzzamanYeah, absolutely. Uh well, I mean, it uh the the thesis is that it needs to be a fully vertically integrated uh platform, right? Where you can take um your case from inception to resolution uh in terms of the core delivery of legal services, right, through the lifecycle of that case, uh and plug into all of these different things, but do it in a way that's seamless, right? You use the example of lean resolution, right? And as a mass toward practitioner, um, I have for the the better part of two decades that I've done mass tort litigation, always used uh a third-party lean resolution service for the exact same reasons that you said. Uh, but once you have that fully but say it integrated inside your organization, then the handoff between, well, I just settled a case, now I need to resolve the liens, but I need to use that use as a third party. If it's within your organization, that's far more seamless. But that's just one example of what you can operationalize within your integrated organization. You know, medical record retrieval and and review is one of them, right? I mean, the thing that we were talking about earlier in terms of uh actually finding out whether or not your client has the injury or was involved in that accident. All of those things in one platform end-to-end, um I that is just the best way that your staff can focus on the uh the core of how they get uh better results for your client as opposed to doing these uh rote and mundane tasks that you can do either through automation or through some sort of a what I like to call a Ford assembly line process, uh, where you can do it better, faster, uh, and cheaper uh to get a better result for your client.
Jason LazarusWell, so you know, Certum's acquisition of an MSO signals a shift for for you guys from
Why did Certum move from capital provider to full operational partner?
Jason Lazarusbeing a capital provider clearly to operational partner. So why move beyond the traditional funding relationship with the firms you guys have worked with into manage services?
Asim BadaruzzamanI'll give you my view. I'm sure you will have a perspective from the finance side. I know the way that we see this at Certain Group is given our sort of core business of litigation finance, risk insurance, it sort of all makes just clear sense that if we're going to give you the capital to fight the fight, we might as well give you also the operations to do it really well and do that fight really well, right? Uh and we can give you a platform where you have access to the capital and access to a fully vertically integrated solution that will um allow you to focus on delivering what you do best as a lawyer, which is the art and the substance of practicing law and representing your client uh in court before a judge, before a mediator or an arbitrator, um, before a jury, as opposed to focusing on the operational piece of, hey, let me make sure that our staff is actually doing what they're supposed to be doing to, you know, do X, Y, and Z. So that's how I see it. Um, Will may have other thoughts on that.
William MarraYeah, I think that's exactly right. You know, if you if you want to be a great lawyer and hold a great firm, you need three things. You need to practice law, you need the capital to run that and power that law firm, and you need to do the business side of the firm, the operational side. Lawyers have a monopoly on the first piece, but they can rely and do, and even before the rise of this new litigation finance and MSO industry, have relied on third parties to help them with capital and help them with operations. And we are building the next generation platform that is fully integrated and is, in a way, the one-stop shop to get the best of both.
Jason LazarusWell, let me ask you this directly, because it's sort of what you were just saying, but do you see MSOs primarily as efficiency engines, capital access vehicles, or a bridge towards a more institutionalized type of law firm structure, or all of them? I it sounded like it's all of those things.
Asim BadaruzzamanYeah. Uh look, I mean, I think the idea behind it is uh an institutionalized structure where uh everything from end to end runs as a well-functioning business, right? Because ultimately it is a business that you're running as a lawyer. Um, you're you know, whether you're a plaintiff lawyer, defense lawyer, what different, it doesn't matter what type of lawyer you are. Um, there is a very large business aspect of it, which they don't teach us in law school. Um and I think a large point of the MSO model is to create an institution uh that operates really well all the way from the capital injection to the outcome of uh the delivery of whatever service you're delivering to your clients.
Jason LazarusYeah. I mean, it's it's such an important point. And I think a lot of resistance is out there in terms
Can law firms survive without treating the practice as a business?
Jason Lazarusof this idea of or traditionally there's been resistance to firms being run like a business because there's been this distinction. Well, it's a it's the practice of law, but there are core functions that you know are just like any other business. The only thing that's different is the delivery of legal services, the the the actual delivery uh of lawyer services, just like with doctors, though, and and the operationalization of the back end of a medical practice, to me, it's all the same thing, really at the end of the day. The arguments that somehow a uh personal injury practice or a law practice in general has to be treated differently, I just don't think there's any merit to that. And the firms that actually focus on running their firms like a business with what's going on with technology and these movements uh that we're seeing in the market, uh, to me, I think signal that any notion that you can run a law firm without focusing on the business fundamentals is out the window now.
William MarraI think that technology piece is especially apt. If you look at the New York Stock Exchange, every type of company is represented except one. Law firms are at a unique disadvantage in their ability to make long-term investments. A contingent fee is a long-term investment. That's why major law firms, larger law firms typically don't do many contingent fee cases. Investing in technology is also a long-term investment. And as you have pressure from legal technology companies, from accounting firms, from other companies that can have a more traditional corporate structure, they can more efficiently make these long-term investments, they can eat law firms' lunch. So law firms need to find ways to make these long-term investments that can let them compete and survive. And if your concern is, as our concern is, the long-term sustainability of efficient and effective law firm practice, you want to welcome this development because it actually provides a moat and a buffer for law firms to resist competition from these non-law firm entities that like it or not is going to encroach on what law firms traditionally use.
Jason LazarusThere's a lot of detractors and commentators out there that are describing MSOs as a gray area for bringing outside capital into law firms without going full ABS. I'm curious about your perspective. Where is the line between that operational support
Where is the ethical line between operational support and de facto ownership?
Jason Lazarusand de facto ownership and how how are firms going to need to navigate the ethical guardrails?
Asim BadaruzzamanYeah, look, I mean, I think ethical guardrails are extremely important, right? Especially as uh this area of uh law improves and evolves over time. Uh, and there are certainly regulators that are taking interest in number one, better understanding how different MSOs function. Uh, and number two, you know, what can and should be done to make sure that they're being run in a way that's not running afoul of the rules. I I think if you're talking about an MSO like ours, uh a fully integrated organization that runs on a model where we're providing service to our firms for a fee, there are already rules on the books, like Rule 5.4, that uh govern not sharing in attorney's fees with law and lawyers, right? Um, I mean, we, you know, as a lawyer, as lawyers, we live in a highly regulated profession as it is. Uh, and I don't think anybody would argue that there shouldn't be regulation. You know, the work that we do and the impact that we have and the damage that lawyers can do from bad lawyering or unethical lawyering is so profound. Uh, regulation is important to the extent that it doesn't uh stifle innovation, right? That it doesn't stifle the ability of what you know Will was saying uh lawyers and law firms' ability to compete in the marketplace uh and provide services that that there is significant demand for and not enough supply for. So having ethical guardrails is important. Um and as, I mean, that's the philosophy that we take, you know, we take that responsibility very seriously. And we keep an eye on the the developments in the space on the this question of you know what what are MSOs structurally really trying to accomplish? Uh, and how should how or why, and to what extent should there be regulations um that uh regulate their conduct?
Jason LazarusWell, I'm curious about your take on this. So you've got Arizona embracing the alternative business structures and funders and private equity entering more openly through those. Do you believe that MSOs are a transitional model on the way to a broader deregulation
Are MSOs a transitional model or the permanent future of law firm structure?
Jason Lazarusor a permanent solution that will define the next era of first firms, growth, and exit possibilities?
Asim BadaruzzamanYeah. Look, I mean, I think uh the MSO model is not something that lawyers invented, right? I mean, this model has existed in accounting and finance and and medicine and veterinary practices. So we're we're charting a new course, I think, in in the law, but not in terms of a concept for how to run your business. So I don't know if I myself see this as some sort of transitional model. I think if it's done right, and if those of us who are trying to do this right and are at the forefront of establishing a foothold in the in the market for how an MSO should be run in the legal space, uh, if all of that is done right, then I think that that is probably the way that a lot of law firms of the future are going to get run. Um But if we don't, then you know the regulators will have a lot to say about how we can structure uh law firms and and how to run them as as this area grows.
Jason LazarusSo if you had to make a prediction, because I'm curious about this, because I just had a recent conversation with an investment banking group that is involved with raising equity for um an MSO. What do you think five years from now it'll look like in terms of consolidation of firms around the MSO model? Meaning, you know, like here in Orlando, we've got Morgan and Morgan, one of the largest personal injury, well, the largest personal injury firm in the country. And firms have trouble competing locally with that kind of model. And it seems like with MSOs, you're gonna see something similar if there really is enough buy-in to that, because the firms that are part of an MSO are gonna have these advantages that firms just don't have access to those same resources. So what do you think it'll look like in five years? Will there be half the PI firms that there used to be? Or is it not really gonna be that kind of transformational for the industry?
Asim BadaruzzamanI'll tell you from my perspective as somebody who is um who lives on the operational side, and then we'll might have a different perspective or an additional perspective on this. There's nothing that's stopping any lawyer or any law firm for from creating an operational base that can help you run your law firm as an institution end-to-end and deliver uh you know high efficiency um legal services at high volume, right? What it requires is capital and it requires uh some operational expertise or an interest in developing tools and workflows that can accomplish that goal, right? Uh and I think the people who are tapping into uh a structure like ours are you know, there will always be an advantage to that. Uh that that will always be a good value proposition for people where you can take advantage of a pre-built structure uh from an operational perspective and then focus on the core delivery of your legal services. Um but those who are out there and doing it at a high level on their own with their own brand, there are plenty of people um in the space that have a really good brand and have a really good operation, um, I think they will still be very, very competitive. And I think time will tell exactly which which side has has more of an advantage. But um, I I don't think it's going to lead to a universe where there's a handful of large MSOs that have absorbed all the firms uh and there's not enough competition in the delivery of legal service. I just I don't see that happening.
William MarraThe point that was made earlier about the cost of legal services and access applies equally here. The types of things that a litigation funder can do or an MSO provider can do, large firms can do that in-house. Firms with billions of dollars in revenue or hundreds of millions of dollars or tens of millions of dollars in marketing budgets can do that in-house. What we are typically doing is servicing smaller firms that would like to compete with the incumbent player. Right. And what do we generally believe more competition does? It results in better services and less expensive services. So I would think that the introduction of tools to help more firms compete with the incumbents is going to allow for more rather than fewer service providers, better rather than worse, and lower cost rather than more expensive legal services.
Asim BadaruzzamanAnd I've heard the argument that you know MSOs uh in the medical space has have led to a rise in the cost of medical expenses and medical costs. And that may or may not be true, but in the legal space, um, especially on the contingency side where you know where we live, um, those fees are regulated, right? There there is a there is a ceiling to how much you can charge your client. So being able to deliver that efficiently and faster and better and with better quality, I think that's a win for clients uh at the end of the day.
Jason LazarusAgain, exactly my argument around healthcare lien resolution too. And ultimately because it puts more dollars into the client's pocket from a net perspective when those are negotiated aggressively and correctly with the right strategies. I want to just before we conclude, uh, talk to you guys about a uh a couple of um
What risks emerge when AI begins shaping which cases get financed or pursued?
Jason Lazarusthings that are evolving in terms of technology with AI now being used to pre-screen claims, detect fraud patterns, and guide funding decisions to some extent. What risks do you see if predictive tools begin shaping which cases get financed or pursued?
William MarraSo we use AI a lot at Sortum. Um we use it for basically anything except the predictive piece. It it helps us do a lot of the operational side. It helps us condense and get summaries of some of the documents that we're reviewing, but the judgment is still there practiced by a human. I mean, you raise an interesting question though. I mean, his historically the province of interpreting laws has has been the monopoly by lawyers, right? And now we have these models that are interpreting legal documents and coming up with an answer, a resolution, right? And some folks want to use these to mediate, arbitrate disputes. I think that's gonna pose some pretty interesting, difficult questions for the legal system that scholars and policymakers and judges and practitioners are gonna want to really um wrestle with. I think if we think about questions like cost, I think it has the ability to radically change the cost basis, cost base for how litigations are pursued. Discovery is usually the most expensive piece of litigation, the large DW litigations that we fund. I hope that AI is going to help dramatically reduce the cost of that discovery. That may, by the way, lead to less demand for some of our services, right? Because litigation finance is in many ways a function of the high cost of litigation. But you know, all of this comes with many of the appropriate caveats that apply to AI in the legal space and that apply to AI broadly, right? And we've seen the hallucination of cases we've seen in other sectors AI gone wrong. And I think these are, I'm not saying anything particularly new here to say this is, you know, one of, if not the leading public policy issue that humanity is going to have to deal with in the years to come. Yeah, great point.
Jason LazarusI wanted to ask about mass tort litigation because it's uniquely data heavy, thousands of plaintiffs,
Is AI fundamentally changing how mass tort firms evaluate merit and allocate resources?
Jason Lazarusmillions of documents. Do you see AI as fundamentally changing how firms are going to evaluate merit, allocate resources, and the evaluate risk in those cases? Or is it because I I think we just touched on this, but I'm I'm curious, you know, is it going to be primarily an efficiency tool layered onto the existing model in the mass tort context?
Asim BadaruzzamanI don't see it just as an efficiency model. It is. We're using it currently where we have measurable efficiency gains and things like reviewing medical records, right? Look at you know, running them through a model that pulls out all of the metadata that you're you want to see uh while you're evaluating the case at the front end, right? Um, but I also see it as a value driver because you can now surface things that before you were relying on your human reviewers to do and trudge through uh you know millions of pages of documents over an entire docket of you know one tort, um, versus something that can a tool that can do it at a much higher accuracy rate uh in much shorter time for relatively much cheaper. Uh and it can actually help you, for example, in negotiating a settlement, right? Having a clearer view into every single matter as opposed to what we've done many times, you know, as practitioners in the mass torch space. Uh, you do a random sampling, right? And then you get a data scientist to tell you we were talking about predictive modeling, you know, do a predictive model of what the entire uh population looks like based on that random sample. Well, you don't have to do the random sampling because you can take the entire data set, run it through um an AI tool, and extract all of that metadata, and then you can look at it and say with a very high degree of confidence, this is what you know are is the good, bad, and the ugly in my docket of cases, or all of the plaintiffs in a given litigation. So it has measurable uh impact. I think we're just starting to see how it's being used on that that back end of things at you know at the end of the life cycle of litigation. Um, and it will only it will only continue to get better over time.
William MarraAnd by the way, defendants and judges have access to the same tools, right? So one of the biggest criticisms we see of the presence of litigation finance in the mass court space is that it is helping lawyers amass dockets of worthless cases. And and there's a lot of reasons why I think that argument is wrong on its merits. But now that argument is sort of defanged by AI, right? Because you do not have to settle those dockets with a sampling, you can actually look at all of the cases, and that I think is going to be transformative for the efficient and effective resolution of these of these large mass torts.
Jason LazarusSo if you were a plaintiff personal injury law firm, CEO,
What structural decisions should plaintiff firm leaders be making in the next 12 to 24 months?
Jason LazarusCOO, managing partner, or a mass tort firm and you're listening to this episode, what are two or three structural decisions you would want to be working through in the next 12 to 24 months, given everything we were just talking about?
Asim BadaruzzamanYeah, I don't know, Will, if you want to talk about that. But um look, I mean, I think um what you need to think about probably is number one, what is the value proposition of uh you know undertaking this sort of an exercise uh with you know turning your operations uh institutionally into an MSO, right? And you know, changing the structure of how your law firm is functioning. What are you going to gain out of that? Is that going to help you better deliver better outcomes to your clients? Is that gonna help your firm grow? Uh is that going to help you access um the resources, both from a capital perspective, but also from uh the core operational perspective to be a better lawyer and for you to get better results for your clients. I mean, I think those are the things that I would think of uh if I am running a firm or running a practice and thinking about, you know, how do I use all these different uh developments that are evolutions that are happening in this space to my advantage and the advantage of my clients.
William MarraAnd I would say from the starting block is goes lawyer, and then it starts with young lawyers still in law school or just starting their careers. Just familiarize yourself, educate yourself about the many tools that are out there, right? It's sort of the same approach that we'll take to the AI calls right now, which is you're gonna have to be native to these if you want to succeed in the legal landscape and the technology landscape of tomorrow. Um, and so figure out what your goals are for your firm, for your practice, and then understand all of the many options that are out there because they're a lot more than there were a few years ago, and they'll probably be a lot more tomorrow. Uh and so, so, so go on that journey and frankly pick up the phone, call us, call someone else who who you know and trust, and try to understand the different options because there's a lot of ways that really sophisticated, really smart lawyers are using these tools to grow their business.
Jason LazarusGreat points. Final question for you both. Uh, and I'll ask it individually to you both, because I think you guys have different views, and that's what I want to get at with this last question. I always ask it very open-ended. Uh, Will, I'll start with you. You know, with your focus in the litigation funding world, what is your view?
William MarraYeah, so I I think that um I think access to the courts is going to get very heavily democratized in the next five to ten years. I think awareness of these topics is still extraordinarily low. Most lawyers, almost all lawyers, have not done a single litigation funding deal. And every claimant that we work with, it's basically their very first deal. I think as awareness grows, you're gonna have a totally different, much larger industry than you have today. And I think the key differentiator among providers is gonna be your team and your ability to add value to the cases, right? Because I think the capital side, I don't think it's quite gonna become commoditized, but you're gonna be able to get capital for the best cases. And the the claimants and the law firms that own those cases, that have those cases, are gonna be able to choose who they wanna who they want to work with. So I think we're gonna see a pretty significant growth in the industry size. I don't think regulation is gonna help the industry grow. I don't think it's gonna hurt it. And um, and I think that's that's where the space is going.
Jason LazarusSo, same question to you, Asim, but really more focused on your views as a masked work practitioner and the MSO kind of direction. So I'm curious about your overall view on that.
Asim BadaruzzamanYeah, look, my view is that uh MSOs um are going to be uh something that a lot of uh people in this business are going to utilize to operationalize their business and grow their business and deliver better, better outcomes. I think the value proposition is just very clear for lawyers to see that there is a better way of doing what you're doing. Uh and you know, I think uh MSOs like ours, or while we're building a fully vertic vertically integrated solution, uh there will be more of those. Uh and that will elevate the quality uh of lawyering, uh particularly on the plaintiff side. But I think on both sides of the V, um, as both the technology tools that we're using to do the job of uh improve and become more widely adopted, uh, and as law firms and MSOs become more and more sophisticated as time goes on. Great points.
Jason LazarusSo if anyone's got questions about anything that you've talked about with the MSOs and mass tort space, what's the best way to get in touch with you?
Asim BadaruzzamanWe're happy to give out our contact information. We have a website, you can reach us there, you can email us, call us anytime. I mean, we're uh we field questions and calls all the time about, you know, questions. I'm sure you know Will gets questions about litigation finance all the time. I get questions about you know what we're doing and you know how how to evaluate even just AI tools. I uh I had like two conversations just yesterday with people asking, hey, have you used this other tool? Tell me more about it. So anybody wants to do that, we're happy to always uh be available.
Jason LazarusAnd the websites is Certum. Certum Group.com. Same question. What's the best way to get in touch with you? People have questions about litigation finance or any of your areas of expertise.
William MarraYeah, website, email, or LinkedIn. Uh, we're all pretty active across all those and we'd love to hear from folks.
Jason LazarusThanks to you both for spending uh some time with me this afternoon. Great episode, really appreciate it. And we'll see everybody on the next episode of Tri Law Review. If today's episode gave you a new perspective on how your firm operates or sparked a useful idea, consider sharing it with a colleague and be sure to follow the show so you don't miss future conversations with leaders across the personal injury space. Tri Law Review is brought to you by Synergy, a strategic operations partner helping personal injury law firms resolve healthcare liens more efficiently. If you're looking to accelerate case flow and allow your team to focus on high-level legal work that moves cases faster, consider partnering with Synergy. I'm Jason Lazarus, and I'll see you in the next episode.
