Legalist

What Litigation Finance Is Really About

Twice a year, Y Combinator, a startup accelerator based in Mountain View, California, holds what it calls a Demo Day, which is a showcase of the latest batch of new companies it has nurtured. In the past, those have included Dropbox, Airbnb, and Reddit (as well as a number of companies no one remembers). Last week, at the most recent Demo Day, Eva Shang took to the stage to talk about her …


Peter Thiel & Y Combinator Fund a “Litigation Financing” Startup to Make Money Off Other Peoples’ Lawsuits

Legalist is a startup founded by Thiel Fellow Eva Shang and Christian Haigh, backed by Y Combinator: it will use data-mining to identify people who have been legally wronged by deep-pocketed aggressors and offer to finance their litigation in return for a share of the winnings. report this ad This tactic, called “champerty,” used to be illegal, but as it has morphed into the more thrusting, …


A Startup Is Automating the Lawsuit Strategy Peter Thiel Used to Kill Gawker

Did you look at Peter Thiel’s systematic destruction of Gawker via the American legal system and think “Wow, it’s too difficult to extract money from corporations and people using the courts?” Did you think, “Why don’t I try that?” If you answered yes to either question, there’s a startup you should meet. Legalist is a Silicon Valley startup that was developed in the Y Combinator incubator offering …