Jonathan Barnes is Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel at Woodsford Group Limited. Before leaving private practice, Jonathan enjoyed a successful 20-year career in the City of London as a transactional lawyer. In 2006 he joined longstanding client Woodsford Consulting – a business consultancy and Family Office of a wealthy European family – as a director and subsequently CEO. Jonathan co-founded Woodsford Litigation Funding in 2010 and has been central to its successful growth. Woodsford is a founder member of the Association of Litigation Funders of England and Wales and Jonathan serves on its Board.
T +44 20 7313 8079
E jbarnes@woodsfordlf.com
Gary Barnett is the Executive Director and General Counsel of the International Legal Finance Association (ILFA), which was founded to represent the global commercial legal finance community. Based in Washington, DC, but with members throughout the world, ILFA is the only global association of commercial legal finance companies. ILFA and its members benefit from Gary's various experiences throughout government, where he has shown an ability to gain consensus and accomplish the stated objective. Gary has served in a number of senior positions in government, including his most recent role at the Department of Justice as a Senior Counselor to the U.S. Attorney General. He previously served as the Staff Director and Chief Counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law. Gary received his J.D. from Georgetown University and his B.S. in Economics and History from Boston University.
T +1 202 961 7421
E gbarnett@ilfa.com
Christopher Bogart is Chief Executive Officer, a director and a co-founder of Burford Capital, and also serves as a member of its Commitment Committee. He is one of the most frequently cited and sought-after experts in the field across the mainstream media and legal and financial press. Before co-founding Burford, Christopher was Executive Vice President & General Counsel of Time Warner Inc. where he managed one of the largest legal functions in the world. He also served as Chief Executive Officer of Time Warner Cable Ventures and one of four senior executives operating Time Warner Cable, with $9 billion in revenue and 30,000 employees, and as Chief Executive Officer of Time Warner Entertainment Ventures. Prior to Time Warner, Christopher was a litigator at law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP.
T +1 212 235 6820
E cbogart@burfordcapital.com
Christopher DeLise is elta Capital Partners. In 2011, Christopher DeLise founded Delta Capital Partner in Chicago after successful careers in law and finance. Delta’s operations now span North America, Europe and Asia, and the firm continues to play instrumental roles in developing new products, services, and markets worldwide. Before founding Delta, Christopher was formerly an EquityPartner at K&L Gates LLP, where his practice focused on representing investment funds, financial institutions, Fortune 500 companies, and institutional and individual investors in matters ranging from fund formation and governance to compliance, and from cross-border M&A and strategic and financing transactions to all facets of starting, operating and selling technology companies. Christopher previously served as Chairman of the PrivateInvestment Funds practice group at Husch Blackwell LLP, and prior to that was an attorney in the private equity practice group of DLA Piper LLP.During his professional career, Christopher has been involved in virtually every aspect of conceptualizing, forming, operating, financing, managing, and advising private investment funds having served as principal as well as outside and in-house general counsel to venture capital, private equity, and hedge funds.eLise has been named to Law Dragon 100’s list of most influential funders in 2020 and 2021.
Susan Dunn is co-founder of Harbour Litigation Funding and is one of the most experienced and well-known professionals in the funding sector. A pioneer of litigation funding in the UK, Susan has been sourcing and investing for over 15 years’ and during this time has provided significant input to the development of public policy. Susan was a founding member of the Association of Litigation Funders of England and Wales, and continues to play an important role with this body. Susan has previously worked as a litigator in the UK and the US where she was also a diplomat (Vice-Consul Investment), for the British Government.
T +44020 3829 9320
E susan.dunn@harbourlf.com
Allen Fagin is a board member and senior advisor to Validity Finance. He is a well-known attorney and former chairman of Proskauer Rose, LLP. Allen began his career at Proskauer in 1976, and specialized in employment litigation, co-chairing the firm’s Labor and Employment Law Department for many years. During his tenure as chairman of Proskauer (2005-2011), the firm grew to over 750 lawyers and approximately 1,500 employees, and opened offices in London, Sao Paulo, Chicago, and Hong Kong.
Allen previously served as a law clerk to the Honorable Robert L. Carter, United States District Judge in the Southern District of New York. He is an honors graduate of Columbia College, Harvard Law School, and the JFK School of Government at Harvard, where he received a J.D. and a master’s degree in Public Policy.
William Farrell is Managing Director and General Counsel at Longford Capital, which he co-founded in 2011. He is an accomplished attorney with more than 20 years of complex litigation experience, including extensive trial and appellate experience in the United States as both a government prosecutor and as a partner in the commercial litigation departments of two prominent national law firms. William serves as an adjunct professor of law at the Baylor Law School teaching a course on litigation finance.
T +1 312 212 8240
E wfarrell@longfordcapital.com
David Gallagher is a senior vice president of D. E. Shaw & Co., L.P. and co-head of the Litigation Investing team within the D. E. Shaw group’s Corporate Credit investment unit. In that capacity, Mr. Gallagher focuses on the sourcing, structuring, and underwriting of financings for complex commercial disputes. Prior to joining the firm in 2018, he was an investment manager and legal counsel at Bentham IMF, where he sourced and advised on funding opportunities in commercial lawsuits. Before that, Mr. Gallagher was senior litigation counsel in the Los Angeles office of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP. Mr. Gallagher graduated from Sarah Lawrence College with a B.A.in liberal arts, earned an M. Phil. in English literature from the University of Oxford, and received his J.D. from Harvard Law School.
E David.Gallagher@deshaw.com
Ian Garrard is Managing Director and a director of Innsworth Advisors, based in London. Innsworth sources, evaluates and manages investments in litigation and arbitration. Prior to Innsworth Ian has had over 25 years’ experience, in private legal practice (having founded two successful law firms) and in senior executive roles, of managing large scale disputes across many jurisdictions. Ian is recognized by various publications as a leader in litigation funding.
E igarrard@innsworth.com
David has responsibility for the firm’s finance, investor relations, compliance, technology, and human resources functions. He is also a member of the InvestmentCommittee. David joined Parabellum after spending fourteen years at Goldman Sachs. At Goldman, David served in several roles, including COO for Fixed Income North Americas Sales, Chief of Staff for Global Recruiting, and global head of Goldman Sachs University for the Securities Division. Prior to joining Goldman, David served as Deputy Executive Secretary at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, where he was a member of the Chief of Staff’s office for Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.
Hassan Murphy is a founder and co-managing partner of TRGP Investment Partners LP and is responsible for overall corporate management and oversight, deal sourcing, investment selection, portfolio construction, and commercial litigation initiatives. Hassan is also a member of TRGP’s Board of Directors, the Board ofHuman Rights First and the Board of Visitors of the University of MarylandSchool of Law. Formerly, Hassan was a nationally recognized trial lawyer in tort, products, consumer class actions, environmental, civil rights, data breach and complex commercial litigation, leading the firm he managed – Murphy,Falcon & Murphy – to over $1 Billion in verdicts and settlements. Results included the then largest punitive damages verdict and the largest private groundwater contamination settlement inMaryland history and the largest police shooting settlement in the UnitedStates. Hassan has been appointed lead counsel and/or to the plaintiffs’ steering committee in multiple class actions across the country.
As defense counsel to Fortune 500’s in bet-the-company litigation in venues across the country, Hassan worked with C-suite leadership to mitigate risk and significantly reduce payouts.
He has been named National Trial Lawyer of theYear by Lawyers for Public Justice and to the Top 100 Black Lawyers in America. He holds a B.A. from Williams College and a J.D. from Georgetown University.
Kevin McCaffrey is the Chief Executive Officer at Law Finance Group (“LFG”). LFG has been providing financing alternatives to law firms and their clients for over 25 years. Kevin is a seasoned finance executive having occupied leadership roles in equities and alternative investments at Citigroup and its predecessor firms. Kevin was on the Management Committees of Citi’s North American Equity Division, Global Alternative Investments and Global Research over the course of his tenure. Kevin built and managed the #1 ranked (Institutional Investor) U.S. Equity Research Department. Additionally, his investment experience includes board seats on Citi’s Asian Private Equity Funds and Managing Partner of Absolute Value LLC, a Citi Proprietary hedge fund.
T (212) 446-6789
E kmccaffrey@lawfinance.com
Mr.Neumark is a Managing Director based in New York in the Fortress Credit Funds business, co-head of the Specialty Finance group and CIO of Legal Assets at Fortress. Mr. Neumark also serves on the investment committee for the Credit Funds business at Fortress and is a member of the Management Committee of Fortress. Prior to joining Fortress in May 2010, Mr. Neumark was a Senior VicePresident at Plainfield Asset Management, a large distressed debt hedge fund based in Greenwich, CT, where he served on several boards as well as ad hoc creditor committees. Mr. Neumark also practiced law at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen& Katz, in the restructuring and finance group and at Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett LLP, in the corporate group. Mr. Neumark received his B.A. inEuropean History from Vanderbilt University with Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude honors and his J.D. from UCLA School of Law.
Andrew Saker is the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Omni Bridgeway and is based in the Perth office.
Andrew was a partner at a leading provider of corporate recovery, insolvency management and restructuring services throughout Australia and Asia for 16 years. During this period, he managed the Indonesian and Perth operations and assisted with billion-dollar cross-border restructuring assignments throughout the world including in Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, China, Argentina, Kazakhstan, Europe, the US and Canada. Mr Saker has managed hundreds of large claims across a range of industries including mining, telecommunications, energy, aquaculture, property, manufacturing, infrastructure, banking and finance.
Andrew holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree in Accounting and Finance. He is a Member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants and was an Official Liquidator of the Supreme and Federal Courts until his appointment at Omni Bridgeway. He is recognised in Who’s Who Legal: Thought Leaders – Third Party Funding 2020 Guide, LawDragon's Leading Legal Consultants (2016-2019), Global 100 Leaders in Legal Finance (2020-2021) and Global Restructuring Advisors & Consultants Guide (2020).
T +1 212 488 5331
E asaker@omnibridgeway.com
Leslie Perrin is the Chairman of Calunius Capital LLP, an office he has held since January 2009. Leslie was the Chairman of the Association of Litigation Funders of England and Wales, for almost eight years from its establishment in November 2011 and in that capacity has been and remains deeply involved in the development of litigation funding as an international phenomenon. Leslie has more than 30 years' experience of litigation markets, having been successively head of litigation, managing partner and senior partner at international law firm, Osborne Clarke. One of his cases still holds the record for a UK jury award of defamation damages against an insured defendant. In other cases, he became recognised as one of the pioneers of group actions in the UK. For nine years until 2015, he acted part-time as the Senior Independent Director of DAS, the UK market leader in legal expenses insurance.
T +44 7836 606011
E leslie.perrin@calunius.com
Neil co-founded Therium in 2008 and is the firm’s Chief Investment Officer. A solicitor with over 22 years’ experience, he was previously Litigation Counsel in-house for Marsh & MacLennan Companies, Inc. (MMC), prior to which he was in practice in the City of London with US firm Reed Smith and Withers. Neil has led investments in litigation and arbitration valued in excess of $15 billion, including many of the largest and most high-profile funded cases in the market. He is also a founding board member of the Association of Litigation Funders, the self-regulatory body for the industry in England and Wales and is regularly invited to speak at conferences and quoted in the media on issues related to the industry. Since it was first published in 2018, Neil has been consistently recognised as a leading individual in the litigation funding industry by Chambers and Partners. He gained an MA in Jurisprudence from the University of Oxford in 1995.
T +44 20 3327 3460
E neil.purslow@therium.com
Marcel Wegmüller is a co-founder and co-CEO of Nivalion. Marcel has over 10 years’ experience in international disputes funding and established and led the first Swiss litigation funder. Previously, he held various senior positions at Credit Suisse Group. He holds a masters in law degree from the University of Zurich, is admitted to the Swiss bar and has completed executive programs at INSEAD and London Business School (LBS). He is recognised by Who’s Who Legal as a Thought Leader in Third Party Funding and by Lawdragon as an outstanding litigation funder.
T +41 41 748 43 00
E marcel.wegmueller@nivalion.com