Aviva Will, senior managing director at Burford Capital

Litigation funder Burford Capital has earmarked a $50m fund for commercial disputes led by women or women-owned firms, in a move aimed at helping to close the gender gap in law.

Known as The Equity Project, Burford said the fund is intended to "provide an economic incentive for change" by making capital available for litigation matters led by female lawyers.

The initiative is supported by more than a dozen female senior lawyers, known as Equity Project Champions, including a trio of London QCs – Latham & Watkins international arbitration global co-chair Sophie Lamb QC, Debevoise & Plimpton London partner Wendy Miles QC and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan international trial practice chair Sue Prevezer QC.

Aviva Will, a senior managing director at Burford and a former senior litigator at Cravath Swaine & Moore, said: "There's no question that there remains a significant gender gap in law. The question is how to close this gap, and quickly."

In launching the fund, Burford highlighted a recent study by legal recruiter Major Lindsey & Africa, which found that women partners at London law firms earn 24% less than men.

According to Will, less than 10% of the thousands of requests for financing that Burford has received in the past 10 years were for matters run by women. She said the industry "can and must change this", and that "diversity and mentoring programmes play a part, but to change the outcomes more quickly, we need to change the economics".

According to Burford, the fund will allow women litigators and women-led firms to offer attractive alternative fee arrangements when pitching for work, thus increasing their career prospects and chances of success.

Will told Legal Week sister title The American Lawyer: "Whoever holds the purse strings, holds the power at a law firm. That's how it works. What this does is it puts the power of capital behind women to generate their own business for the firms, but also to incentivise the firms to put women in charge of big cases.

"When we talked to women lawyers in the formation of this and thinking it through, a lot of what we heard was that woman are less likely to put themselves out there to go to a contingency committee and say: 'I've got this great case with this new client but we've got to take it on risk.' This kind of initiative allows them to use Burford's capital to take that risk."

The funds will be available on matters in which: a woman litigator is first chair, serves as plaintiffs' lead counsel or chairs the plaintiffs' steering committee; a women-owned law firm is representing the client; a women litigator earns origination credit; or a woman partner is the client relationship manager. Cases will also have to meet the standard investment criteria set by Burford.

Burford CEO Christopher Bogart added: "As McKinsey and others have shown, companies with more gender diversity on their executive teams outperform on profitability and value creation. The Equity Project is about improving business outcomes and about closing the gender gap in law."

Burford recently raised $250m by issuing new shares for the first time since 2010. Bogart told Legal Week the funder has experienced "fairly dramatic" growth in the last two years, with $1.34bn of new investments in 2017 – three times as much as 2016. Bogart said Burford has now worked with 70% of the Global 100 and 90% of the Am Law 100.