As followers of its development over the past decade are well aware, legal finance—shifting the cost and risk of high value commercial disputes to third-party funders—has some vocal detractors. The most prominent include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform, purporting to represent the US business community, and the Insurance Information Institute, an advocate for the interests of the U.S. insurance industry.

This is, perhaps, unsurprising: As more often the target than the proponent of litigation, big business and insurers would prefer to maintain their customary Goliath positions, far better resourced and represented than their typical adversaries, by keeping third-party capital out of the hands of those who use it to pursue them through the courts.

And yet, the story is not quite so simple or one-sided. Fortune 500 companies of all stripes that are members of the Chamber of Commerce routinely use legal finance.