A Proposal for a Commodities Market for the Legal World
Who wants in on my new firm? Here's how we're going to do it. We're going to open a simple trading market, right, which'll easily get approved by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, led as it is by Goldman Sachs alums. This will have a forward-facing straight-up predictive betting market on investment-backed lawsuits. (Later we'll open up that market to straight-up gambling on all law cases, because, who wouldn't want to go big on counterintuitive Supreme Court outcomes what with the new Justices?) Then we'll package and roll-up the investments in class action and high-end litigation. We'll let the lawyers openly re-sell their actual debts and costs in an exchange, so they can access up-front cash (with, of course, ballooning interest). It'll encourage speedy settlement! It'll clean up the courthouses! Then we can tranche the debt and reinsure it via some morons like AIG, who'll be left with costs, that'll then get paid by the Goldman Sachs alums in the government. Everyone wins!
This insanity has been operating on some level for a long time. Nearly 15 years ago, a firm I was with "associated" with another firm for $1 million in "seed money" for a class action suit. That suit ended up going nowhere. My firm ended up with an enormous debt, and nearly all the partners in bankruptcy.
I spent ten years giving depositions and fending off lawyers who were looking for some recompense from the bottom-feeders at the firm who, like myself, hadn't leveraged themselves to the point of being insolvent.
Ultimately, for this and other stupid "investments" in our dumbass windmill-tilting–from banks, as well as the associated lawyer on the class case–I ended up taking a fairly large loan to buy my peace.
So this talk makes me bare my teeth.
Brilliant.
Why, that's so crazy it already works.
If by "everyone," you mean, "everyone who's a Goldman Sachs alum," you're absolutely right. The only suggestion I'd have is to rebrand this as tort reform.
Just fast-forward to the part where we swindle old folks out of their life insurance policies and then hope they die immediately.
All litigation ought be funded by the state, but of course only after careful consideration of the merits of the plaintiff. Other funding should be forbidden. That is to say, the courts should be open to those the state deems deserving, and only to them. That's the way to put an end to the cruption.
What do you think a law firm does when it accepts a case on spec? It goes to a bank and gets a loan. What you're proposing isn't much different.