David Perla on the US GAO Legal Finance Report
- Case law & ethics
The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently released a report on legal finance. David Perla writes for New York Law Journal on this report and responds specifically to fabricated attacks on the legal finance industry:
"Recently, a trope invented and perpetuated by opponents of legal finance is that it presents a so-called national security threat, which is a complete fabrication and a thinly veiled attempt to advance its failed proposal to force disclosures of financing in litigation. That the GAO studied legal finance for nearly two years, including trends and potential disadvantages, and included just a single footnote referencing a law review article, is revealing, given its clear and broad mandate to identify issues and the care with which it studied the industry. Moreover, the author of the article cited, Maya Steinitz, has acknowledged publicly—on a recent 60 Minutes episode explaining the benefits of legal finance—that opponents generally dislike regulation, except when it helps them. Put bluntly, opponents of the legal finance industry will invent any narrative to oppose accountability, but the GAO report speaks for itself and exposes the national security threat narrative for the fiction that it is."
