It has been a while since we profiled someone working at a litigation funder on these pages, by my count since the summer of 2020, when I interviewed Legalist’s Eva Shang, right on the heels of Longford’s John Garda. A lot has changed in the industry since then, with both Legalist and Longford seeing tremendous growth in terms of exposure and assets under management in that time. At the same time, the intervening years have also seen some challenging developments in the litigation funding space, including some high-profile fund closures and periods where attracting new capital has been very difficult. Still, the industry’s trajectory remains on a favorable upward curve and in a sign of continued health, new funds piloted by experienced industry hands have been launched. This week, we will hear from one of the co-founders of a newly-launched fund, which has already attracted serious interest both for its funding capability, as well as a gala industry event it will be putting on at the end of February.
Let’s meet our interviewee, who was gracious enough to agree to this interview even as she is hard at work getting her new venture off to a flying start. Lauren Harrison is the co-founder and managing partner of Signal Peak Partners, where she brings more than 25 years of front-line commercial litigation experience to legal finance. A former trial partner at Vinson & Elkins and Jones Walker, Harrison spent her career litigating complex antitrust, IP and other commercial disputes before serving as a vice president at Law Finance Group and later launching Signal Peak. She attended Dartmouth College and Cornell Law School, clerked on both the Ninth Circuit and the Western District of Washington, and has been professionally recognized by Lawdragon, Chambers, Texas Super Lawyers, and Best Lawyers in America.
Lauren’s new venture Signal Peak Partners, co-launched with industry veteran and fellow litigator, Mani Walia, is a litigation finance firm specializing in early-stage funding of complex matters — where the partners like to say the more complicated, the better. Signal Peak is currently raising its inaugural fund with a first close on March 1 and intended cap of $125 million. As of today, it has reviewed over 100 leads and has several matters under term sheet or funded. On February 26, Signal Peak will host an invitation-only symposium at the Post Oak Hotel in Houston, convening members of Congress, state and federal judges, and senior in-house counsel for candid conversations about the future of legal finance. The event will feature a tribute to legendary trial lawyer H. Lee Godfrey. Confirmed attendance currently exceeds capacity, underscoring the depth of interest in the dialogue Signal Peak is helping to shape. On a personal note, I very much appreciate the invite I received to the event, and very much look forward to attending.
Now to the interview. As usual, I have added some brief commentary to Lauren’s answer below but have otherwise presented her answer to my first question as she provided it.
Gaston Kroub: As a former practicing litigator turned funder, what are the lessons you learned at Biglaw that you apply to your current practice most regularly?
Lauren Harrison: The first thing that comes to mind is teambuilding. When you work in a sprawling practice section at a multi-office law firm, you learn that great outcomes are the products of great teams, and teambuilding is both a mindset and a skill set. Complex litigation is not a solo exercise. It requires assembling the right mix of experience, judgment, creativity, and execution, and it requires using the right mix of top-down direction and active listening. As a partner and mentor at two large firms, I learned the importance of including diverse viewpoints and experience levels in all aspects of the process but without losing the structure that ensures efficiency. And most importantly, never hoard credit. What you put out to your community comes back to you; I believe this across contexts and disciplines. These principles guide us at Signal Peak. We partner with lawyers we respect. We trust their judgment, and we structure our investments to support, not interfere with, their ability to try cases well.
Another critical lesson from Biglaw is to respect client resources. Client work is relationship-based, and I was mindful of how my decisions affected a client’s legal spend. As a funder, that translates to responsible stewardship of investor capital. We are disciplined about underwriting, thoughtful about capital deployment, and focused on efficiency at every stage of a matter. It also informs our views on investing and the ways that incentives shape behavior. Hourly billing has an important place in the legal marketplace. Expertise and counseling deserve to be valued. But hourly billing creates obviously counterintuitive incentives, where more time spent equates to greater “value.” At Signal Peak, alignment is central. We seek partnerships with attorneys who are willing to bet on themselves and whose interests are aligned with our own. Our funding structures are designed to reward efficiency, to value outcomes over process, and to ensure that everyone pulls in the same direction toward a successful result.
On a more macro level, being a Biglaw alum and specifically a Vinson & Elkins alum in Texas is to be part of a large but very specific group. National and international law firms invest heavily in brand recognition and building a culture that adheres across far-flung offices. While Signal Peak is small by comparison, that focus on culture and identity is part of our ethos. Our name conveys the role we expect to play in Texas and beyond. We are building a culture of reliability and disciplined execution, where trust is earned through consistency and results.
GK: The importance of teamwork in driving successful litigation results can’t be overstated — and that is especially true in complex IP litigation. And when a funder is introduced into the mix of client and their trial team, the importance of trying to maintain alignment across each stage of the matter is of critical importance, as Lauren rightly recognizes. That focus, as well as the tremendous litigation experience that Lauren brings to bear on behalf of Signal Peak’s investors and funded clients, makes it no surprise to me that the firm is off to such a strong start in terms of its capital raising and deployment efforts. Likewise, the strength of the relationships that Lauren and her colleagues have built over their own litigation careers have surely helped shape the star-studded lineup that is set to gather at Signal Peak’s upcoming symposium.
We will continue with Lauren’s answers to questions 2 and 3 next time, which will center on her thoughts about the critical need for battle-tested trial lawyers, as well as the role litigation funding can play in advancing the objectives of corporate legal departments. In the meantime, feel free to reach out to Lauren and her Signal Peak colleagues if you have meritorious cases that could benefit from litigation funding.
Please feel free to send comments or questions to me at gaston@k2k.law or via Twitter: @gkroub. Any topic suggestions or thoughts are most welcome.
Gaston Kroub lives in Brooklyn and is a founding partner of Kroub, Silbersher & Kolmykov PLLC, an intellectual property litigation boutique, and Markman Advisors LLC, a leading consultancy on patent issues for the investment community. Gaston’s practice focuses on intellectual property litigation and related counseling, with a strong focus on patent matters. You can reach him at gkroub@kskiplaw.com or follow him on Twitter: @gkroub.
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