The Lawyer’s Horizon newsletter published an article reporting on the rise of Claimant side litigation firms.
One US firm wanting to ape the success of Quinn is US-owned Keller Lenkner, which launched a London base early last year before opening in Liverpool in December. Its experience shows there is no shortage of clients willing to sign up to group actions. Keller Lenkner says it signed up 2,000 to 3,000 clients a week last year and although it is just 18 months old, it has 100,000 clients involved in actions against Mercedes, Volkswagen, Vauxhall, Uber, British Airways, Equifax and many more.
The anomaly with Keller Lenkner is that this is a start-up with some deep pockets and a clean balance sheet. Its US parent was founded in 2018 by three lawyers whom two years previously had sold the litigation finance firm, Gerchen Keller Capital, to Burford Capital for $160m. The firm is now using the money and knowledge from its previous incarnation to build inroads into the UK market. A Tesco equal pay claim is among the 24 High Court cases it has lined up.
