Benjamin Wey thinks of lawsuits as financial events.
That view is central to how Wey approaches litigation finance, one of the six disciplines practiced at New York Global Group, the international private equity and advisory firm he leads as CEO.
Alongside corporate finance, direct investments, market entry advisory, strategic advisory, and venture capital financing, litigation finance is the discipline Benjamin Wey says outsiders understand least, and the one he believes is quietly changing how legal risk is priced.
A claim is an asset
The starting point for Benjamin Wey is simple. A meritorious legal claim has value, but that value is locked up until the case is resolved.
For a well-capitalized company, that is an inconvenience. For a smaller business, an individual, or even a mid-sized firm facing a far larger opponent, it can be the difference between pursuing a claim and walking away from it.
Litigation finance addresses that gap. A third-party funder provides capital to cover legal fees and costs, typically on a non-recourse basis, in exchange for a share of any recovery.
If the case fails, the funder usually loses its investment. If it succeeds, the funder is paid from the proceeds.
In Wey’s view, the structure matters less than what it does. It turns a legal claim into something that can be evaluated, priced, and financed like any other asset.
And once claims can be financed, the question of who can afford to pursue justice starts to shift.
Why balance sheets have shaped outcomes
Benjamin Wey has spent more than two decades on Wall Street and in cross-border deal-making. During that time, he has seen how often the outcome of a dispute tracks the resources of the parties rather than the facts of the case.
A defendant with deep pockets can extend a case for years, file motion after motion, and wait for the other side to run out of money. The strategy does not require being right. It only requires being able to outlast.
Wey describes this as a pricing problem hiding inside a legal system. When one side can absorb the cost of time and the other cannot, the settlement value of a claim falls well below its real value.
Litigation finance, in his framing, is a corrective. It gives the weaker party the ability to hold out for a fair result, which in turn changes how the stronger party calculates its own risk.
What underwriting a case actually looks like
One of the misconceptions Benjamin Wey encounters most often is that litigation funders are gamblers placing bets on courtroom outcomes. The reality, he argues, is closer to credit analysis.
Underwriting a case starts with the merits: the strength of the legal theory, the quality of the evidence, and the track record of the counsel involved.
But merits are only the first filter. A funder also has to assess the likely damages, how long the matter could take, the jurisdiction and its procedural habits, and the question of if the defendant can actually pay the balance is often overlooked.
A winning case against an insolvent defendant is a poor investment. So is a strong case with modest damages that will take a decade to resolve.
Wey notes that the discipline requires the same patience and skepticism that any serious investor applies to a private company or a debt instrument.
Most cases that come to a funder are declined. That selectivity is a large part of what keeps the asset class credible.
Portfolio thinking
Benjamin Wey also points to a structural shift in how litigation finance is deployed. Early in the industry’s development, funding was mostly arranged one case at a time. Increasingly, funders work with law firms and corporate clients on portfolios of claims.
The logic will be familiar to anyone who has worked in private equity. A single case carries binary risk.
A portfolio of cases, underwritten carefully and diversified across claim types and jurisdictions, behaves more like a managed book of investments. That reduces volatility for the funder and can lower the cost of capital for the claimant.
For corporate clients, Wey adds, portfolio funding can also move litigation off the balance sheet as a cost center and reframe it as a source of value. A company holding several strong claims it has been unable to afford to pursue can monetize them without draining its operating budget.
The risks worth taking seriously
Benjamin Wey does not present litigation finance as free of concerns. Questions about disclosure, control over settlement decisions, and the potential for conflicts between funders, lawyers, and clients are legitimate, and courts and regulators in several jurisdictions continue to debate how much transparency funding arrangements should require.
His position is that these are reasons for disciplined practice rather than reasons to avoid the asset class.
Clear agreements about who controls strategy and settlement, careful attention to ethical rules, and honest underwriting protect everyone involved, including the funder.
A funder whose model depends on pressuring clients into bad decisions will not last long in a market that runs on reputation.
A quiet repricing
When a well-resourced party knows its opponent can be funded, the calculation changes. Delay stops being a guaranteed strategy.
Weak defenses become more expensive to maintain. Settlement discussions move closer to the actual value of the claim.
None of that happens loudly. It happens in the background, in the way lawyers advise clients and the way general counsel assess exposure.
But across thousands of disputes, Wey believes the effect is real: legal risk is gradually being priced according to the facts rather than according to who can afford to wait.
For an investor who has spent a career bridging markets and capital, that is the appeal. Litigation finance takes an inefficiency that has been accepted for generations and treats it the way finance treats any mispriced asset, as an opportunity to bring value and fairness closer together.
More of Benjamin Wey’s perspective on finance and cross-border capital is available on his Medium profile and in his earlier writing on how regulatory complexity shapes access to capital.