Decisions this important are ‘strategic class’ decisions. If you are a champion in your organization that sees the benefits working with a litigation finance company can bring to a company, then this article and presentation template will help you prepare for a board presentation. If you do not see the value yet, check out our worksheet to calculate why litigation finance might be a good fit for your company.
When preparing for a board presentation, there are a few key lessons to remember to lead you to success:
- Be prepared and on point.
You should know exactly why litigation finance is a sensible choice for your company’s situation. You should anticipate questions or concerns that they might have, with answers ready. These could be questions or concerns like, “even if we lose a lot of money by not pursuing a matter, we might save money & headache by not participating in litigation.” You can have answers such as, “the litigation finance model lets us deploy capital on our operations & growth while at the same time pursuing money owed that would otherwise be a loss.”
Here is another one: “We do not want to commit the company to debt from financing for litigation that may not pay off.” A concern like this can be met with an answer like, “there are companies like Late Harvest Financial that work with non-recourse funding. That means, the attorney gets paid upfront & throughout, but the obligation to pay back the financing company is forgiven if the case is not successful.”
We have also heard questions like, “It sounds complicated and outside of our focus area, we should just focus on our business.” Your answers could be along the lines of “I can be a point person to make sure we are working with a finance company that only gives us favorable terms. The legal expertise is, of course, handled by a lawyer. We defend our legal rights to be paid for the work we’ve completed and can keep our investments into our own operations & growth on track.”
There might be other questions specific to your organization, so in role as a champion, you will have to be prepared to learn what some of these concerns might be. This leads us to the next key lesson:
2. Know your board members.
Either through research or prior discussions, you can ascertain information important to knowing where the board members might stand. If you do not have the information, consider having conversations with your board members individually to find the following:
Do they consider the loss of pursuing litigation as something they would change if they could?
Would they likely view litigation finance as an innovation to help the company, or a threat to the status quo?
What motivates this board member, and how could litigation finance end up serving that board members objectives over the long term?
3. Keep your presentation relevant, timely, and short.
This is not your doctoral thesis. You should have a pretty good idea of where the board members stand on the topic before presenting, and you can focus your presentation on overcoming initial objections that you’ve researched.
It is important to keep the overall presentation short. Equally important is keeping the presentation relevant to the concerns that are uniquely tied to your organization. Finally, research a few of these points beforehand, or talk to your contact at Late Harvest Financial to find timely/recent information to include, such as:
Recent litigation finance news
Industry Trends on litigation finance.
How can litigation finance be strategically aligned with their current initiatives and goals?
Complete your projections on how engaging litigation finance would benefit the company.
- Common Best Practices for Presentations
Prepare and rehearse until you feel you are ready.
Speak Plainly.
After the presentation, be open to your board members thoughts/concerns, and promise to research their concerns. Follow up and get back to them.