JPMorgan Asset Arm Fronts Fees in Mass Tort Firm Investments

JPMorgan Asset Management is dabbling in legal finance as institutional investors seek returns uncorrelated to the stock market.

The JPMorgan Chase & Co. division advanced two mass tort law firms money tied to expected attorneys’ fees, according to public documents. The amount of the deals with Seeger Weiss and Simmons Hanly Conroy and the returns the asset manager expects weren’t disclosed.

The filings from 2024 and 2025 are a rare public example of how large investors are growing more comfortable with a legal industry investment that typically has been the terrain of dedicated litigation funders and alternative investment firms. JPMorgan’s asset arm managed $4.2 trillion as of Dec. 31.

Mass tort law firms are a popular area for funders due to the large number of cases and structured payouts. The firms transacting with JP Morgan Asset Management have been involved in suits over the opioid crisis and cases against Ozempic manufacturer NovoNordisk and Norfolk Southern, among others.

Commercial litigation funders deployed $2.8 billion in new commitments last year, according to a recent report by Westfleet Advisors. Fortress Investment Group, BlackRock Inc., and Davidson Kempner Capital Management are among the multi-strategy investment managers, hedge funds, and private equity operations pouring money into legal assets.

Investors in attorney fee transactions typically pay law firms up front an amount lower than lawyers expect to collect for a case. When the fees eventually arrive, the investors aim to reap a profit by collecting more than they fronted the firm.

Returns on these structures vary but they are typically in the low double digits, according to a person who’s done the transactions but declined to be named discussing private details. Investors are attracted to legal industry investments because they can gain returns that are uncorrelated to the stock market.

For Seeger Weiss, the transaction with JPMorgan “involved the firm monetizing legal fees it had already earned to receive payment on an accelerated basis,” Stephen Mallenbaum, the law firm’s executive director, said in a statement.

JP Morgan Asset Management declined to comment. Simmons Hanly Conroy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Seeger Weiss is a major player in the mass tort space. The firm in 2024 won the position of lead counsel in consolidated litigation against Novo Nordisk A/S’s Ozempic and similar drugs over side effect warnings as well as injectable contraceptive Depo-Provera and its connection to brain tumors.

Seeger Weiss and Simmons Hanly Conroy have also been involved in opioid litigation. A court-appointed panel recommended Simmons Hanly Conroy receive 11.4% of the $2.14 billion fee fund resolving litigation from local governments over drugmakers, distributors, and pharmacies’ roles in fueling the opioid crisis.

Simmons Hanly Conroy was also one of the lead attorneys in the class action lawsuit against Norfolk Southern for the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.

‘Sooner Rather Than Later’

Attorney fee transactions with investors typically occur after large lawsuits have been resolved but before attorneys who worked on the cases are compensated for their time. Post-settlement investments are lower risk than funding lawsuits whose outcomes are still uncertain and timelines for resolution are not clear.

“This is a way for a law firm, just like any other business that has collections coming over some period of time, to accelerate that revenue and have it come in sooner rather than later,” said Boris Ziser, a partner at McDermott Will & Schulte and global head of structured finance, CLOs, and alternative assets.

For the investors, “it’s a good investment where the risk is pretty minimal,” Ziser said, speaking generally about the transactions. “They determined that the return they’re getting for that risk is attractive.” Ziser, who has worked on these types of transactions, said he didn’t handle the JP Morgan Asset Management investment.

Post-settlement deals are a growing part of the legal finance landscape, said Justin Brass, co-founder of JBSL Legal Finance, which has done a number of transactions involving the purchase of attorneys fees.

Attorneys fees, especially for those in mass tort leadership, can be quite large, at times in excess of nine figures, Brass said. “Why shouldn’t this avenue be available to lawyers who have already settled something and now they’re just waiting for a payment stream?”

JP Morgan’s Transaction

JP Morgan Asset Management’s transaction with Seeger Weiss and Simmons Hanly Conroy were executed with a Lynstone Special Situations Fund, according to the filings.

The asset manager closed on a $2.4 billion fund in June 2022 after raising capital from pension funds, insurance companies, foundations, endowments, and wealth managers, according to a press release at the time.

The fund is managed by the Global Special Situations Team which is part of the alternative investment arm of JP Morgan Asset Management.

It was the firm’s second closing of the fund after announcing a $1.06 billion capital raise in October 2019. The firm invested those proceeds in stressed, distressed and event driven situations across North American and European private and public credit markets, it said in a 2019 press release.