Who seeks litigation funding, what the dollars pay for, and where the money goes. A closer look at 165 grants, FY2016–2023.
Applications came from every kind of public interest practice: legal aid organizations, nonprofit law firms, private co-counsel teams, and law school clinics.
Legal aid organizations and nonprofit law firms accounted for 61% of grants, private co-counsel teams for 24%, and law school clinics for the remainder. The typical applicant had a certified or putative class, a trial date on the horizon, and a litigation expense no general-support grant would cover.
Demand outpaced supply throughout the period. Applications nearly doubled between FY2016 and FY2023, while the Fund's grant budget grew 68%. In the final two fiscal years, the Fund was able to support just under half of qualified requests.
Impact Fund grants are litigation-expense grants, not general support. Expert witness costs were the single largest use, at 44% of dollars — economists, epidemiologists, statisticians, and hydrologists whose reports decide certification motions. Class notice (18%) and discovery costs (15%) followed, with the balance covering depositions, travel, and appellate printing.
“Nobody funds a hydrologist. That's the whole story of why these cases die.”
Denise's clients — 1,800 households in a majority-Black parish — had been drinking contaminated well water for a decade. Proving where the contamination came from took a $22,000 groundwater study no one else would pay for. The study became Exhibit A. The parish got a settlement that funds a new municipal water line.
Grantee headquarters cluster where public interest law firms cluster — California, New York, Illinois, the District of Columbia. The litigation itself does not: funded cases were venued in 38 states plus D.C. and Puerto Rico.
Twenty-two grants supported cases in the South, where the ratio of public interest lawyers to poverty population is the lowest in the country — and where a modest expense grant is most often the difference between filing and folding.
A $12,000 grant let us take depositions 400 miles from the nearest co-counsel. That distance is the point.”