A lawsuit cash advance can help the claimant win a personal injury lawsuit if all other means of obtaining funding have been exhausted. People have borrowed money from relatives, sold valuables, and taken out loans in order to pay for the services associated with their lawsuits, but there is a simpler and often cheaper alternative; working with a cash advance company. Legal advances can help the client proceed with the case by helping to cover the cost of necessary personal expenses required for the lawsuit. Companies like Legal Advances can provide a lawsuit cash advance in order to successfully take the lawsuit to court.

Some firms have charged effective interest rates exceeding 100 percent a year, but the business generally operates beyond the reach of money lending laws and has mostly escaped the sort of hostile attention that has been directed at, for example, the payday loan industry and its alleged ""predatory lending."" However, that may be changing. New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has reached settlements calling for clearer disclosure of fees from at least ten litigation-cash-advance firms, including one based in New Jersey which billed a client $19,000 for a cash advance of $3,000 two and a half years earlier. (This company later accepted a smaller sum.)

Industry publications have pointed out that we shouldn't assume that the legal finance company is actually pocketing an extraordinarily high overall return on its cash advances since in cases where client/plaintiffs obtain neither a verdict nor a settlement it will lose the money. But this once again suggests a near parallel with sub prime lenders, many of which also must write off a nontrivial share of debt holdings as un-collectable.

To obtain litigation funding from a third party such as Legal Advances, the claimants attorney will be required to supply all the necessary information for review. Once Legal Advances reviews the case and speaks with the attorney, they will make a decision to provide the claimant with a lawsuit cash advance if they feel there is a good chance of winning in court. Keep in mind that this cash advance is not technically a loan, as the claimant does not have to repay the amount if the case is unsuccessful.

Prior to signing on with the cash advancing company, the claimant must know what he or she will receive should the case be won, so as not to have any surprises in the end, and then proceed knowing how much to repay after being granted a monetary award from the defendant.