Why “David vs Goliath” Framing Is Not Enough
By Steve Conley
Academy of Life Planning
When governments speak about access to justice, they often reach for a familiar story.
David versus Goliath.
Ordinary people versus powerful institutions.
The little person finally getting their day in court.
The government’s decision to reverse the impact of the PACCAR judgment has been framed in exactly these terms. Without litigation funding, we are told, victims like the Horizon postmasters would never have been heard.
That statement is not wrong.
But it is incomplete — and incompleteness is where systems quietly fail people.
This article is not an argument against litigation funding.
Nor is it a defence of corporate wrongdoing.
It is an examination of how justice systems behave under economic pressure, and what recent experience tells us about their structural limits.
1. The Loudest Objection Was Never About Justice — It Was About Liability
Let’s begin with clarity.
The most forceful opposition to the PACCAR ruling did not come from victims’ groups.
It came from litigation funders and commercial legal interests.
The ruling brought litigation funding agreements into clearer legal view, questioning whether percentage-based returns should be treated like other damages-linked arrangements.
The reaction was immediate and intense.
That reaction is instructive.
When an industry mobilises quickly to remove legal classification, oversight, or enforceability constraints, it is rarely because those constraints enhance accountability. More often, they interfere with commercial certainty and returns.
This does not imply bad faith.
It reflects normal economic behaviour.
The policy question is therefore not whether litigation funders are “good” or “bad”, but whether justice systems should depend on structures whose primary obligation is to capital efficiency rather than citizen repair.
Justice cannot be built on goodwill alone.
It must be built to withstand predictable incentives.
2. The Risk Is Not Theoretical — It Is Now Evidenced
Concerns about litigation funding distorting justice are sometimes dismissed as abstract or speculative.
They are not.
Even before PACCAR, critics across the spectrum — including the Adam Smith Institute — warned that the rapid expansion of litigation funding risked:
- Distorting settlement behaviour
- Inflating aggregate claims exposure
- Introducing misaligned incentives into the justice process
Their conclusion was not abolition, but consistent regulation, holding funders to standards comparable with other investment activity.
Courts and academics have long raised similar questions:
- Who ultimately controls litigation strategy?
- Who decides whether to settle or proceed?
- How transparent are funding terms and exit mechanics?
- What happens when commercial risk appetite changes mid-case?
These questions moved from theory to reality in a very public way.
3. When the Structure Was Stress-Tested: Motor Finance Discretionary Commission Cases
The motor finance discretionary commission litigation marked a turning point in this debate.
As legal uncertainty increased and expected returns narrowed, some litigation funders withdrew support or repositioned strategically, leaving claimants exposed, delayed, or effectively abandoned.
Many claimants had relied on funder backing to proceed. When that backing shifted, the consequences were not abstract:
- Claims stalled
- Confidence collapsed
- Individuals were left navigating complexity they had never agreed to carry alone
This was not illegality in a narrow sense.
It was structural predictability.
When litigation funding operates as risk capital, claimants inevitably become contingent assets. When the economics no longer stack up, support is optional.
That episode matters because it punctures a comforting narrative.
Litigation funding is often spoken about as if it were an extension of justice itself. In reality, it is an investment mechanism, governed by portfolio logic rather than moral obligation.
That does not make funders villains.
It makes them investors.
But justice systems should never rely on investor loyalty as a substitute for structural integrity.
4. What We See at Get SAFE: Victims Arrive Late, Exhausted, and Disempowered
This is where policy meets lived experience.
At Get SAFE, we work with people before, during, and after financial harm. Many encounter litigation funding only once they are already exhausted, disoriented, and desperate.
Patterns repeat with striking consistency:
- Evidence has degraded due to delay
- Narrative control has already shifted away from the individual
- Funding terms are opaque or poorly understood
- Settlement is prioritised over truth, learning, or reform
- The person becomes a claim, not a citizen
In those moments, litigation funding may help recover money — but it rarely restores agency.
Justice becomes something done to people, not with them.
That is not a moral failure.
It is a design failure.
5. The False Binary: Funding or No Justice
The most dangerous idea in this debate is the false binary:
“Without litigation funding, ordinary people cannot access justice.”
That framing collapses multiple design choices into a single inevitability.
It ignores alternatives such as:
- Early-stage citizen empowerment
- Evidence literacy and self-directed case building
- Transparent pre-legal advocacy
- Collective learning and shared intelligence
- Structural prevention, not just post-harm monetisation
Litigation funding should be one tool in a wider justice ecosystem, not the gatekeeper through which all claims must pass.
When access to justice depends on projected recovery multiples and portfolio risk tolerance, justice ceases to be a right. It becomes a derivative.
6. Justice Must Be Accessible — and Trustworthy
The government is right about one thing.
Justice should not be reserved for those who can afford it.
But access alone is not enough.
A justice system that is:
- Financially accessible
- Yet structurally opaque
- Incentive-misaligned
- And fragile under market stress
Will eventually fail the very people it claims to protect.
The lesson from PACCAR, from motor finance, and from lived experience is not that litigation funding is wrong — but that it cannot be the foundation of justice.
The Get SAFE Position
At the Academy of Life Planning, and through Get SAFE, we work upstream of this failure.
Our focus is on:
- Citizen-led evidence building
- Early clarity and case ownership
- Restoring agency before monetisation
- Reducing dependency on late-stage commercial rescue
Litigation funding should be an option of last resort — not the price of admission to justice.
Justice works best when people are empowered before they are funded.
Closing reflection
Access to justice matters.
But justice that survives only when the economics stack up is not justice — it is exposure.
Design matters.
About Get SAFE
Get SAFE (Support After Financial Exploitation) is a citizen-led initiative that empowers victims of financial harm to investigate, document, and pursue redress.
Through AI-enabled training, structured playbooks, and collaborative fellowship, Get SAFE transforms victims into advocates — ensuring that truth and justice are not luxuries, but rights.
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Every year, thousands across the UK lose their savings, pensions, and peace of mind to corporate financial exploitation — and are left to face the aftermath alone.
Get SAFE (Support After Financial Exploitation) exists to change that.
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steve.conley@aolp.co.uk | +44 (0)7850 102070
Academy of Life Planning 