Litigation Funder LexShares Announces Doyle as New Chief

LexShares, the litigation funder known for its investment crowdfunding marketplace and case origination software, has a new chief executive officer.

Max Doyle comes to LexShares after more than three years at Augusta Ventures, where he led North America operations. He replaces Cayse Llorens, who left in 2022.

Doyle said he wanted to take on more work in North America, where British funder Augusta had only a small percentage of its overall business. “It was going to be more of the same rather than doing something amazing,” he said.

LexShares is one of the more established funders in the decade-old US litigation finance space, where financiers invest in legal actions with goal of making a profit if the parties prevail.

Llorens had become CEO in 2021 after his Chicago-based private equity firm Brockhurst Capital Partners became a majority investor. Brockhurst still has a controlling interest in the company, which was founded in 2014.

LexShares closed on a $25 million fund in 2018 and completed its second fund in 2022, raising $100 million. Doyle said 60% of the capital is already deployed and the hope is to have a closing on its third fund, similar in size to the second, at the beginning of 2024.

“You can’t really ignore what the market is doing when you put together your next fund,” he said. “What we want to do is make sure that it has enough DNA from the past and comprises the types of cases that we’ve been known for.”

The company is known for its marketplace where investors can put money into LexShares’ fund or select individual cases. LexShares is also one of the few players in the space that specializes in small to medium size investments and has an average ticket size between $1 and $3 million.

Doyle said it’s possible the company will turn toward larger cases in the future, and it has paired up with other funders on large investments.

He said the company has become active in mass torts, and he expects that trend to continue. They have financed law firm clients active in Round Up, Johnson & Johnson talcum powder and infant formula torts.

“I still see Mass Torts as just one practice of law that does offer up the arithmetic to facilitate funding so that we can get a return,” he said. “It’s just one aspect of law, but it’s a particularly hot one at the moment.”

LexShares has proprietary software called Diamond Mine, which forages through data and scores cases on how well they’d do as investments. Diamond Mine has been a “battering ram” that has given the small company a large amount of case leads, Doyle said.