Working with an Advisor
Advisors Deliver Better Results
Going directly to capital sources creates a distinct informational disadvantage for claimants and firms. An experienced advisor managing the transaction levels the playing field, providing actionable guidance on terms, structures, funder reputations and strengths, timelines, preparation and marketing.
Advisors Deliver More Reliable Results
There are 30+ dedicated litigation funders and almost as many non-traditional capital sources. Taking terms from the wrong investor is a wasted opportunity to find a value-add capital partner and risks delay, failure to close and early termination of funding.
Advisors Alleviate Conflict Issues
Law firms do not want to lead on the capital pricing process. It is time intensive, uncompensated and distracts them from doing what they do best. Further, law firms typically want to avoid representing clients in negotiations where financial interests may not be aligned.
Working with Sokol
Sokol Knows Litigation Finance
Sokol has years of experience at top litigation financiers - valuing, pricing, diligencing, structuring and executing litigation funding. Relationships with law firms and competitors result in a broad and deep knowledge of who is active on specific types and sizes of cases, how investment decisions are made, and how deals are transacted.
Sokol Knows Patent Litigation
Few funding advisors are themselves attorneys; fewer still were practicing patent litigators. Founder, Michael Kallus, has a long background analyzing, charting, budgeting and litigating patent cases with several of the top law firms in the US. He has drafted claims, briefed courts and tried cases. He has also been active in the patent transactional market - with insight into purchase prices, valuations, settlement ranges, defendant legal teams and tendencies, campaign strategy and outcomes. Sokol leads conversations with funders on all levels.
Michael Kallus is the founder and Director of Sokol Advisors with more than twenty years experience in patent litigation, patent transactions and litigation finance. Michael maintains an extensive industry network and has a comprehensive knowledge of the industry's competitive landscape. He has lengthy first-hand experience evaluating and structuring litigation finance packages from financier and claimant sides.
Michael previously worked as an litigation finance investment manager for two leading litigation financiers: the Intellectual Property Finance team at alternative investment management firm Fortress Investment Group and at legal asset fund Woodsford Litigation Funding. There he vetted cases, prepared terms, led valuation and performed asset management functions. Prior to his work in litigation finance, Michael worked in patent risk intermediary RPX Corp’s acquisitions and business development groups, performing patent risk valuations with in-house litigation teams and counsel in networking, telecommunications, energy, ecommerce, gaming, and medical verticals.
Prior to RPX, Michael was a patent litigator with the law firms of Fish & Richardson, Morgan Lewis and Confluence Law Partners, an alternative fee litigation boutique he helped found. Michael was a federal judicial clerk in the Northern District of Florida and is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law and the University of California, Berkeley. He is admitted to practice in California and Massachusetts.
