Can my lawyer stop me from getting funding?

It reads like an obstacle. It was written as a protection, and it protects you against three specific things:

• Funding a case that cannot support it. Your attorney is the only person with a complete picture of the liens, the coverage limits and the realistic range of your recovery. If an advance would swallow your net, they will know before anyone else does.
• Contracts that interfere with the case. The Act bars a funder from taking any right to make decisions about your claim or its settlement. Your attorney reading the contract is how that gets enforced in practice.
• Undisclosed stacking. A funder is prohibited from funding a consumer who has a prior assignment on the claim without satisfying it. Your attorney is the one who knows what is already attached.

The same section of the Act prohibits a funding company from paying an attorney a referral fee, from accepting one, and from steering you toward a particular attorney. The relationship is deliberately kept at arm's length in both directions — your lawyer cannot be paid to send you to us, and we cannot be paid to send you to them.

In our experience it is usually one of these, and most of them are reasonable:

• The maths does not work. Existing liens plus an advance would leave you with little or nothing. This is the most common reason and the best one.
• The case is about to resolve. Paying for money you would have had in weeks.
• The terms are bad. They have read the contract and object to it — which is exactly the outcome the acknowledgment requirement is designed to produce.
• Firm policy. Some firms decline to participate in funding at all, as a blanket rule.
• They have not read it yet. Genuinely common. Busy practice, unfamiliar paperwork, and a no is faster than a review.

1. Ask which reason it is. "The numbers do not work" and "I do not do these" call for completely different responses from you.
2. If it is the maths, listen. An attorney telling you an advance would eat your recovery is doing their job. That is not an obstacle to route around.
3. If it is the terms, ask what specifically. A different amount, or a different structure, sometimes resolves the objection. Tell us what they objected to and we will tell you honestly whether we can address it.
4. If they have not read it, ask them to. You are entitled to a considered answer, and the acknowledgment is a defined step rather than an open-ended favour.
5. Tell them what you actually need and why. Many attorneys have seen clients accept low offers under financial pressure and will engage differently once they understand you are choosing between funding and a bad settlement.

You do not have to be the go-between. With your written authorisation we contact your attorney's office directly, send the contract for review, and answer their questions ourselves. Most of the friction in this process is people relaying half-remembered terms between two parties who could just talk. If you want to know what they will be looking at, what we actually require is a short list.

If your attorney declines, we will tell you plainly that we cannot proceed, and why. We will not keep working on you.