Melissa Sobel has jumped into the growing litigation finance industry with a move to Burford Group LLC as its first-ever in-house counsel.

Sobel went to Burford following an eight-year stint at Time Inc., most recently as associate general counsel. She says the new opportunity arose at a perfect time: “I needed a change,” she tells CorpCounsel.com.

Sobel was also eager to get into a new and growing industry. When she heard about the job opening, she began reading everything she could find about litigation funding, she says. “Sometimes I’d talk to lawyers about it and even they would say, ‘What’s that?’ ” After completing her research, Sobel made the move. She officially joined Burford in mid-June. The company continues to rely on Latham & Watkins for outside legal advice.

Burford opened its doors in 2009 and is now one of the largest companies in the field of third-party litigation financing. These companies invest money in lawsuits and collect a portion of any recovered funds.

Burford is listed on the London Stock Exchange. The company has committed almost $300 million to its portfolio in three years, during which time its work has included lawsuits involving contracts, real estate, trade secrets, and securities laws. The company has now reached a size where having a dedicated corporate counsel becomes a necessity, according to a statement by CEO Christopher Bogart.

Since beginning at Burford in June, Sobel has been getting a handle on the company’s diverse portfolio. Prior to joining Time Inc., Sobel had focused on corporate work at Debevoise & Plimpton, and she says a lot of the skills she picked up there are transferring over to her new position. Her work as an associate GC at Time Inc. comes in handy too, she says, since working in the upper echelons of an in-house legal department teaches you how to deal with “everything under the sun.”

So far, Sobel is the only dedicated member of the law department—although almost everyone else who works at Burford is a lawyer. She says that since the business and the industry are still new and growing, the company is less structured than previous places she’s worked. “What’s nice about being here is that there’s a real inclusiveness in how the development of the business is discussed and how decisions are made,” she says.

Sobel graduated from Wesleyan University with an English degree in 1991, and she earned her law degree from New York University School of Law in 1996.