There seems to be a growing appetite among litigation departments among the Am Law 50 law firms—a cohort long associated with defense-side work for corporate defendants—to share risk with clients on plaintiff-side matters. 

Let me present Exhibit A: Leaders of the litigation department at Kirkland & Ellis, the top-ranked firm in terms of gross revenues on the Am Law 100, notably announced four years ago via an interview with my predecessor at the Litigation Daily that they were launching a self-funded, plaintiffs-side trial group aimed an increasing the number of the firm’s contingency matters by 10-fold or more.