On the issues related to entities that lend money to litigants

A few days ago, the New York Times published a long article on entities that lend money to litigants in exchange for an assignment of an amount of the potential proceeds of the litigants' legal action. See here. The article coincided with a hearing in the Illinois legislature to discuss Senate Bill 3322 which attempts to regulate such entities. The NYT article also generated a lot of discussion among legal blogs. For an interesting discussion of the legal and ethical issues that relate to the litigation loan industry go to Room for Debate, Legal Ethics Forum and The Wall Street Journal Law Blog.