Ashley Keller, JD/MBA, '07: Launched Keller Lenkner, a Plaintiff-Side Litigation Firm in Chicago
GKC Founders, Burford Execs Launch Plaintiff-Side Litigation Firm
The trio who formed Gerchen Keller Capital (GKC) are moving on to a new venture just over a year after the $160 million sale of their litigation finance firm to Burford Capital Ltd.
Adam Gerchen, Ashley Keller and Travis Lenkner have quietly launched Keller Lenkner, a plaintiff-side litigation firm in Chicago that works exclusively under alternative fee agreements. The trio gained notoriety by growing their litigation finance firm GKC to $1.3 billion in assets under management before selling it to publicly traded Burford in December 2016.
The trio will remain as “senior advisors” to Burford.
The Keller Lenkner firm has a bare-bones website and Class A office space in a new tower in Chicago’s West Loop. It also has clients but none that have yet to appear on public dockets, Lenkner said in an interview. The firm will focus on multidistrict litigation, mass tort actions and class action litigation.
While the types of cases the group intends to handle may be well-suited for litigation funding in some instances, Lenkner said his new firm will have no special ties to litigation finance.
“We think we’re well-situated not only to add a lot of value for clients, but also to bring a new perspective to the plaintiff’s bar and to continue to work based on our combination of experiences in law and finance,” Lenkner said. “In particular, our experience evaluating litigation risk. The difference is it’s now risk we’re taking ourselves instead of evaluating risk that other people are taking.”
Read more at The American Lawyer