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Mobilising the Market: An Empirical Analysis of Crowdfunding for Judicial Review Litigation

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View the page of Sam Guy

Sam Guy provides an analysis of crowdfunding campaigns raising funds for judicial review cases.

Image courtesy of interviewee. June 20, 2024

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This video discusses the process and implications of judicial review in the UK, particularly in relation to the rising trend of crowdfunding for legal challenges against government bodies. Judicial review is a critical legal procedure enabling the public to contest government actions they believe to be unlawful, though the high costs associated with such cases can deter individuals from pursuing them. Legal aid has significantly declined since reforms in 2012, leaving most potential litigants without financial support for their cases.

As a result, many individuals have turned to crowdfunding to finance judicial reviews. A key platform for this is Crowd Justice, which specializes in funding legal cases. The author conducted an empirical study analyzing 413 crowdfunding cases related to judicial reviews, revealing that a sizable portion of cases were public interest litigations—those affecting broader community concerns rather than individual issues.

Notably, the Good Law Project emerged as a significant player in this arena, successfully using crowdfunding for cases relating to various pressing policy issues. However, the study also found a disparity in funding, with a few high-profile cases attracting the majority of donations, while many others struggled financially. The findings highlight that inexperienced litigants, including local community groups, are increasingly involved in public interest litigation, suggesting that crowdfunding is democratizing access to legal processes.

The analysis underscores the diverse landscape of public interest litigation, challenging traditional views that associate it primarily with established civil society organizations. The conclusion calls for more nuanced understanding and research into the experiences of various groups using crowdfunding for legal challenges, especially local community organizations.

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Here are some articles similar to the video you , focusing on the themes of judicial review, crowdfunding for legal challenges, and public interest litigation:

1. **"Crowdfunding for Justice: New Avenues for Public Interest Litigation"**
This article explores the intersection of crowdfunding and public interest litigation, highlighting various case studies of successful crowdfunded legal challenges. It discusses how platforms like Crowd Justice are reshaping access to justice for marginalized groups.

2. **"The Impact of Legal Aid Reforms on Public Interest Litigation in the UK"**
This piece examines the consequences of the 2012 legal aid cuts in the UK, detailing how these changes have prompted a rise in alternative funding methods such as crowdfunding, and the implications for the accessibility of judicial review for ordinary citizens.

3. **"Judicial Review and the Role of the Public: A New Era of Engagement?"**
An analysis of how the evolution of judicial review has empowered the public, particularly through tools like crowdfunding, to hold the government accountable. The article discusses various notable cases and the increasing involvement of citizen litigants.

4. **"Empirical Trends in Crowdfunded Judicial Reviews: A Comprehensive Study"**
This research paper presents empirical findings on crowdfunded judicial reviews, similar to the study mentioned in your video. It offers insights into the demographics of funders and litigants, as well as the types of legal actions that see funding.

5. **"Revolutionizing Legal Finance: The Rise of Crowdfunding Platforms"**
This article outlines the emergence of crowdfunding as a means to finance legal actions, detailing the different platforms and their roles in supporting individuals seeking judicial review against government entities.

6. **"The Good Law Project: Pioneering Crowdfunding in Public Interest Litigation"**
A detailed look into the Good Law Project's efforts in utilizing crowdfunding for legal actions on policy issues, emphasizing successful campaigns and the broader implications for civil society activism and legal accountability.

7. **"Access to Justice in an Era of Austerity: Crowdfunding as a Solution?"**
This article discusses the challenges of accessing legal redress in light of austerity measures and how crowdfunding has emerged as a viable alternative for individuals and community groups seeking to contest government action.

These articles collectively examine the evolving landscape of public interest litigation and the innovative funding mechanisms that are enabling more individuals to engage with the judicial system.

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In terms of the kind of context

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and the background, judicial review in general is a,

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a really kind of important legal process by which members

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of the public can challenge the actions

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and decisions of government bodies where they believe

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that the government body has acted unlawfully, basically, so

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that that government body could be a central government

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department, like the home office,

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it could be a local council making a planning decision

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or a housing allocation decision, that sort of thing.

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It could be an arm's length government body like Natural

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England or Osted.

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But, so if you are looking to challenge one of those sorts

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of government bodies where you think

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that they've acted unlawfully for anybody looking

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to bring a judicial review, one major difficulty is

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that the process of bringing a case is incredibly expensive.

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And if you lose your case, the standard rule is

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that you'll have to pay not only the costs

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of your own legal representatives, so the lawyers

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that you have engaged, but also the costs

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of the defendant, the other side.

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So the government body,

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and in 20 17, 1 public law practitioner, Tom Hickman,

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Casey estimated at the cheapest, losing a sort

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of simple two hour judicial review claim against a

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government department would likely involve you needing

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to cover eight to 12,000 pounds.

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And then meanwhile, a sort of moderately complex claim

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that lasts one day against a regulatory body would exceed

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40,000 pounds in costs,

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and a substantial kind

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of two day case would likely generate costs of between 80

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and 200,000 pounds.

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Now, legal aid has classically been available to ensure

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that citizens are able to bring judicial review claims,

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but reforms in the Legal aid sentencing

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and punishment of offenders act in 2012

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radically reduced the number of people

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whose earnings mean they're eligible

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to qualify for legal aid.

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And that means that the vast bulk of people in the country

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will not qualify for legal aid.

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And so if they feel that a government body has acted

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unlawfully, most members of the population

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would only be able to bring a case if they could take on the

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risk that if they lose the case, they'll need

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to pay the costs of of both sides.

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And clearly given those costs, I mentioned above,

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that's not a viable option for many people.

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And that is why crowdfunding has, has basically begun

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to be used to support the funding of judicial review cases.

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It's in effect filling the gap that has been left by

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that fast reduction in legal aid.

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And crowdfunding involves those people who are seeking

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to bring a judicial review,

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posting a fundraising page online,

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and seeking donations from interested members of the public.

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Now, because crowdfunding relies on donations from the

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public, there have been concerns raised by some academics

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and some legal practitioners

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that they will encourage a more politicized approach

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to judicial review.

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And this is because people are likely to donate

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to those cases which they feel most strongly about,

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which we might expect will be those

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with more popular policy implications.

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And this might mean that less popular causes are individuals

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like prisoners, for example, may fare less well

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than politically popular causes in their fundraising,

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which might affect the kinds of cases that can be brought.

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And these suspicions have been intensified by a number

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of high profile legal challenges related to, for instance,

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parts of the Brexit process, which were able to be brought,

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having raised large amounts of money through crowdfunding.

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And in particular, the legal campaigning organization,

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the Good Law Project, have used crowdfunding

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to bring judicial reviews in a wide range

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of high profile policy issues.

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And as a result, they've attracted quite a lot

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of admiration, but also quite a lot of criticism.

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But then, despite all this controversy

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and the importance of crowdfunding in Access to Justice, up

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until this study that I conducted,

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nobody had really conducted a systematic

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or empirical study to work out actually

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how crowdfunding is being used in practice

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to fund judicial review cases.

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And in order to put right that lack

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of empirical tension towards crowdfunding,

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I constructed a database of judicial review cases

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that were fundraised for using Crowd Justice.

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Now, crowd Justice is a platform which was established in

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2014, and it's the only bespoke crowdfunding site

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that has been set up specifically for funding legal cases.

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So a small number of people do use other platforms

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to fund their legal cases like Kickstarter or GoFundMe.

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Uh, but Crowd Justice has been by far the most popular site

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for litigation crowdfunding in the uk.

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So I therefore focused on Crowd Justice

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and identified all fundraising pages, which were labeled as

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judicial reviews on the site.

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And then I also manually identified other pages on the site,

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which were not labeled as such,

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but which were clearly seeking funding for judicial reviews.

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So in total, I identified 413 pages on Crowd Justice,

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which represented the vast majority

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of judicial review fundraising pages

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that had been launched on Crowd Justice from when the site

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began up to a cutoff date of November, 2020.

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So using the information

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that was contained on those crowd justice fundraising pages,

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I gathered information on a range of variables including,

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the sums of money that were being fundraised for

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and how much was actually raised in practice,

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how the cases progressed in the judicial review system,

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what type of sector the cases were concerned with.

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So that could be planning immigration, education, housing,

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which public body was being challenged,

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And also the level of detail which kind

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of the case owners were providing

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on the nature of their case.

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Uh, the majority of cases were being brought by individuals

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and groups based in England and Wales,

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and there were a small number based

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in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

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My research found that there was a remarkably high number

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of litigants who were seeking funding for judicial reviews,

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which we might say are public interest judicial reviews.

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So they're challenging government decision making

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that affects a wider set of people

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or a wider set of interests than just a single

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individual or household.

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So to make that distinction clear, we might say

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that an individual who is challenging a government refusal

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to grant them Social Security benefits

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for themselves is a case

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where the impacts predominantly affect

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that individual litigant.

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By contrast, we might say that a local community group

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challenging account's planning decision

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that involves a protected area of outstanding natural beauty

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is a public interest case

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because it concerns a natural resource that is enjoyed

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by a range of people going

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beyond just the particular group bringing the case.

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So that group, we, we might say, is acting on behalf

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of a wider set of interests, equally a national charity

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or campaign group that challenges government policy in

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their area of expertise.

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For instance, a group like Friends of the Earth,

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challenging the government's policy on Net zero

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clearly involves the group claiming

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to challenge the government on behalf of the wider public.

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So there was a considerable range of citizens

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and interest groups who I found were using crowdfunding

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to support judicial review cases that were looking

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to legally challenge local

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or national policy issues in the public interest.

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By contrast, there were far fewer individuals bringing cases

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that affected their own household circumstances, such

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as challenging decisions to refuse an individual's benefits.

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Now, the most prominent example of using crowdfunding

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to support judicial review cases in the,

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in the public interest is the Good law project

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who are referred to before.

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They regularly asked donors to support their cases

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through crowdfunding

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and have brought, as I say, a range

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of cases on issues including climate change, PPE,

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procurement during the pandemic, voting rights,

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gender identity, and so on.

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But there are also other significant campaign organizations

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and charities who have used crowdfunding including Liberty,

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so the National Civil Liberties Organization,

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the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, friends

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of the Earth, as well as Wild Justice,

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which is an organization led in part by the conservationist

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and television personality, Chris Packham.

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And this is without mentioning the wide range

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of local community groups seeking

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to protect local resources, whether

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that's natural resources in planning cases,

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or protecting local healthcare provision from NHS closures.

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And if we think about how successful these cases have been,

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success is is somewhat a matter of how one defines it.

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So as a social campaigner kind

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of bringing a case in court seeking wider social effects,

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you may lose a case in court

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but have received publicity that draws attention

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to the policy issue and causes change in an indirect way.

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So you may claim victory in, in,

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in the court of a public opinion.

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And this kind of effect is something

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that the Good Law project argues

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that they achieved in their PPE procurement cases

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during the pandemic.

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So though many of them were unsuccessful in court

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or had limited success in court, they claim

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that their litigation campaigns contributed

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to public perceptions of

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of LEAs in government

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procurement practices over this period.

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So it partly depends on how narrow

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or broad a view of success you take,

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but even if we do take a narrow view of success, so

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a case is successful if it wins in court

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or if the government body settles the case outta court in

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the person's favor, I calculated in the study

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the success rate of crowdfunded cases was 28%,

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which actually is an entirely reasonable rate of success

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and doesn't indicate any sort of,

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meritless caseload in the study identified that

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among this breadth of cases that were being brought

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to protect wider public interests,

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these cases could be distinguished according

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to whether they were seeking

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to bring about effects at a local or a national level,

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and whether the people bringing the cases were inexperienced

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or experienced litigants

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and a classified experienced litigants as those individuals

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or groups who had brought three

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or more judicial reviews at any point in their lifespan.

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Now, ordinarily, when we think

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of public interest litigation litigation for wider,

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wider effect, we naturally think

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of those organizations like Child Poverty Action Group like

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Liberty, friends of the Earth

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who have been regularly bringing cases for many years

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that challenge central government policies on behalf

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of the wider public.

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And these types of groups tend

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to be referred in the academic literature as repeat players,

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which is a term that was used

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by Mark Lanter in a 1974 article.

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And repeat players regularly bring cases,

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so they have the capacity

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and the resources to be more

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strategic in their legal campaigns.

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And repeat players are often able to therefore develop legal

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and policy expertise.

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They can readily access legal specialists.

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They may even employ in-house legal staff,

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and they may also have a stronger bargaining reputation so

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that when they do threaten to bring a legal challenge,

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the government may take them more, more seriously

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and maybe more likely to settle it in

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their favor as a result.

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So we might say that these groups are experienced litigants

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that seek to bring about effects at the national level.

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And in the crowdfunding dataset identified 49 cases which

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were being brought by such groups, a set

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of groups which are referred to

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as established civil society organizations.

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What was striking in the dataset,

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however, was that far more commonly than those sorts

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of organizations, we were seeing inexperienced litigants

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bringing cases about national public interest issues.

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And there were therefore 153 cases that were being brought

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by inexperienced litigants seeking effects at the national

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level, A category are referred to

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as the emerging social reformers.

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Now, this may be a sign that crowdfunding is enabling

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a far wider range of litigants to bring cases,

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challenging national policy issues

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beyond those standard civil society organizations.

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Equally, what was also notable in the dataset was the number

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of inexperienced groups who were seeking

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to bring about wider effects at the local level.

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And there were 163 crowdfunding pages

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that were being launched by such groups,

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which I term the local community groups.

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Now, we do not often think of these kinds of groups

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as engaging in public interest litigation,

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but they're ultimately seeking effects

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that impact a wider set

13:21.665 --> 13:22.945
of people than those bringing the case.

13:23.365 --> 13:26.705
So I argue in the article that that is an appropriate label

13:27.005 --> 13:28.665
to assign to those sorts of groups.

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There were no cases that were identified

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of experienced local campaigners.

13:34.825 --> 13:37.265
Interestingly, but this may change in the future

13:37.805 --> 13:40.545
if crowdfunding does in fact enable local groups

13:40.565 --> 13:42.105
to bring repeat litigation.

13:42.605 --> 13:45.265
In terms of the amounts of money that claimants were able

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to fundraise across all 413 cases,

13:49.525 --> 13:52.825
the claimants raised over 9.1 million pounds.

13:53.715 --> 13:55.415
And this meant that the, the mean value

13:55.415 --> 13:58.695
of donations per case was 22,000 pounds.

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And the median value of donations per case was 8,000 pounds.

14:03.275 --> 14:07.055
So yet your average crowdfunding case looks like it's gonna

14:07.055 --> 14:09.575
raise somewhere between 10 and 20,000 pounds.

14:11.295 --> 14:13.715
The fact that the mean and the median values there are

14:13.715 --> 14:15.435
so different, 22,000

14:15.455 --> 14:18.885
and 8,000 are not especially close together points

14:18.985 --> 14:23.085
to quite a striking reality of the crowdfunding landscape.

14:24.105 --> 14:29.085
So as a statistical tool, calculating the mean is far more

14:29.645 --> 14:32.845
affected by outlying values than calculating the median.

14:33.505 --> 14:34.685
And by outlying values,

14:34.925 --> 14:37.525
I mean values which differ greatly from the

14:38.165 --> 14:40.525
ordinary distribution of the dataset.

14:41.735 --> 14:44.915
So this indicated that the mean value was being skewed

14:44.975 --> 14:46.475
by these outlying values.

14:47.015 --> 14:50.955
So the, the, the rate was being skewed by outlying cases,

14:50.975 --> 14:52.725
which were raising far more funds

14:52.795 --> 14:53.805
than the rest of the cases.

14:54.385 --> 14:56.165
So by identifying the upper

14:56.345 --> 15:00.445
and lower bounds of the interquartile range, I calculated

15:00.445 --> 15:03.765
that there were 52 outlying cases in the dataset.

15:04.275 --> 15:06.485
This means there were 52 cases, which were raising

15:07.105 --> 15:09.325
far more money than the remainder of the cases.

15:10.865 --> 15:14.765
And remarkably, these 52 cases represented 13% of the cases,

15:14.865 --> 15:17.925
as a whole, but amounted to almost two thirds

15:18.105 --> 15:19.125
of the overall funds

15:19.125 --> 15:21.365
that were being donated across all of the cases.

15:22.785 --> 15:25.165
So if those 52 cases were removed from the data,

15:25.995 --> 15:30.085
that 9.1 million pound total figure would fall

15:30.105 --> 15:31.805
to 3.7 million pounds.

15:33.415 --> 15:36.835
So with those 52 cases removed, the mean

15:36.835 --> 15:39.035
and the median values of donations per case,

15:39.385 --> 15:43.035
were also far closer together, again, indicating

15:43.035 --> 15:46.075
that those outlying cases were indeed skewing the data.

15:46.775 --> 15:49.435
And what this demonstrates in, in real terms is

15:49.435 --> 15:52.995
that the judicial review crowdfunding field is highly

15:53.395 --> 15:55.395
unequal in terms of what can be fundraised.

15:56.085 --> 15:59.915
We're seeing a minority of politically high profile cases

16:00.605 --> 16:02.275
attracting the majority of the funding,

16:02.965 --> 16:05.715
while the remaining bulk of cases struggle

16:05.715 --> 16:07.595
to reach quite modest sums of money.

16:08.855 --> 16:11.435
If we recall that bringing a full judicial review case is

16:11.435 --> 16:14.115
likely to cost eight to 12,000 pounds at a minimum,

16:15.025 --> 16:18.355
many litigants even using crowdfunding will still struggle

16:18.575 --> 16:19.955
to fundraise that kind of amount.

16:20.735 --> 16:22.315
And this means that many will be forced

16:22.315 --> 16:24.155
to withdraw their cases from the system

16:24.705 --> 16:27.795
despite having crowdfunded, despite having fundraised money.

16:28.915 --> 16:31.175
And in the dataset, there were numerous examples of,

16:31.175 --> 16:34.535
of local community groups especially who had raised funds of

16:34.535 --> 16:36.095
around 10 to 20,000 pounds

16:36.675 --> 16:39.375
and still felt they they needed to withdraw their cases

16:39.885 --> 16:42.415
because actually the risk of paying the cost

16:42.415 --> 16:45.975
of both sides if they lost was still too overwhelming.

16:47.035 --> 16:49.855
As the first significant empirical study

16:49.855 --> 16:52.215
of judicial review crowdfunding,

16:52.215 --> 16:55.135
the research challenged some common assumptions

16:55.135 --> 16:57.695
that have been made about crowdfunding in this field.

16:58.355 --> 17:01.095
So for instance, as I've alluded to it, it's often assumed

17:01.095 --> 17:04.815
that litigants who use crowdfunding will raise vast amounts

17:04.815 --> 17:07.575
of money, and that fundraising is, is straightforward.

17:08.715 --> 17:11.455
And this research indicated that that kind of assumption

17:12.115 --> 17:15.335
has really developed from a disproportionate focus on the

17:15.335 --> 17:16.895
outlying cases that are capable

17:17.195 --> 17:21.015
of raising large sums while overlooking the majority

17:21.035 --> 17:24.495
of cases which attract less public attention and

17:24.495 --> 17:25.775
therefore raise far less money.

17:26.995 --> 17:29.015
If we are to properly understand

17:29.035 --> 17:31.975
how crowdfunding works in practice, we need to pay attention

17:32.155 --> 17:35.055
to its operation in not just the outlying cases

17:35.565 --> 17:37.695
that gain the most attention and the most criticism,

17:38.555 --> 17:41.575
but we also need to incorporate understanding of

17:41.575 --> 17:44.735
how it is used by less politically prominent litigants,

17:45.365 --> 17:48.095
including in particular local community groups

17:49.665 --> 17:52.285
And particular local community groups, would make

17:52.285 --> 17:55.805
for an ideal site of further research to understand more of

17:55.995 --> 17:58.445
what is happening in practice in these contexts,

17:58.565 --> 18:01.285
particularly more qualitative research

18:01.585 --> 18:04.525
and thinking of the implications of the study moving

18:04.525 --> 18:06.245
beyond crowdfunding itself.

18:07.145 --> 18:09.685
The findings present an important challenge

18:10.145 --> 18:12.285
to our thinking about public interest litigation.

18:13.185 --> 18:15.165
So in this data set, the types of groups

18:15.195 --> 18:19.165
that we see mobilizing law to seek social impacts

18:20.025 --> 18:22.085
are far more diverse than we often imagine.

18:23.065 --> 18:26.125
As I've said, when we talk about public interest litigation,

18:26.425 --> 18:30.205
we, we, we go to those classic, civil society groups,

18:30.985 --> 18:34.245
but the findings here indicate that in practice,

18:34.425 --> 18:37.645
in the modern landscape of public interest litigation,

18:38.355 --> 18:41.325
many litigants are more exper, more inexperienced,

18:41.865 --> 18:44.725
and many litigants are far more localized than

18:44.845 --> 18:48.205
that standard image of the nationally focused civil society

18:48.205 --> 18:48.485
group.

00:00 - In terms of the kind of context and the background, judicial review in general is a, a really kind of important legal process by which members of the public can challenge the actions and decisions of government bodies where they believe that the government body has acted unlawfully, basically, so

00:17 - that that government body could be a central government department, like the home office, it could be a local council making a planning decision or a housing allocation decision, that sort of thing. It could be an arm's length government body like Natural England or Osted. But, so if you are looking to challenge one of those sorts of government bodies where you think that they've acted unlawfully for anybody looking to bring a judicial review, one major difficulty is

00:43 - that the process of bringing a case is incredibly expensive. And if you lose your case, the standard rule is that you'll have to pay not only the costs of your own legal representatives, so the lawyers that you have engaged, but also the costs of the defendant, the other side. So the government body, and in 20 17, 1 public law practitioner, Tom Hickman, Casey estimated at the cheapest, losing a sort of simple two hour judicial review claim against a

01:15 - government department would likely involve you needing to cover eight to 12,000 pounds. And then meanwhile, a sort of moderately complex claim that lasts one day against a regulatory body would exceed 40,000 pounds in costs, and a substantial kind of two day case would likely generate costs of between 80 and 200,000 pounds. Now, legal aid has classically been available to ensure that citizens are able to bring judicial review claims,

01:46 - but reforms in the Legal aid sentencing and punishment of offenders act in 2012 radically reduced the number of people whose earnings mean they're eligible to qualify for legal aid. And that means that the vast bulk of people in the country will not qualify for legal aid. And so if they feel that a government body has acted unlawfully, most members of the population would only be able to bring a case if they could take on the

02:11 - risk that if they lose the case, they'll need to pay the costs of of both sides. And clearly given those costs, I mentioned above, that's not a viable option for many people. And that is why crowdfunding has, has basically begun to be used to support the funding of judicial review cases. It's in effect filling the gap that has been left by that fast reduction in legal aid. And crowdfunding involves those people who are seeking to bring a judicial review,

02:38 - posting a fundraising page online, and seeking donations from interested members of the public. Now, because crowdfunding relies on donations from the public, there have been concerns raised by some academics and some legal practitioners that they will encourage a more politicized approach to judicial review. And this is because people are likely to donate to those cases which they feel most strongly about, which we might expect will be those

03:04 - with more popular policy implications. And this might mean that less popular causes are individuals like prisoners, for example, may fare less well than politically popular causes in their fundraising, which might affect the kinds of cases that can be brought. And these suspicions have been intensified by a number of high profile legal challenges related to, for instance, parts of the Brexit process, which were able to be brought, having raised large amounts of money through crowdfunding. And in particular, the legal campaigning organization,

03:40 - the Good Law Project, have used crowdfunding to bring judicial reviews in a wide range of high profile policy issues. And as a result, they've attracted quite a lot of admiration, but also quite a lot of criticism. But then, despite all this controversy and the importance of crowdfunding in Access to Justice, up until this study that I conducted, nobody had really conducted a systematic or empirical study to work out actually

04:09 - how crowdfunding is being used in practice to fund judicial review cases. And in order to put right that lack of empirical tension towards crowdfunding, I constructed a database of judicial review cases that were fundraised for using Crowd Justice. Now, crowd Justice is a platform which was established in 2014, and it's the only bespoke crowdfunding site that has been set up specifically for funding legal cases. So a small number of people do use other platforms

04:42 - to fund their legal cases like Kickstarter or GoFundMe. but Crowd Justice has been by far the most popular site for litigation crowdfunding in the uk. So I therefore focused on Crowd Justice and identified all fundraising pages, which were labeled as judicial reviews on the site. And then I also manually identified other pages on the site, which were not labeled as such, but which were clearly seeking funding for judicial reviews. So in total, I identified 413 pages on Crowd Justice,

05:18 - which represented the vast majority of judicial review fundraising pages that had been launched on Crowd Justice from when the site began up to a cutoff date of November, 2020. So using the information that was contained on those crowd justice fundraising pages, I gathered information on a range of variables including, the sums of money that were being fundraised for and how much was actually raised in practice, how the cases progressed in the judicial review system,

05:47 - what type of sector the cases were concerned with. So that could be planning immigration, education, housing, which public body was being challenged, And also the level of detail which kind of the case owners were providing on the nature of their case. the majority of cases were being brought by individuals and groups based in England and Wales, and there were a small number based in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

06:11 - My research found that there was a remarkably high number of litigants who were seeking funding for judicial reviews, which we might say are public interest judicial reviews. So they're challenging government decision making that affects a wider set of people or a wider set of interests than just a single individual or household. So to make that distinction clear, we might say that an individual who is challenging a government refusal to grant them Social Security benefits

06:39 - for themselves is a case where the impacts predominantly affect that individual litigant. By contrast, we might say that a local community group challenging account's planning decision that involves a protected area of outstanding natural beauty is a public interest case because it concerns a natural resource that is enjoyed by a range of people going beyond just the particular group bringing the case.

07:05 - So that group, we, we might say, is acting on behalf of a wider set of interests, equally a national charity or campaign group that challenges government policy in their area of expertise. For instance, a group like Friends of the Earth, challenging the government's policy on Net zero clearly involves the group claiming to challenge the government on behalf of the wider public. So there was a considerable range of citizens and interest groups who I found were using crowdfunding

07:34 - to support judicial review cases that were looking to legally challenge local or national policy issues in the public interest. By contrast, there were far fewer individuals bringing cases that affected their own household circumstances, such as challenging decisions to refuse an individual's benefits. Now, the most prominent example of using crowdfunding to support judicial review cases in the, in the public interest is the Good law project who are referred to before.

08:03 - They regularly asked donors to support their cases through crowdfunding and have brought, as I say, a range of cases on issues including climate change, PPE, procurement during the pandemic, voting rights, gender identity, and so on. But there are also other significant campaign organizations and charities who have used crowdfunding including Liberty, so the National Civil Liberties Organization, the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, friends

08:32 - of the Earth, as well as Wild Justice, which is an organization led in part by the conservationist and television personality, Chris Packham. And this is without mentioning the wide range of local community groups seeking to protect local resources, whether that's natural resources in planning cases, or protecting local healthcare provision from NHS closures. And if we think about how successful these cases have been, success is is somewhat a matter of how one defines it.

09:04 - So as a social campaigner kind of bringing a case in court seeking wider social effects, you may lose a case in court but have received publicity that draws attention to the policy issue and causes change in an indirect way. So you may claim victory in, in, in the court of a public opinion. And this kind of effect is something that the Good Law project argues that they achieved in their PPE procurement cases

09:31 - during the pandemic. So though many of them were unsuccessful in court or had limited success in court, they claim that their litigation campaigns contributed to public perceptions of of LEAs in government procurement practices over this period. So it partly depends on how narrow or broad a view of success you take, but even if we do take a narrow view of success, so

09:58 - a case is successful if it wins in court or if the government body settles the case outta court in the person's favor, I calculated in the study the success rate of crowdfunded cases was 28%, which actually is an entirely reasonable rate of success and doesn't indicate any sort of, meritless caseload in the study identified that among this breadth of cases that were being brought to protect wider public interests, these cases could be distinguished according

10:33 - to whether they were seeking to bring about effects at a local or a national level, and whether the people bringing the cases were inexperienced or experienced litigants and a classified experienced litigants as those individuals or groups who had brought three or more judicial reviews at any point in their lifespan. Now, ordinarily, when we think of public interest litigation litigation for wider, wider effect, we naturally think

11:01 - of those organizations like Child Poverty Action Group like Liberty, friends of the Earth who have been regularly bringing cases for many years that challenge central government policies on behalf of the wider public. And these types of groups tend to be referred in the academic literature as repeat players, which is a term that was used by Mark Lanter in a 1974 article. And repeat players regularly bring cases,

11:28 - so they have the capacity and the resources to be more strategic in their legal campaigns. And repeat players are often able to therefore develop legal and policy expertise. They can readily access legal specialists. They may even employ in-house legal staff, and they may also have a stronger bargaining reputation so that when they do threaten to bring a legal challenge, the government may take them more, more seriously

11:53 - and maybe more likely to settle it in their favor as a result. So we might say that these groups are experienced litigants that seek to bring about effects at the national level. And in the crowdfunding dataset identified 49 cases which were being brought by such groups, a set of groups which are referred to as established civil society organizations. What was striking in the dataset, however, was that far more commonly than those sorts

12:23 - of organizations, we were seeing inexperienced litigants bringing cases about national public interest issues. And there were therefore 153 cases that were being brought by inexperienced litigants seeking effects at the national level, A category are referred to as the emerging social reformers. Now, this may be a sign that crowdfunding is enabling a far wider range of litigants to bring cases, challenging national policy issues beyond those standard civil society organizations.

12:55 - Equally, what was also notable in the dataset was the number of inexperienced groups who were seeking to bring about wider effects at the local level. And there were 163 crowdfunding pages that were being launched by such groups, which I term the local community groups. Now, we do not often think of these kinds of groups as engaging in public interest litigation, but they're ultimately seeking effects that impact a wider set

13:21 - of people than those bringing the case. So I argue in the article that that is an appropriate label to assign to those sorts of groups. There were no cases that were identified of experienced local campaigners. Interestingly, but this may change in the future if crowdfunding does in fact enable local groups to bring repeat litigation. In terms of the amounts of money that claimants were able to fundraise across all 413 cases,

13:49 - the claimants raised over 9.1 million pounds. And this meant that the, the mean value of donations per case was 22,000 pounds. And the median value of donations per case was 8,000 pounds. So yet your average crowdfunding case looks like it's gonna raise somewhere between 10 and 20,000 pounds. The fact that the mean and the median values there are so different, 22,000 and 8,000 are not especially close together points to quite a striking reality of the crowdfunding landscape.

14:24 - So as a statistical tool, calculating the mean is far more affected by outlying values than calculating the median. And by outlying values, I mean values which differ greatly from the ordinary distribution of the dataset. So this indicated that the mean value was being skewed by these outlying values. So the, the, the rate was being skewed by outlying cases, which were raising far more funds than the rest of the cases.

14:54 - So by identifying the upper and lower bounds of the interquartile range, I calculated that there were 52 outlying cases in the dataset. This means there were 52 cases, which were raising far more money than the remainder of the cases. And remarkably, these 52 cases represented 13% of the cases, as a whole, but amounted to almost two thirds of the overall funds that were being donated across all of the cases. So if those 52 cases were removed from the data,

15:25 - that 9.1 million pound total figure would fall to 3.7 million pounds. So with those 52 cases removed, the mean and the median values of donations per case, were also far closer together, again, indicating that those outlying cases were indeed skewing the data. And what this demonstrates in, in real terms is that the judicial review crowdfunding field is highly unequal in terms of what can be fundraised. We're seeing a minority of politically high profile cases

16:00 - attracting the majority of the funding, while the remaining bulk of cases struggle to reach quite modest sums of money. If we recall that bringing a full judicial review case is likely to cost eight to 12,000 pounds at a minimum, many litigants even using crowdfunding will still struggle to fundraise that kind of amount. And this means that many will be forced to withdraw their cases from the system despite having crowdfunded, despite having fundraised money.

16:28 - And in the dataset, there were numerous examples of, of local community groups especially who had raised funds of around 10 to 20,000 pounds and still felt they they needed to withdraw their cases because actually the risk of paying the cost of both sides if they lost was still too overwhelming. As the first significant empirical study of judicial review crowdfunding, the research challenged some common assumptions that have been made about crowdfunding in this field.

16:58 - So for instance, as I've alluded to it, it's often assumed that litigants who use crowdfunding will raise vast amounts of money, and that fundraising is, is straightforward. And this research indicated that that kind of assumption has really developed from a disproportionate focus on the outlying cases that are capable of raising large sums while overlooking the majority of cases which attract less public attention and therefore raise far less money. If we are to properly understand

17:29 - how crowdfunding works in practice, we need to pay attention to its operation in not just the outlying cases that gain the most attention and the most criticism, but we also need to incorporate understanding of how it is used by less politically prominent litigants, including in particular local community groups And particular local community groups, would make for an ideal site of further research to understand more of what is happening in practice in these contexts, particularly more qualitative research

18:01 - and thinking of the implications of the study moving beyond crowdfunding itself. The findings present an important challenge to our thinking about public interest litigation. So in this data set, the types of groups that we see mobilizing law to seek social impacts are far more diverse than we often imagine. As I've said, when we talk about public interest litigation, we, we, we go to those classic, civil society groups, but the findings here indicate that in practice,

18:34 - in the modern landscape of public interest litigation, many litigants are more exper, more inexperienced, and many litigants are far more localized than that standard image of the nationally focused civil society group.

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