Legal-Bay is a lawsuit lending company with over 20 years of combined experience. But should they be the lending company you choose to get pre-settlement financing for your lawsuit? That’s what we aim to find out.
We scoured the web for the latest reviews on Legal-Bay and, using our own experience, came up with our view about the matter. Like all our reviews, our knowledge is based on publicly available resources.
What Are Legal-Bay’s Loans Like?
Like us, Legal-Bay offers cash advances on settlement claims and claims they can do it in as little as 24 hours. Also like us, they require no fees to evaluate your case, and the advances they offer are non-recourse. However, they do charge origination fees.
One thing that may give you pause is their interest rate limit. Despite issues surrounding unregulated lawsuit loans in many states, they state they will never charge more than 26.9% on the first year of an advance. It is uncertain if this is a compound rate or if they’ve changed this rate since 2017. Still, it’s refreshing to see the limit posted clearly.
It is crucial to know how much interest you’ll need to pay on any lawsuit loan. Despite being non-recourse, you want to ensure that you’ll have enough money left over after your settlement to move on after your accident.
What Cases Does Legal-Bay Take?
Unlike many other pre-settlement finance companies, Legal-Bay takes just about every case we can think of where you can receive damages, including more obscure case types like:
- Discrimination
- Police brutality
- Securities fraud
- Life insurance buyouts
- Clergy abuse
- Wrongful imprisonment
They also appear to offer post-settlement financing, which you might need after you’ve won but while you’re waiting for the payment to reach your lawyer.
Legal-Bay Branding Confusion
One thing that threw us for a loop is that the company goes by two different names. The company is named Legal-Bay LLC, but their website also uses the name The Lawsuit Settlement Funding Co.
We can only speculate why they’re using two mixed names on the site like this. One reason might be for search engine purposes. If someone searched for “lawsuit settlement funding,” having the name of your company match the query will make it much easier to find.
Trustpilot’s Opinion of Legal-Bay
Trustpilot is one of the better review sites for companies on the web and they’ve collected over 100 web reviews of Legal-Bay. As of this writing, the company has a 4.7 rating with 89% of their reviews marked Excellent on Trustpilot.
The few negative reviews they have are either customer service related or complaints about getting denied. Unfortunately, not every case will qualify for pre-settlement financing or for additional loans, and you could be denied.
What Is Legal-Bay’s Lending Limit?
Every company has lending limits. According to Legal-Bay’s website, the minimum amount they will fund is $1,000 with no maximum amount. However, for loans over $100,000, they will need to do a “substantial due diligence review” on your case to determine if you qualify for that much.
Our Verdict on Legal-Bay
We do like the transparency about maximum interest rates, origination fees, and loan limits. Sometimes these things aren’t revealed until you’re already negotiating with a company and can surprise a plaintiff.
However, we also worry a little about the multiple business names and it isn’t clear if the company charges compound or simple interest on their advances. If it is compound, that’s a hefty amount of money at the quoted maximum interest rate!
Still, with so many positive web reviews of Legal-Bay on Trustpilot and so few negative reviews overall, it’s definitely one to add to your list. We also admire the huge range of cases they’ll take. If you’ve been denied by other companies because of your unusual case, try Legal-Bay and see what they’ll say.