Every fund built on this model reserves ten percent of all settlement proceeds for civil rights cases that can't attract standard contingency representation. The tithe is a structural requirement — written into the fund documents, not left to mood or margin.
A contingency attorney takes a case when the expected recovery exceeds the cost of losing. This is rational. It is also why the cases with the most constitutional importance — the ones with clear violations and thin damages, the ones that would set precedent, the ones against departments that have never faced accountability — go unfunded. The tithe exists for those cases.
Standard litigation finance optimizes for return. The standard performance-only model in this framework is built the same way — performance-only means no settlement, no payment. That structure works because documented First Amendment violations carry predictable damages under Section 1983. Financial leverage applies even where the camera isn't running, but only if someone is willing to fund the case.
The problem is selection pressure. When returns drive case selection, the cases that fall below the return threshold don't get selected. If that threshold is wrong — if it screens out cases that are legally important but financially modest — the accountability infrastructure develops a structural gap. The tithe closes that gap.
It does so the only way that actually works at scale: by building the subsidy into the fund documents rather than relying on the goodwill of fund operators to choose principle over margin.
The tithe reserve is not a general civil rights charity account. It funds specific categories of accountability cases that the standard contingency market systematically underserves.
Strategic lawsuits filed by departments, officers, or municipalities to silence auditing activity. Often designed to drain resources rather than win on the merits. The damages to the auditor are the point — which means the recovery rarely justifies the cost of defense without the tithe.
Cases where the constitutional violation is clear but qualified immunity protection makes outcome uncertain. The legal point worth making doesn't promise the recovery that makes a case attractive. These are the cases that build precedent — and the cases that financing most reliably skips.
Cases where the goal is the record, not the recovery. Repeat-offender officers, departments with documented refusal to train, jurisdictions building a pattern for future litigation. The individual settlement may be modest. The institutional record it creates is not.
Cases in departments and states that have never faced a funded, documented accountability case before. The first case in a jurisdiction changes the calculation for every case that follows. The financial return on the first case understates what it opens up.
The 10% flows through the fund structure automatically. It is not a donation and it is not discretionary. It is a line in the fund documents — the same way a legal fee split is a line in a retainer agreement.
The standard performance-only case resolves. Settlement proceeds enter the fund.
Ten percent is automatically routed to the tithe reserve before distribution to investors or fund operators.
Civil rights attorneys on the advisory board evaluate cases in the tithe queue. Selection is consensus-based.
Selected cases receive tithe financing. If a recovery occurs, proceeds re-enter the tithe reserve.
Individual investors who participate in a fund structured under this model do not have veto power over the tithe. The 10% reserve is a term of the fund, not a discretionary allocation. This is the same principle that governs attorney fee structures — you negotiate the deal before the recovery, not after. Investors who prefer a fund without the tithe are building a different product, not a variant of this one.
Case selection for the tithe reserve is governed by an advisory board composed of the attorney capital partners who advise on case selection. These are civil rights attorneys who have already invested in the standard model. Their return structure means they understand which cases matter — not just which cases pay.
No single investor controls the tithe. Advisory board decisions require consensus among civil rights attorneys, not approval from any one capital partner or fund operator.
Cases enter a queue, not a pitch competition. Tithe case intake is documented and standardized — the same basic criteria applied to every submission: violation, jurisdiction, auditor track record, legal posture.
Attorney advisors may not steer cases to themselves. Advisory board members who stand to benefit from a particular case selection must recuse from that vote. The ethics wall that governs investor participation also governs advisory board conduct.
When investors fund both the standard model and the harder cases, the structure changes the accountability math in two directions at once. The standard model generates financial returns. The tithe deploys those returns into the cases that build the broader accountability infrastructure that makes the standard model more valuable over time.
A department that has never been held accountable is a different litigation environment than one that has. The tithe is how you build the second kind of environment out of the first. The investment rationale for the tithe is the same as the investment rationale for the standard model — it just operates on a longer timeline.
This is not a charity component bundled into a financial product. It is a mechanism for deploying accountability pressure in the cases where accountability is hardest to apply — and where the long-run effect on department behavior is potentially the most significant.
Investors who participate in a fund structured under this model are participating in both. There is no option to opt out of the tithe and remain in the fund. That is what makes it structural rather than aspirational.
Financial leverage applies even where the camera isn't running. A department that has never been sued — never faced a funded, documented case — operates in a fundamentally different risk environment than one that has been. The tithe creates the possibility of that first case in a jurisdiction that would otherwise remain outside the accountability infrastructure.
Small settlements matter. Pattern documentation matters. Jurisdictional firsts matter. The accountability record that the standard model creates is built not just from the cases that win big — it is built from the cases that establish that any case at all is possible.
As more funds are built on this structure across more cities and jurisdictions, the tithe reserve grows proportionally. A network of ten funds each generating $1M in annual settlements creates $100,000 in tithe capacity — enough to fund three to five meaningful cases per year that would otherwise never be litigated. A network of one hundred funds creates a permanent, structured civil rights litigation capacity that does not depend on foundation grants, donor mood, or the generosity of any single law firm's pro bono hour budget.
Every fund built on this model carries the tithe by default. If you're building a fund, you're building both — the standard performance-only model and the accountability reserve that funds the cases the market won't.
This page describes a proposed fund structure for civil rights litigation finance. Nothing on this page constitutes legal advice or an offer to invest. Fund structures must be reviewed by qualified legal counsel in the relevant jurisdiction before implementation. See our full disclaimer.