A Proposal for a Commodities Market for the Legal World

Who wants in on my new firm? Here’s how we’re going to do it. We’re going to open a simple trading market, right, which’ll easily get approved by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, led as it is by Goldman Sachs alums. This will have a forward-facing straight-up predictive betting market on investment-backed lawsuits. (Later we’ll open up that market to straight-up gambling on all law cases, because, who wouldn’t want to go big on counterintuitive Supreme Court outcomes what with the new Justices?) Then we’ll package and roll-up the investments in class action and high-end litigation. We’ll let the lawyers openly re-sell their actual debts and costs in an exchange, so they can access up-front cash (with, of course, ballooning interest). It’ll encourage speedy settlement! It’ll clean up the courthouses! Then we can tranche the debt and reinsure it via some morons like AIG, who’ll be left with costs, that’ll then get paid by the Goldman Sachs alums in the government. Everyone wins!