Professor Deborah L. Rhode is quoted in The Wall Street Journal Law Blog about the increasing practice of third-party funding of lawsuits:

Stanford law professor Deborah Rhode has a slightly different take. She says that under the current regime of most U.S. jurisdictions, only lawyers are permitted to fund suits. “If you opened that up, and allowed others in, it would likely drive down the price of legal services.” In other words, those standard 1/3 contingency fees would likely fall down a la the [sic] London Bridge.