Let’s start with an old Irish story – that of a high king wounded in battle. Nuada of the Tuatha Dé Danann loses his hand in war; and in a world where wholeness meant sovereignty, the wound was not merely personal. The ruler had to be pristine, so this loss meant he could no longer rule. The solution is strange, surgical, and mythic: a silver hand is made for him, an Airgetlám, a “silver-hand”. It was as dexterous and supple as the original.
That tale has started to feel less like folklore and more like a working metaphor for litigation funding in 2026.
Because the modern funder is, by necessity, chimeric, and is expected to source, diligence, execute, manage and monetise claims, across multiple matters, multiple jurisdictions, multiple time zones — with speed — while retaining the moral and intellectual sobriety to say “no” when the story is bad or the numbers don’t work.
The bottleneck here is timing, fatigue and the brutal arithmetic of attention. And the only workable solution is AI. AI, used properly, is not a replacement for judgement. It is a silver hand: a second capability that restores sovereignty over your own time. Not because it makes you less human, but because it allows the human part of you to remain human: awake, discriminating, and responsible.
The skill of the silver hand
In litigation funding, “chimeric talent” means a person who can do high-trust work (relationships, judgement, risk appetite, ethics, negotiation) while delegating high-volume work (search, drafting, comparison, repetition, pattern spotting) to something that does not tire.
And the practical effects are immediate: turnaround time collapses, internal cadence becomes steadier, and you can run several matters at once without the subtle cognitive corrosion that comes from constant switching.
1. Super search engine
Every funder knows the first phase of a case: the frantic assembling of reality.
What the documents actually say. Which corporate entity sits where in a structure. Where the assets might be. What the claimant’s story looks like when you test it against documents rather than hope.
Classic searches are good at retrieval; and bad at synthesis. They give you “things.” They do not give you “the picture.”
AI becomes a type of super search engine when it can take the retrieved fragments and turn them into a working map: timeline, actors, leverage points, contradictions, missing documents, and questions you should ask next. It makes your research directional. It reduces the dead miles, the hours spent scrolling, opening, forgetting, repeating.
2. Drafting
NDAs, term sheets, LFA mark-ups, adverse costs provisions, control rights, reporting, information undertakings, default mechanics, assignment restrictions, intercreditor letters, settlement waterfalls, insurer correspondence, internal IC memos, claimant updates, counsel instructions.
You can waste a huge amount of time producing work that is 80% structure and 20% analysis.
AI excels at the 80%: the first pass, the scaffolding, the alternatives, the clause library, the “give me three options” loop. It will not replace a good lawyer’s instincts, but it will remove the drudgery. In practice, changes the internal rhythm: you can draft at the speed you think, not the speed you type.
3. Analysis and cadence
The funder’s advantage is not that we are clever. It is that we are consistent.
Consistency is hard under load. You start a matter with clarity, and two weeks later you are managing twenty threads, three counsel teams, and two nervous claimant.
It is in these conditions that judgement degrades. AI can act as a cadence engine: summarising calls, tracking action items, comparing versions, maintaining timelines, spotting where the story has shifted, and reminding you of the question you asked three weeks ago that nobody answered. It reduces cognitive leakage. Used well, it is less like a brain and more like a metronome.
4. Analysis and cadence
Prediction in our world is disciplined guessing, rather than prophecy. AI contributes here by running scenario thinking at scale: stress-testing assumptions, enumerating pathways, modelling timelines, and highlighting where your thesis is thin. It will sometimes be wrong in the particulars, but it is useful in the way a good junior is useful: it forces explicitness. It makes you show your working. And that really improves decisions.
5. Agentic
The next step is not merely “smarter answers.” It is “delegated execution.”
Agentic AI is the silver hand that can do as well as search or analyse: generate a diligence checklist tailored to a case, draft the outreach emails, track responses, set reminders, produce weekly status notes. This is where timing advantages kick in, because the machine can carry the repetitive weight.
Nuada’s silver hand restored his sovereignty. That is the promise here. AI is not quite magic. It is a new hand. And the people who learn to wield it with discipline will feel, very quietly, that time has expanded, and with it, the capacity to do the work that only a human being can do: to choose, to judge, and to be accountable.
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