Aviva Will
Doyenne of the legal finance industry and founder of The Equity Project
Aviva is Co-Chief Operating Officer of the world's largest legal finance company, Burford Capital, with overall responsibility for its global underwriting and investment activities and nearly a decade of experience investing in and managing the world’s largest portfolio of commercial litigation and arbitration risk.
In her role at Burford, Aviva has overseen the continuing innovation of its offerings to law firms and corporations and has built the industry’s most respected litigation finance team.
After having assessed thousands of commercial matters and noting that fewer than ten percent were led by women lawyers, Aviva founded The Equity Project.
The Equity Project is a groundbreaking initiative designed to help close the gender gap in law by providing an economic incentive for change through a $100 million pool of capital earmarked for financing commercial litigation and international arbitration matters led by women and racially diverse lawyers. As part of The Equity Project, Aviva recruited 25 lawyers from the world’s leading law firms and corporations to be Champions in promoting the availability of this capital to incentivize change.
The Equity Project is an important tool for female and racially diverse lawyers: It provides access to capital that allows more flexibility in offering clients solutions. Capital from The Equity Project provides an economic incentive for law firms to proactively promote female and racially diverse lawyers as the lead on cases and to communicate to female and racially diverse lawyers specifically that there is an opportunity to use legal finance for building a book of business.
Throughout her career, Aviva has been an outspoken champion for diversity in the business of law. She has published widely on the subject, including in New York Law Journal, The Times, ABA Journal, Bloomberg Law, Law360 and CDR. She has spoken on panels and at conferences for organizations including ArbitralWomen, ICDR, ALM, Lexology, AAI and The Women’s Leadership Institute to name just a few.
Aviva was named as both a Trailblazer 2019 and a Distinguished Leader 2019 by the New York Law Journal in part for her work on The Equity Project and in part because of her formidable reputation in both the legal and finance industries.
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