I come from a family of engineers. I have not a single engineering bone in my body, to my father’s great disappointment, but it’s about problem solving, and I guess that’s the sort of thing that runs through engineering and through law.
During a periodic tidy up, my mum found a hymnbook from my school and in the front of it, as the prig of a child that I was, I had written that when I grow up I wanted to be, not one, but three things. I wanted to be a lawyer, a social worker, and prime minister. Those were my aims in life. Aged nine.
I love the stories that come with the law. I love telling a story and I love hearing a story. And that’s basically what being a lawyer is, it’s a story with the law wrapped around it. That brings with it endless variety and endless problem solving, and that appetite for the next story has never diminished.
A good friend of mine is the head of criminal justice in Edinburgh social services. I look at what she does and think: ‘Gosh that’s a big old job.’ I wouldn’t be prime minister, my politics probably wouldn’t allow it. I love art, so if I wasn’t a lawyer, artistic talent would be amazing. Or to be a stand-up comedian.
I started in property, I was terrible at that. I was terrible at my seat in pensions, wills and trusts. I was terrible at corporate too. They all couldn’t wait to see the back of me. But then I got into disputes and this wonderful woman called Helen Mason, who trained me and to this day is one of my dearest friends, spotted that there was some ability there and devoted a lot of time to basically saving my bacon so that I was kept on.
As a very young lawyer I found myself in the Court of Appeal; I remember being absolutely mesmerised by it. It was a case about Travel West Midlands bus drivers that were being balloted about whether they wanted to strike, and the legal question that came out of that was whether it had to be the majority of only those voting in the ballot or the majority of all the members.
I remember thinking: ‘This is better than any kind of theatre or television drama.’ I was in awe of the ability of the judges making those decisions and found it utterly fascinating that these people were so able, and so clever and gathered the points quickly.
I love telling a story and I love hearing a story. And that’s basically what being a lawyer is, it’s a story with the law wrapped around it.
I’ve had an interesting working life. I’ve worked in the States, I’ve been a diplomat, I’ve worked for a dotcom. When I came back here from living in the States, I knew I didn’t want to go back into private practice.
I bumped into a barrister on the Tube who I used to instruct when I was in practice David Lock, now QC. I asked what he was going to do next, and one of the things he said he was contemplating was litigation funding. What I didn’t learn until many, many years later was that night he spoke to Helen Mason and said: ‘I bumped into Sue Dunn on the train, and I’m going to do this thing.’ She said: ‘You should do it with her.’
We started with a million pounds, first working out of his house, we then moved into a converted carpet factory in Kidderminster – which my colleague likes to say was a ‘disused carpet factory’, but it was converted. Quite quickly after that, he was offered the job to run the National Criminal Intelligence Service and I said it would probably be better if he did that full time while I focused on the funding. So, for five years it was just me and the board of the business.
There was always a quite a snooty response to us. Sort of: ‘Oh, we don’t want to talk about money.’ Almost as if they were saying: ‘Let’s not sully ourselves by talking about money, it’s just a very intellectual thing we do over here that people happen to pay us for.’
More times than I care to mention the first response I’d receive from litigators was not: ‘That’s great, can we do some cases?’ or ‘Let me tell you about all the good stuff I do’, it was: ‘If I’m negligent, will you sue me?’ I just thought: ‘Really? Is that your most positive message?’
We tried to raise money in 2007. We had two suitors for £50m and then we had none because Northern Rock fell over and the world started falling apart. We set Harbour up in late 2007. First within a multi-strategy hedge fund, and then we spun it out in early 2009. We’ve been raising funds since then, we’ve now got $1.4bn across five funds.
Raising the first fund was still the most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my working life. Trying to raise money in 2008/9 when the world had just fallen apart was really difficult.
Nowadays there is nobody – no type of claimant, no type of law firm – who doesn’t call us. So those people who used to ignore my calls or my emails then went: ‘Ah, it turns out our client does need this money.’ People have realised that we’re just part of the ecosystem now. One of the things I get frustrated about is this notion that funders fund speculative cases. Well, we would go out of business if we handled speculative cases, we are only going to fund good cases.
There’s an ongoing case we have for Indonesian seaweed farmers whose crop was ruined by an oil spill. There was also the Roadchef case, where we were funding employees who had money taken from their employee share option scheme. Those are the cases that, as and when they succeed, are particularly pleasing. Where you have claimants who would not have been able to succeed without the funding.
Whatever I do, I always try and bring people together. When I started Harbour, it was just me. But I have always tried to encourage a collegiate atmosphere so that people feel able to speak up. When we grew and we had more people, I had coaching to help with that sort of transition. I want to hear what everybody has to say. I believe people at all levels here would honestly say that they feel able and confident to be able to speak up. There’s no hierarchy, we have a very flat structure. I’m very keen on that.
During the pandemic, we saw how different jurisdictions dealt with the challenge. I’ve got to say, hands down, this jurisdiction was head and shoulders above everywhere else in the world, the other common law jurisdictions. If you take the business interruption insurance cases that we funded, the claims were issued in July 2020, and we had a Supreme Court decision by January 2021.
My biggest inspiration from within the legal profession is Nicola Mumford, who was the managing partner of Wragge & Co. She has been a source of tremendous support and guidance and mentoring to me over the years, right from the very early days. Outside of the law? My dad. He made me helpfully oblivious to whether women can succeed or not. I never for a moment thought: ‘I wonder if I can or cannot do this because I’m a woman’, because he made me think that everything is possible.
I have a big art addiction. I have a large collection that I’ve loved buying, mostly from emerging or developing artists. I only ever buy things that I love. It’s a passion that started in my teens, and I have become friends with several artists. I’m endlessly fascinated by the artistic mind and what it can represent.
I did a motorbike trip through India on a Royal Enfield Bullet motorbike. That was one of the most spectacular things I’ve ever done. I went from Goa to Cochin. I’d love to do something like that again.
One of the most fascinating places I’ve visited is Eritrea. I was drawn to go there because I love art deco architecture, and the Italian occupation there led to quite a big art deco development in the capital and likewise in next door Ethiopia, so I might have to go there too.
My friends would say that I’m a big ‘pay it forward’ person. I know that I have benefited massively from those who have supported me along the way, and I feel a huge responsibility to keep paying it forward for others. That’s how we keep lifting everybody up; that is the key.
Susan Dunn is one of the founders of Harbour Litigation Funding and chair of the Association of Litigation Funders. She is widely regarded as one of the pioneers of third-party disputes funding in the UK.