As a public interest litigation finance firm, we succeed most when litigation is avoided. Any funded attorney in our network knows this part of our funding ethos and agrees, absent reasonable suspicion of corruption, to work with opposing counsel prior to suit for public entities in our network. 

Transparency pays. Public entities around the country have spent billions of dollars on legal fees to avoid their obligations under FOIA. In most cases, had they known what they were refusing to share and at what price to the public in advance, they could have saved a lot of money by just using a simple dispute resolution process.

massFOIA has the numbers:
 – a typical single-defendant case costs a public entity between $3,000-$5,000 dollars once filed.
 – even our innovation of  multi-defendant litigation can only cut that number to $1,500.

A small governmental organization before the age of AI may have received 1-5 FOIA requests per year. Now, they can expect anywhere from 2x to 10x that number of requests. (We know!).

By ensuring your entity, generally through your executive or counsel, signs up for massFOIA’s dispute resolution process, you can reduce your cost outlay by as much as 90%.

Subscribing entities include that they are massFOIA partners in their FOIA responses and on their FOIA page. Then, our supported requesters know to alert the subscribing entities prior to suit that massFOIA will share its funding decision prior to the institution of the lawsuit.

Although massFOIA will not offer any opinion on the law, wil not offer any legal advice, and will not itself demand documents, it will let both sides know whether the current position of each side will or will not lead to funded litigation. 

That way, a subscribing entity can use the dispute resolution platform to avoid litigation and save massive litigation costs while maintaining its independence and fealty to its citizens.

Please inquire on our Contact page as to subscription costs and a list of requesting entities who also subscribe.

Direct-to-entity:  Population-size coverage dependent. Ideal for saving big on external counsel.

Countywide Initiative: When a County-wide platform subscription is purchased, any entity headquartered in the county has access to the process.

Partner-registered: Our most popular service for entities because it is free! Well, almost free, because your external attorneys pay on your behalf ensuring the lowest possible price. 

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The Pre-Litigation Process

1) The entity subscribes and remains current on its subscription,
2) The entity includes its membership info (a blurb we provide) in FOIA responses,
3) massFOIA will refuse funding of that litigation  absent contancting both parties noting whether it would fund the litigation or not.
4) If massFOIA would fund the transparency litigation,  massFOIA offers a statement of level of production that would prevent the funding of a transparency lawsuit because the production achieved massFOIA’s public interest level of transparency (“Transparency Target”). Funding of transparency litigation is thereafter stayed for a reasonable time for the subscriber’s consideration (no shorter than the statutory minimu m business days).
5) massFOIA will not remove the stay while the parties in in good faith discussions in reasonable time frames.