A quarter of litigation disputes involve claims of more than £3m, and legal costs exceed £500,000 in 10% of cases, a survey of the heads of litigation at the UK’s top 200 law firms has revealed.

The research, commissioned by Harbour Litigation Funding, showed that commercial contract disputes formed 44% of firms’ litigation workload, followed by professional negligence claims (12%), insolvency-related claims (9%) and fraud claims (7%).

Some 70% of litigation matters related to disputes less than two years old, the research found. While a sizeable minority of respondents said that litigation time periods had increased over the last year, more than 80% expected to get to trial within two years of the start of the matter.

More than 90% of firms said they ‘always’ or ‘sometimes’ discussed litigation funding options with their clients, and half of them had direct experience of using litigation funding.

The heads of litigation at 62 of the UK’s top 200 law firms responded to the survey.