Law firm chases £370k fees in failed £60m data lawsuit, judge calls bluff

Judge says IPS Law gambled on a lucrative data privacy lawsuit and lost—no fees owed

A boutique sports law firm has been denied payment for its work on a failed £60 million legal venture after a High Court judge ruled there was no right to bill for services rendered.

Senior Costs Judge Rowley handed down the stinging decision in Global Sports Data Technology Group Ltd v IPS Law LLP, concluding that the Manchester-based firm took on the data privacy claims at its own financial risk, hoping for a potential £6 million payout.

The ambitious project—dubbed Project Red Card—was a bold attempt by Global Sports, led by co-founders Jason Dunlop and former Cardiff City manager Russell Slade, to sue data-using companies such as video game manufacturers and betting firms. Their goal: to secure compensation for hundreds of professional athletes whose performance data had allegedly been exploited without consent.

At the heart of the case was IPS Law senior partner Christopher Farnell, who met with Dunlop and Slade in 2021 to plan the group litigation. The idea was to secure £20 million in litigation funding and pursue thousands of individual claims. If successful, damages could hit £60 million—10% of which was earmarked for Farnell and his firm, 10% for the funders, and 10% for Global Sports.

But no formal contract ever materialised.

Despite that, IPS Law went on to do significant legal work, banking on the promise of a payday if the claims succeeded. When the venture collapsed, however, Farnell issued invoices totalling approximately £370,000—a move Judge Rowley later dismissed as a “mopping up” operation to convert unbilled hours into firm income.

In his ruling, Rowley said there had been no solicitor-client relationship between IPS Law and Global Sports. Instead, he characterised the arrangement as a joint venture, where each party brought skills to the table and agreed to share in potential profits. That meant the law firm had no legal right to charge Global once things went south.

“It is very much a matter where each entity puts in its time and effort at its own risk if the project proved unsuccessful,” Rowley said.

He also pointed out that once the relationship soured, the invoices only surfaced as a way to claw back losses—despite having never been submitted during the project’s active phase.

Farnell had argued that his boutique firm would never agree to unpaid work, claiming Dunlop assured him, “no one expects you to do work for nothing.” Yet the court sided with Dunlop and Slade, who insisted from day one that compensation was only due if damages were recovered.

Michael Fletcher and Gareth Farrelly of Glaisyers ETL represented Global, hailing the result as a vindication. “This was an exceptional and highly unusual case,” said Fletcher. “Global’s position has been fully accepted by the court.”

Dunlop echoed the sentiment: “This was a clear and fair decision. The court has recognised what we have consistently said – that IPS Law was not engaged to act as our legal representative and was not entitled to deduct money from investment funds that it held for us.”

The ruling sets a stark precedent for law firms entering speculative legal ventures. Without written agreements, even hundreds of hours of work can go unrewarded if the project fails—especially when the court views the arrangement as entrepreneurial collaboration rather than a traditional legal engagement.

For Farnell and IPS Law, the dream of sharing in a £60 million windfall has ended not just in disappointment, but with a bruising lesson in legal risk-taking