Front Pay

A forward-looking damages remedy compensating a plaintiff for future lost earnings when reinstatement is impractical or unavailable, typically awarded in lieu of reinstatement. Front pay calculations require assumptions about career trajectory, discount rates, and the duration of future harm, making them more speculative than back pay and subject to greater dispute at trial. Funders treat front pay as an upside component of the damages range rather than a baseline, given its inherent uncertainty.

Funders treat front pay as an upside component layered on top of the back pay baseline rather than a core underwriting input, because its dependence on speculative career-trajectory and discount-rate assumptions makes it the most contestable damages element at trial. A case that looks attractive primarily because of a large modeled front pay figure gets discounted accordingly, since courts frequently reduce or eliminate front pay awards that rest on uncertain long-term projections.