I have a friend from highschool who does class action lawsuits. He spends a very large amount of money funding his suits on things like expert witnesses among other things, only 1 in 5 pays off, so it has to pay off well. His model is similar to venture capitalism. Most of these cases take 5-7 years to execute. So he basically takes out loans from another laywer to fund them. His average pay for the last 10 years has been around $140k/year. Some years he makes nothing and pays out a lot, others he makes several million and pays back all the loans. Another way to think of it is like giving money to tax fraud wistleblowers.

Yes he does think of it somewhat like that, establishing himself in an area. However a lot of his work comes from finding people aggrieved by something not them finding him.