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Acuity Law Signs £10m Litigation Funding Deal with Augusta

Leading Welsh commercial law firm Acuity Law has agreed a £10 million litigation funding facility with the UK’s largest litigation funder by volume, Augusta Ventures.

From its headquarters in Cardiff and offices in Swansea and London, Acuity provides legal advice to a portfolio of national and international business clients. The preferred arrangement offers Acuity’s clients competitive funding rates, with a time-efficient process in place to ensure effective decision making. Under the terms of the facility, Augusta will fund the full cost of pursuing a claim, including legal fees and expert witness costs and other agreed disbursements. This arrangement provides Acuity’s clients with ‘non-recourse’ funding, ensuring claimants are not called on to repay in the event their claim is unsuccessful. Augusta only recovers its investment from any sums received from defendants.

Hugh Hitchcock, Head of Litigation at Acuity, said: “Acuity has established its reputation as a leading UK litigation law firm. We’ve been delighted to serve an increasing number of clients over recent years, and this deal with Augusta further differentiates our offering to clients in Wales and across the UK. We are now able to help clients pursue meritorious cases that otherwise may not have proceeded due to financial constraints.”

Robert Hanna, Managing Director at Augusta, said: “We are delighted to be working with Wales’s leading litigation firm, Acuity Law, on providing funding for their clients’ disputes. Augusta has built a market-leading reputation for our team and processes, which enable access to justice. We are looking forward to offering these to Acuity’s clients to help them secure the funding they need to pursue meritorious claims.”

Acuity Law has recently been recognised in the Wales Legal Awards as both the Commercial Litigation Team of The Year and the overall Legal Team Of The Year. Acuity Law is a new model law company that is enjoying rapid and successful growth. With a team of over 100 lawyers and expanding, Acuity last year advised on over 100 UK-based transactions with an aggregate value of over £1.5 billion. Acuity Law specialises in high value and complex commercial disputes.

Augusta has recently announced a further $115m fundraising from a multi-billion-dollar US-based investment manager. This follows a £150m fundraising from a global investment fund in 2018, to finance business growth and investment in funding cases.

Augusta has also recently announced hirings into its senior team with the arrival of Proskauer Director Polly Bahl as Chief Operating Officer, FTI Consulting Managing Director Leor Franks as Chief Marketing Officer and Ardonagh Group’s Chief Counsel Frances Coats as General Counsel. These additions reflect Augusta’s ongoing growth and increasing client demand for dispute and litigation funding.

About Acuity:

  • Founded in 1999, Acuity Law is a commercial law firm headquartered in Cardiff and with offices in Swansea and London.
  • Acuity is an award-winning firm whose most recent accolades include Law Firm of the Year (Wales) at the Legal 500 Awards 2019 and Litigation Team and Legal Team of the Year at the Wales Dealmakers Awards 2019.
  • Acuity are specialists in providing corporate (M&A’, disposals, joint venture and partnering arrangements, management buy-outs and management buy-ins, private equity and venture capital investments and business transfers and restructuring), commercial, litigation, real estate, employment and tech advice.
  • Acuity’s corporate and commercial and TMT teams were ranked tier 1 in this year’s edition of the Legal 500.

About Augusta:

– Established in 2013, Augusta is the largest litigation and dispute funding institution in the UK by # case. Augusta’s scale enables us to make decisions in market-leading timeframes and fund cases of any size.
– Augusta is organised into a series of specialist practice groups: Arbitration, Class Action, Competition, Consumer, Intellectual Property and Litigation, and sectors including Financial Services and Construction & Energy.
– By the end of H12019, Augusta had funded 213 claims with a market-leading win ratio of over 80%.
– Augusta has offices in London, Sydney, Melbourne and Toronto.

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Announcements Commercial Legal Innovation

Sentry Expands Free Funding Market Search for Litigators

By John Freund |

Sentry Funding’s free tool enabling litigators to instantly search the funding market on behalf of clients has been expanded.

Sentry’s free ‘decision in principle’ feature enables lawyers to evidence to clients that they have conducted a broad market search, even if funding is not ultimately taken out.

Having deployed £125m in funding across a range of case types, Sentry now has access to an even broader funding marketplace, covering 34 global jurisdictions. Finance is provided by 13 funders, five of which are members of the Association of Litigation Funders.

With the recent addition of Sentry’s first US-based funder, the US offering will now be expanding over the next few months. 

A faster process

Sentry has deployed the latest technology to make the search for funding even easier. 

  • The intuitive application process now only asks questions relevant to previous answers, saving lawyers time.
  • The commercial marketplace has been redeveloped with 63 new data points added to the funder criteria matrix - improving the accuracy of case / funder matching
  • Sentry has also begun building out its AI capabilities, starting with an automated auditing tool for live case progression audits. 

Tom Webster, chief executive officer at Sentry Funding, said:

‘By broadening our reach and speeding up the process, we’re making it even easier for lawyers to raise funding. We’re also giving litigators an easy way to show clients they have fully researched the market, rather than just approaching one or two funders. 

‘The service is free to use, so even if clients decide they do not ultimately want funding or if none is available for that case, for the lawyer, it makes sense to use our “decision in principle” feature, so they can put evidence on file that they did check the market.’

Sentry Funding is an SaaS (software as a service) technology provider that gives solicitors access to a diverse marketplace of litigation funders. It works with solicitors, funders and third-party providers to ensure claimants are getting the most efficient service for their funding needs. 

The Sentry Portal also acts as a case management system that runs a transparent digital case file for solicitors, funders, after-the-event insurance providers, barristers, cost lawyers and other relevant third parties.

Announcements Commercial

NorthWall Capital Hits €2.9 B AUM on Private Credit Momentum

By John Freund |

NorthWall Capital has rocketed past €2.9 billion in assets under management after pulling in an additional €1.6 billion of institutional capital in 2025 alone. The London-based alternative credit manager says the surge reflects allocators’ intensifying hunt for scaled, multi-strategy platforms as Europe’s banks retrench and borrowers seek bespoke sources of credit.

A press release from NorthWall Capital details first-close totals across four distinct strategies. The flagship Credit Opportunities fund secured €731 million—already eclipsing its prior vintage—while the newly launched Senior Lending vehicle raised $503 million, translating to roughly $750 million of deployable firepower once leverage is applied. Asset-Backed Opportunities collected €252 million for collateral-rich loans in sectors underserved by traditional lenders, and the specialist Legal Assets platform locked down $169 million to extend the firm’s law-firm lending programme.

Founder and CIO Fabian Chrobog said the fundraising validates “the consistency of our approach” and NorthWall’s ability to craft solutions that resonate with investors and counterparties alike. With headcount slated to hit 40 by year-end, the firm plans to lean further into complex, situational credit born of bank deleveraging, regulatory shifts and sponsors’ need for certainty of execution.

Announcements Commercial People Moves

Victory Park Expands Legal Credit Leadership with Maleson Promotion

By John Freund |

Victory Park Capital (VPC), a global alternative asset manager specializing in private credit, has announced that Justin Maleson will expand his role to Managing Director, co-heading the firm’s legal credit investment strategy. The promotion underscores VPC’s ongoing investment in its legal finance capabilities and follows Maleson’s initial appointment in 2024 as Assistant General Counsel.

An announcement from Victory Park Capital details Maleson’s new responsibilities, which include sourcing, analyzing, and managing investments across legal assets, while maintaining oversight of the firm’s legal operations. He joins Chad Clamage in co-leading the strategy, working alongside team members Hugo Lestiboudois and Andrew Pascal, under the continued oversight of VPC CEO and founder Richard Levy.

Maleson brings a strong background in litigation finance and commercial law to the position. Before joining VPC, he served as a director at Longford Capital, where he specialized in originating and managing litigation funding transactions. His earlier tenure as a litigation partner at Jenner & Block further deepened his exposure to complex legal matters, equipping him with the expertise needed to navigate the nuanced legal credit space.

VPC’s legal credit team emphasizes an asset-backed lending model, prioritizing downside protection and predictable income streams. The firm aims to capitalize on inefficiencies within the legal funding market by leveraging its internal expertise and broad network of relationships. With Maleson’s appointment, VPC signals its intent to further scale its legal credit strategy, positioning itself as a key player in the evolving legal finance sector.

Maleson’s elevation comes at a time of increasing sophistication in litigation finance, where experienced legal minds are playing a pivotal role in portfolio construction and risk management. As VPC bolsters its leadership, the move may foreshadow further institutionalization of legal asset investing and heightened competition in a maturing market segment.