Burford Capital director Charlie Rooke argues that litigation funding in the United Kingdom has moved past the question of what legal finance is and into a narrower conversation about where a company's capital is best deployed.

As reported by Non-Billable, Rooke said the market "has moved from conversations around 'what is legal finance?' to 'how can legal finance support this particular case?'" He described a client base that increasingly includes well-capitalised businesses rather than claimants who cannot otherwise proceed, noting that Burford is "increasingly talking to large corporations about whether it makes sense to spend their own money on litigation or deploy that capital elsewhere."

Rooke, who spent six years as a commercial litigator at Freshfields before moving in-house at Royal Bank of Canada and joining Burford in 2022, sits on the firm's London underwriting team with a focus on competition disputes, including collective proceedings before the Competition Appeal Tribunal.

On underwriting, he said the analysis reduces to three questions: "do we think the case is going to win? If it does, when will it win? And how much will it win?" He added that Burford is overlaying its institutional experience with "an AI database containing information from the investments we've looked at across different jurisdictions, types of case, claimants, defendants and law firms."

Rooke also linked funding to changing law firm economics, suggesting capital can sit behind conditional fee arrangements, discounted rates with success uplifts and damages-based agreements. External investment in law firms has been possible for years, he said, "but I think AI is going to turbocharge that."

Australian litigation funder CASL is supporting a shareholder class action against hearing implant manufacturer Cochlear, filed in the Supreme Court of Victoria over the company's fiscal 2026 profit guidance. Cochlear has confirmed it was served with the claim and says it will defend the proceedings.

As reported by Health Services Daily, the proceeding is being run by plaintiff firm Echo Law with CASL funding, and covers investors who acquired an interest in Cochlear shares between August 15, 2025 and April 21, 2026 inclusive. The claim alleges breaches of continuous disclosure obligations and misleading or deceptive conduct.

The class period opens on the day Cochlear issued FY26 underlying net profit guidance of A$435 million to A$460 million, representing growth of 11% to 17%, and closes the day before that figure was withdrawn. On April 22, 2026, the company cut guidance to A$290 million to A$330 million, citing softer third-quarter sales and heightened uncertainty over fourth-quarter Middle East sales. The shares fell 40.7% in a single session, the largest one-day decline since listing, erasing more than A$4 billion of market capitalisation.

The claim alleges that conditions not reflected in the original guidance included slower growth in hearing healthcare markets, declining US consumer sentiment, difficulties in the Nucleus Nexa rollout in the United States and Germany, softer trading from January onward, and lower gross margins alongside restructuring costs.

Cochlear said it "denies the allegations set out in the claim and will be defending the proceedings," attributing the downgrade to factors that were not foreseeable when guidance was given.