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Announcements Commercial Legal Innovation

Latest Burford Quarterly Explores Key Trends Driving Innovation in Commercial Disputes in 2025

By Harry Moran |

Burford Capital, the leading global finance and asset management firm focused on law, today releases its latest Burford Quarterly, a journal of legal finance that explores top trends at the nexus of law and finance.

This Burford Quarterly examines the innovative ways in which businesses and law firms are reimagining their financial strategies around commercial disputes. Examples of this include law firms using creative billing structures as alternatives to hourly fees; companies choosing to opt out of litigation to maximize and accelerate recoveries; or businesses monetizing IP assets, allowing for continued investment in other vital areas of the business.

Articles in the Burford Quarterly No.1 2025 include:

  • The innovation engine: Legal finance for forward-thinking law firms

As law firms launch into 2025, a year that promises continued disruption and opportunity, innovation is not a choice—it’s an imperative. Forward-thinking firms are reimagining their financial strategies, moving beyond traditional models to embrace legal finance as a critical tool for transformation. In this article, Travis Lenkner and Emily Slater explore innovative ways legal finance is helping firms solve pressing challenges and accelerate growth. 

  • Healthcare antitrust opt-outs: Improving liquidity by monetizing valuable legal claims

An increasing number of healthcare businesses are recognizing the value that legal finance provides in helping to mitigate the financial strain of high-cost litigation and expedite recoveries in high-stakes litigation. Ahead of a March 2025 opt-out deadline for claimants in the Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) antitrust class actions, Charles Griffin summarizes insights from a recent webcast in which experts from Burford and Paul Hastings presented factors hospital networks and providers should consider in weighing their options.

  • Legal finance and life sciences: Unlocking IP potential in pharma, biotech and medical devices

Innovation in Europe’s life sciences and pharmaceutical sectors is vital, but long R&D cycles and short profit windows pose challenges. Joshua Harris explains how legal finance helps companies protect and monetize IP assets, enabling continued investment in life-saving technologies.

  • International arbitration in London: Next-Gen leaders’ perspective

Geoff Nicholas, Christiane Deniger and James MacKinnon lead a Burford roundtable with London-based arbitration lawyers. Partners from A&O Shearman, Debevoise & Plimpton, Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner and Freshfields share their insights on key trends and challenges shaping international arbitration, including the use of technology and AI and arbitral efficiency.

Aviva Will, President of Burford Capital, says: “While the legal industry may be slow to evolve, legal finance is a powerful tool to drive innovation in the business of law. This issue of the Burford Quarterly highlights key trends in commercial litigation and arbitration in 2025 and shows how litigation funding continues to shape the legal industry. By providing capital and mitigating risk, funding removes barriers for businesses and facilitates growth, and the latest Quarterly brings insights, analysis and real-world examples of tools to help business executives, GCs, CLOs and law firm attorneys recognize and harness the full potential of finance for law.”

About Burford Capital

Burford Capital is the leading global finance and asset management firm focused on law. Its businesses include litigation finance and risk management, asset recovery and a wide range of legal finance and advisory activities. Burford is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: BUR) and the London Stock Exchange (LSE: BUR), and it works with companies and law firms around the world from its offices in New York, London, Chicago, Washington, DC, Singapore, Dubai and Hong Kong.

For more information, please visit www.burfordcapital.com.

This announcement does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any ordinary shares or other securities of Burford.

About the author

Harry Moran

Harry Moran

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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.