US asset manager Aperture Investors says it has expanded its litigation finance platform, raising its total investment capacity to around $1bn.
The Litigation Finance Private Credit platform, which was launched in 2024, now has more than $600m in assets, Aperture said.
The asset management firm says its expanded strategy will create additional opportunities for its lending platform, which provides structured loans to law firms backed by fees awarded in legal disputes. The firm says it targets procedurally mature, near-settlement or short-duration legal cases.
The platform is led by Aperture’s New York-based litigation finance portfolio manager Luke Darkow, who joined in 2024 from Victory Park Capital.
Darkow said: “Plaintiffs law firms’ ability to access traditional debt and equity financing solutions remains relatively constrained, while investors are looking for sources of return that are less dependent on traditional market cycles.
“We believe litigation finance sits at the intersection of those two trends, and the launch of this strategy will allow us to provide investors with more flexible, ongoing access to this opportunity set. Our focus is narrow by design, which is why we primarily intend to lend against short-duration and procedurally mature cases where we can better evaluate and mitigate risk.”
At the time of Darkow’s appointment, Aperture’s CEO and founder Peter Kraus said the litigation finance market was a “relatively underbanked asset class”, which could double in size annually through 2035.
Aperture says it has relationships with more than 250 law firms and legal service providers, which “has helped support deployment across a range of legal claim types”.
Litigation funders in the UK were left disappointed earlier this year after the UK government failed to deliver on promises to reverse the 2023 Supreme Court PACCAR decision, which rendered most litigation funding agreements unenforceable.
Hopes that the government would follow through on its pledge were dashed in March when its legislative programme for the 2026/27 parliamentary session did not include a draft bill to reform the litigation funding regime.
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