Nick Rowles-Davies

LFE EDITOR AND REGULAR COLUMNIST

Nick Rowles-Davies is the Editor of Legal Finance Expert. He wrote the key litigation funding text Third Party Litigation Funding in 2014 and has worked in the legal finance industry since the 1990s. Rowles-Davies has been credited with being instrumental in the evolution of the litigation funding industry, from traditional third-party single-case funding to a broad legal and global corporate finance solutions practice.

He served as Chairman of the Commercial Litigation Association from 2019 to 2023 and Director of the Association of Litigation Funders of England and Wales (2014 to 2016).

He is Chief Executive of Lexolent, the world’s first origination network platform for legal finance professionals and a litigation finance fund. Before Lexolent, Rowles-Davies worked senior roles across several of the largest global legal finance companies. He was Executive Vice Chairman of Litigation Capital Management Limited from 2018 to 2021, Chief Executive Officer of Chancery Capital from 2017 to 2018 and Managing Director of Burford Capital UK from 2014 to 2016. With extensive other work in his career, Nick is an admitted solicitor of the Senior Courts of England & Wales and of the Eastern Caribbean (British Virgin Islands).

Articles

The Price of Machine Learning: How a $1.5 Billion Settlement Redefines AI’s Legal Landscape

January 20, 2026

By Nick Rowles-Davies In August 2025, Anthropic did something unprecedented. The AI company agreed to pay $1.5 billion, with preliminary court approval following in September, to settle copyright claims from authors whose books trained its Claude chatbot. At roughly $3,000 per book for an estimated 500,000 works, the settlement represents the first major resolution in the escalating legal battle over whether AI companies can use copyrighted material freely for training ...

The Tokenisation of Litigation Finance: Opening Access to a High-Return Alternative Asset Class

January 13, 2026

By Nick Rowles-Davies How blockchain technology is democratising one of the most lucrative, and exclusive, corners of the investment world. A Market Poised for Transformation The intersection of blockchain technology and alternative investments continues to expand into previously inaccessible corners of finance. Among the most promising frontiers is litigation finance, a multi-billion dollar asset class that has historically been the exclusive preserve of hedge funds, institutional investors, and the ultra-wealthy ...

The Civil Justice Council’s Final Report on Litigation Funding: Towards a New Regulatory Era

December 19, 2025

By Nick Rowles-Davies On 2 June 2025, the Civil Justice Council (CJC) published its Final Report on litigation funding in England and Wales. Commissioned by the Lord Chancellor in the wake of the UK Supreme Court’s landmark decision in R (on the application of PACCAR Inc and others) (Appellants) v Competition Appeal Tribunal and others (Respondents) [2023] UKSC 28. The report is the most comprehensive examination of litigation funding in ...

Holding Tech Giants Accountable: An Interview with Dr. Sean Ennis

December 17, 2025

Class Representative in Ennis v Apple — Competition Appeals Tribunal The litigation funding industry has evolved dramatically over the past 25 years, and nowhere has this evolution been more visible than in the Competition Appeals Tribunal (CAT). At the heart of one of the most significant competition law cases currently before the CAT stands Dr. Sean F. Ennis, an expert on management, strategy and economic policy whose unique background spans ...

Litigation Funding in the Middle East: Opportunities, Challenges, and Regional Nuances

December 12, 2025

By Nick Rowles-Davies The Middle East is rapidly emerging as one of the most dynamic and promising regions in the global legal funding landscape. With maturing legal systems, growing international arbitration hubs and increased awareness of third-party funding (TPF), funders are finding the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) jurisdictions—particularly the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman—ripe with opportunity. Yet, the region’s unique legal, cultural and regulatory landscape poses specific challenges that ...

The Proposed Tax on Litigation Finance in Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’

December 4, 2025

By Nick Rowles-Davies Following the 2024 election, Republicans gained control of both chambers of Congress and the presidency. Rather than pursue piecemeal legislation, they advanced a comprehensive reconciliation package—H.R. 1—known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). President Trump signed the bill into law on July 4, 2025, permanently extending many provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) while introducing significant new tax and spending measures ...

Recoverability of Third-Party Funding Costs in Arbitration: A Review of Current Practice and Its Implications

November 21, 2025

By Nick Rowles-Davies Third-party litigation funding (TPF) has become increasingly prevalent in international arbitration. As arbitration remains the preferred mechanism for resolving high-value commercial disputes, particularly those with cross-border elements, funding enables claimants lacking financial resources, or those seeking to mitigate risk exposure, to pursue meritorious claims. However, as third-party funders have become integral participants in the arbitration landscape, a critical question has emerged: can the costs of third-party funding ...

Private Credit and the Litigation Funder: Promise, Peril, and the Path Between

November 19, 2025

By Nick Rowles-Davies This article grew out of a lively panel at Dubai Arbitration Week 2025, where I discussed how the surge of private credit is reshaping the litigation funding market. It distils the themes that surfaced in that conversation such as the promise of speed and scale, the discipline (and demands) of lender covenants, the changing role of insurance, and the evolving place of the traditional limited partner/general partner ...