The dam is breaking: law firm capital deals are closing faster than regulators can write the rules to stop them.

Trish Rich of Holland & Knight and Lucian Pera of Adams & Reese are two ethics lawyers operating at the center of one of the profession's most consequential shifts, and their deal volume tells the story better than any headline. Trish's team closed six deals in all of 2025. By early June 2026, they had already closed fifteen. The players at the table have changed too. A year ago, this was almost entirely a personal injury story. Today, immigration firms, corporate law firms, and insurance companies are all asking serious questions about what MSO structures could mean for their businesses.

So what about the regulatory pushback? Trish described it as trying to stop a waterfall by standing underneath it. Lucian was more blunt: the loudest opposition is coming from one segment of plaintiff's trial lawyers trying to protect their franchise from another. The same people backing restrictive legislation are often calling Trish and Lucian to get their clients in under the wire before it passes.

The big law question is no longer theoretical. Lucian predicted that more than one major firm announcement is likely before the end of 2026, with structures leaning toward minority investment given the challenge of building consensus across hundreds of partners. When the capital comes in, the primary plan is talent, not technology. On AI specifically, Lucian was direct: if costs commoditize the way technology historically does, a small firm with the right tools could quietly out-earn a firm that spent hundreds of millions chasing the same outcome. The firms closing deals that actually work share one thing in common. They came to the table with trust, a shared business vision, and a plan for what comes next.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Law Firm Capital and MSO Deals: What's Actually Happening Right Now

03:04 Regulatory Pushback and Why Capital Keeps Winning

12:06 Insurance, Risk Management, and New Deal Structures

18:12 Best Practices for Successful MSO Deals

23:47 AI, Native Law Firms, and the Future of Legal

Links

Connect with Trish Rich:

Law Firm Web bio: https://www.hklaw.com/en/professionals/r/rich-trisha-m

Trish's LinkedIn Profile link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trisharich

Connect with Lucian Pera:

Law Firm Web bio: https://www.adamsandreese.com/people/lucian-pera

Lucian's LinkedIn Profile link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucianpera

Connect with Howard Rosenberg:

LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hrosenberg/

Company web profile: https://www.baretzbrunelle.com/howard-rosenberg

Connect with Chris Batz:

Connect with Chris on LinkedIn

Follow Columbus Street on LinkedIn

Columbus Street Website

MergerWatch Website

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Andy Kvesic left the job every lawyer wants to build something the profession had never seen.

As CEO of Aprio Legal, he traded a general counsel role at a thriving family office for the harder, riskier work of acquiring a Phoenix law firm and redesigning how professional services actually work. The result is a historic combination: the first time two Alternative Business Structure firms have merged, bringing together a corporate law firm and a national accounting and advisory firm backed by private equity. Attorneys, accountants, wealth planners, and business advisors now serve the same clients under one roof.

The idea came from watching entrepreneurs waste time and energy bouncing between disconnected professionals who never coordinated with each other. Arizona's 2021 rule change allowing non-lawyer law firm ownership gave Kvesic the opening to try something different. His merger with Aprio wasn't a calculated exit. It was the recognition that both firms were solving the same problem from opposite ends: Aprio's professionals were constantly referring clients out for legal work, and Kvesic's attorneys were constantly referring clients out for tax and accounting. Neither could fully serve their clients alone.

Building the integrated platform also forced a reckoning with how differently law firms and accounting firms run their businesses. After two decades working almost exclusively with other lawyers, Kvesic found Aprio's infrastructure to be a genuine upgrade: multi-year planning, pipeline visibility, real margin analysis. For an industry that largely runs on a cash-in, cash-out model aimed at maximizing year-end partner distributions, the difference is significant.

The legal profession is changing whether it wants to or not. The more interesting question Kvesic raises is whether the people inside it will have the courage to lead that change rather than resist it.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 From General Counsel to Law Firm Owner: Andy Kvesic's Career Path

02:51 The Vision Behind Raddock's Law and the ABS Model

09:03 How Aprio Legal Became the First ABS-to-ABS Merger

14:57 Cultural Differences Between Lawyers and Accountants

24:33 How Accounting Firm Discipline Is Changing Law Firm Operations

29:35 Growth Strategy and the Integrated Legal Accounting Platform

37:52 ABS Advice and the Future of the Legal Profession

Connect with Andy Kvesic:

Connect with Andy on LinkedIn

Andy Kvesic - CEO, Aprio Legal | Partner

Connect with Howard Rosenberg:

Connect with Howard on LinkedIn

Howard's Company web profile

Connect with Chris Batz:

Connect with Chris on LinkedIn

Follow Columbus Street on LinkedIn

Columbus Street Website

MergerWatch Website

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

When permanent capital, AI disruption, and a rapidly fracturing talent market collide inside the legal industry, the old rules for how law firms grow, get funded, and build their next generation of lawyers stop making sense.

David Perla, Vice Chair of Burford Capital, joins hosts Chris Batz and Howard Rosenberg to break down why permanent capital is a fundamentally different proposition than traditional private equity for boutiques and founder-controlled firms ready to grow, and why the AmLaw 100 is unlikely to move anytime soon.

The more urgent conversation is about what neither capital nor strategy can fully solve. Law firm leaders are making multi-year associate class decisions without any reliable sense of what their workforce looks like in twelve months. Startups that needed fifty people eighteen months ago now run on seven or eight. The associate pipeline, in-house departments, recruiting timelines: all of it is under pressure that is accelerating faster than most leaders want to admit.

Perla's advice is deceptively simple. Get curious. Ask hard questions of people who think differently. The firms that navigate this moment well are the ones willing to challenge assumptions before the market forces the issue.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Introduction: David Perla, Vice Chair of Burford Capital

06:05 Building Pangea3 and Pioneering Legal Outsourcing

12:51 How Burford Capital Invests in the Legal Industry

23:44 Where Private Capital Is Heading in Law Firm Investment

29:51 AI, Legal Talent, and the Associate Pipeline Crisis

39:23 Legal Tech Valuations and the Coming Shakeout

46:06 Advice for Law Firm Leaders Navigating Disruption

Links

Connect with David Perla:

Company Bio: https://www.burfordcapital.com/about-us/our-team/david-perla/

LinkedIn Profile link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidperla/

Connect with Howard Rosenberg:

LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hrosenberg/

Company web profile: https://www.baretzbrunelle.com/howard-rosenberg

Connect with Chris Batz:

Connect with Chris on LinkedIn

Follow Columbus Street on LinkedIn

Columbus Street Website

MergerWatch Website

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm