Platform + Add-On Roll-Up Approach
We target established, cash-generative firms with decades of operating history — real platforms with $10M+ EBITDA, deep client relationships, and proven recurring cash flows. These practices are acquired at multiples that reflect market fragmentation and a historical lack of institutional investment capital.
The strategy is in motion — 20+ firms sourced and two creditors-rights platform IOIs submitted at 8–9x EBITDA ($245M and $320–360M EV, each with rollover and earnout components). Both are platform-scale businesses — either could anchor the strategy on its own. The opportunity to acquire both and combine them immediately into a single national creditors-rights platform (~$355M combined revenue, ~$67M EBITDA) is too compelling to sequence; post-combination, acquisition focus shifts to smaller and midsize add-ons at accretive multiples. Disciplined sourcing has also produced clear passes: walking from an insurance-defense platform that cleared at 15x, killing a high-margin PI firm as too litigation-dependent, and screening out jurisdictions that prohibit outside ownership.
Anchor Investment
- Revenue: $100M+ (scaled institutional platforms)
- EBITDA: $15M+ (high-teens to low-20s% margins)
- Entry multiple: 8.0x - 9.0x EBITDA
- Recurring, counter-cyclical B2B revenue from institutional clients
- Existing management team retained; sellers roll equity
- Serves as integration hub & shared services center
Bolt-On Growth
- EBITDA: $3 - $15M per add-on
- Entry multiple: ~5.0x - 7.0x — accretive vs. platform entry
- 1 - 2 add-ons per year across the hold
- Named pipeline: 6 add-on targets already identified behind the lead platform
- All add-ons in the platform's legal sub-sector
- Geographic and practice-line expansion
Best-in-Class Technology Stack
- Deploy AI-powered document drafting, legal research, and case analysis across all portfolio firms from day one
- Centralize practice management, billing, and client intake on a unified cloud platform
- Implement predictive case valuation and triage models to optimize case selection and settlement timing
- AI-driven marketing and lead generation to reduce client acquisition costs by 30-50%
- Automate back-office operations (HR, accounting, compliance) via MSO shared services
- Target 8-12% EBITDA margin expansion through combined technology and operational improvements
Sources & Uses — Platform 1 (Lead)
Illustrative, based on the lead creditors-rights platform at submitted IOI terms ($245M EV at ~9.0x adj. EBITDA). Excludes an earnout component of ~1.0x EBITDA payable on future performance.
Alignment by Design
We target legal practices where client relationships are institutional — built into the firm's brand, referral networks, and operational systems rather than dependent on any single attorney. In the firms we acquire, the owner-partners are typically spending the majority of their time running the business rather than trying cases, meaning there is limited direct revenue risk tied to any individual seller.
That said, lawyer buy-in across the firm matters. Attorneys who feel sidelined or uncertain about their future after an acquisition become a retention risk — and retention risk, in a people business, is revenue risk. Our rollover equity structure is designed to solve this from day one: giving both selling owners and the lawyers who stay a genuine stake in the outcome.
Rolling Into the Platform
- Selling owners roll 15–40% of proceeds into equity in the combined platform entity — not just their legacy firm
- Day-one diversification: rollover equity represents a claim on the entire portfolio of firms, every geography, every practice area
- Meaningful upgrade in risk profile for founders whose net worth was 100% concentrated in a single practice
- Founders from largest acquisitions sit on a platform-level advisory board, contributing operating insight and industry relationships
- Rollover terms — class, waterfall, and exit rights — structured per transaction to maximize alignment while preserving flexibility
Unlocking Equity for Attorneys
- In most law firms, junior partners hold equity that is illiquid, hard to value, and nearly impossible to monetize
- Many senior associates have no ownership path at all under the prior partnership structure
- Upon acquisition, minority lawyer-partners receive equity grants in the platform — often their first real ownership stake
- Grants vest over 3–4 years, creating a retention mechanism that keeps revenue-generating attorneys fully invested
- Equity in a PE-backed platform with a defined exit timeline replaces illiquid partnership shares
- 100% of net worth in one practice
- No liquidity without selling the whole firm
- Minority partners locked out of real equity
- Exit at 4–6× standalone EBITDA
- Single-geography, single-practice risk
- Equity spread across multi-firm portfolio
- Defined exit timeline alongside LP capital
- Minority attorneys receive platform equity grants
- Exit at 8–10× platform EBITDA
- Multi-geography, multi-practice diversification
The Second Bite of the Apple
The most compelling feature of rollover equity is what happens at exit. Individual law firms — even profitable ones — trade at 4–6× EBITDA. But a scaled, diversified legal services platform with $200M+ in revenue, centralized operations, and proven organic growth commands a materially higher multiple.
Sellers who roll over participate in that multiple expansion. A founding partner who sold at 5× on the way in may see the combined platform exit at 8–10×. That second bite — the spread between entry and exit multiples applied to a much larger earnings base — is where the real wealth creation happens.
It's the same value our LPs are capturing, and rollover holders ride alongside them dollar-for-dollar.