Private equity is moving aggressively into personal injury attorneys’ firms, and the clearest sign yet came last month in a first-of-its-kind, invite-only conference at Holland & Knight’s New York office. The room drew investors and dealmakers from Apollo Global Management, Fortress Investment Group and Stifel Financial Corp., all circling a part of the legal market that has long kept outside capital at bay.
James Amaro, whose Amaro Law Firm is a client of Holland & Knight, said the pressure to move is already changing how firms think about their future. His firm is trying to line up initial terms for a capital infusion by the end of the year, and the broader message from investors has been hard to miss. “With private equity coming into the market, if you sit on the sidelines and do nothing about it, you put your business at risk,” Amaro said. “They’ve already done their homework and they’re moving fast.”
The numbers help explain why the pitch is getting attention. One private equity-backed client of Holland & Knight has closed two deals this year, and a lawyer at that firm expects to wrap up a dozen deals in 2026. Michael Licatesi, who has been tracking the rush into the field, said, “There’s tens of billions coming into the market.”
That money is not flowing into law firms in the way private equity typically buys companies. Most US states prevent non-lawyers from owning or profiting from a law firm, so the structures being discussed are built around management services organizations, or MSOs. In practice, firms are separating IT, human resources, marketing and client intake into private equity-backed MSOs, giving investors a way to take a stake in the business side while the law firm itself remains under lawyer control.
For supporters, that setup offers a path to modernize firms that have been run on thin margins and patchwork systems. Some private equity firms are aiming to provide administrative support for multiple law firms before eventually cashing out their stakes. But critics say the arrangement is a workaround with a more troubling effect: investor influence can seep into the parts of the business that shape the client experience. Bruce Pfaff, a longtime skeptic of outside ownership models, put it bluntly. “They were designed to get lawyers drooling for money,” he said. “By having people that lawyers rely on to get their work done employed by somebody else makes zero sense.”
He added that the real motivation is not operational efficiency but ownership economics. “What they’re really doing is taking those who own the law firm and enriching them with the upfront payment,” Pfaff said.
That makes personal injury firms the first-line test for private equity’s entry into the legal profession. The sector is large, fragmented and heavily dependent on volume, which makes it easier to package for investors than many other corners of law. The next milestones are already visible: Amaro is aiming for initial terms on a capital deal by the end of the year, while one private equity-backed firm is heading toward a dozen deals in 2026. Whether the model stays confined to back-office functions, or reaches further into client-facing work, is the question now hanging over the market.
