EP #77: Aprio Legal: How Two ABS Firms Combined to Build America's First Integrated Legal + Accounting Platform

Speaker A: Greetings, listeners. Howard and I sat down with a very special guest. He left a dream job, acquired a law firm, made history twice over, and merged with a national accounting firm backed by private equity. They are overwhelmed with work and nowhere near done. Enjoy. Welcome everyone to the Future Is Bright podcast. My name is Chris Batts and joined by my co host, Howard Rosenberg. Howard and I are at the center of law firm talent and strategic growth here in New York City. Howard is a partner in the head of talent, intelligence and acquisitions at Baritz, and Bruno and I advise and facilitate law firm mergers at Columbus Street. And today we have a very exciting guest, Andy Kivesich, CEO of Aprio Legal. Andy, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker B: Gentlemen. Love being here. Thanks for having me on the show.

Speaker A: Andy, let's jump in. So what led you to become an attorney? Want to start with that?

Speaker B: Uh, it's an interesting question. I don't come from a family of attorneys. My parents were immigrants. They came to the US in the 70s from Croatia. And so, um, there was always, ah, despite them not having any formal education, there was always a high standard of me and my siblings to achieve and to do well in school and, um, to accomplish great things. So coming out of college, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I was a business major, um, and I just felt like law school would be the more difficult, challenging path that would open up more opportunities for me. It was either that or get my mba. So I decided to go to law school, um, and it turns out it worked out great for me career wise. And, um, that's sort of how I went into it. I didn't have anyone coaching me up on how to do it. Kind of figured it out on my own, but that was my path in becoming an attorney.

Speaker A: Now you're a general counsel for family offices, is that correct?

Speaker B: Right. Yeah, that's if I had to synthesize what I do for a living. That's a fair way to put it.

Speaker A: And were you in house for a period of time doing that?

Speaker B: I was. So I started off as a litigator, um, out of law school, I joined a firm in Phoenix and did commercial litigation for almost ten years. Um, but deep down had always wanted to be a prosecutor. So I was a partner at a law firm and I left that job to go be, um, a fraud prosecutor at the Arizona Attorney General's office, which was such an awesome job. But from there got, uh, recruited to be general counsel for a state agency in Arizona. And then from that job went back into the private sector as the general counsel for a family Office with just 40 company org chart doing all sorts of different things for, um, highly successful entrepreneur.

Speaker A: So it was a single family office particularly that you were supporting. Okay, great. And you ended up going back into private practice. Tell us about that.

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, what's interesting is I had every lawyer's dream job. Every, almost every attorney wants that general counsel job where they don't have to bill hours anymore and they can have one client. It's just um, it's, it's not as much of a grind as working at a law firm. But yeah, I was um, an opportunity came up and this was in 2021. It was when the Arizona Supreme Court changed the rules on who could own law firms. And there was an opportunity to acquire a law firm in Phoenix and I would run it and I was, I would group together a uh, team of investors group that would help uh, us strategically with operations and drive their resources and relationships to the firm. Um, and at first glance I thought why would I do that? I have the job that everyone wants. I'm a GC for this really cool family office and I'm flying around the country and doing deals and managing all these different companies. Um, but this was a really unique opportunity to go in and acquire a firm and fix all the things that I felt like needed fixing with how legal services are delivered, how law firms operate, how attorneys are compensated. Um, and so I, I decided to go for it. And that's what started our um, that, that's what we ended up requiring. Radix Law as an Arizona alternative business structure under the new rules.

Speaker C: And what was the game plan or the mentality that you've kind of taken this new opportunity and obviously a big career change for you. You must have kind of played out what that might be like over the coming years. Walk us through what that process was like.

Speaker B: Yeah. So remarkably I've never had a five year plan. Uh, so I didn't go into that thinking, okay, this is going to be the stepping stone to my next move. I've always just gone with my gut. But the goal, the vision for Radix Law was twofold. One, I thought it would be great to acquire a law firm with some non lawyer business partners that could help us improve the operational efficiency of the firm, adjust the comp plans to keep the attorneys motivated. Uh, but run a really tight business, run a really smart business the way I had seen businesses run through the family office. Understanding how to use capital to grow and how to spend money on marketing and when to Hire and fire, all those things that law firms don't really think about. Um, so that was the idea. It's like, let's run a really efficient business with smart business people and grow the law firm that way. The other mission with Radix Law was I felt like there was a market, um, for combined comprehensive professional services under one roof. And again, this goes back to the family office experience where, where highly successful entrepreneurs typically have a number of different professionals helping them with, with their businesses. So they need an estate planning attorney, they need tax advice, they need a wealth planner, they need people to advise on their transactions, whether it's pre deal due diligence or quality of earnings studies. And so the way that works presently is all those professionals typically work at different offices. And so the client is left bouncing around town figuring out for relatively straightforward transactions, but trying to get advice from four different people and then harmonize all that. And I felt like that's not how the world should work. I felt like there was a place where all of those individuals could work at one company, collaborate, deliver a solution to the client so the client can then go back to doing whatever they were doing. So that was the long term goal with um, Radix.

Speaker A: And how did Aprio come into the picture then? Because it sounds like pre Aprio, you already were thinking comprehensive services.

Speaker B: Yeah, it was a perfect fit. Um, we'd started building out our wealth planning team. We were considering whether to add accounting to our platform. Um, in the meantime, running a busy law firm and having all these clients.

Speaker A: Andy, I'm sorry, did you tell me, did you guys already start building on an ria?

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Really expound a little bit. What do you mean by that?

Speaker B: Um, so under Radix Law, we wanted to have an RIA under that platform. Um, and so we were recruiting, we were trying to find the right advisor to do that. And then we decided to just do it ourselves, which was, I can't tell you how many people told us we couldn't do it. And I knew there was a way to do it. And again, feeding off of what I learned under the family office, which one of the business lines was an ria? One of it was, was a tech platform that supported RIAs. One of it was an insurance wholesaler. So I kind of knew how that business model worked. Um, and seeing how ownership is structured at those entities, I thought we could do that at the law firm. And so it took so long. Um, there was so much scrutiny. It was a regulatory nightmare. And again, meanwhile, still trying to run a law Firm. We had a day job of a really busy business law firm. So, um, that was going on. In the meantime. Aprio also got an alternative business structure license. So the question of how did we meet them? How did this whole thing happen? I didn't know who they were. They came to Arizona, got the alternative business structure license. Their vision for the world was much like ours, however, they were the accounting firm, and they felt like there was a place to have a national accounting firm that's doing taxes and wealth advisory and business advisory and all that stuff. The one missing piece was legal. And so through that ABS community, I met them. Um, and it was just. I'll never forget, the conversation is like, you meet these people and they're asking you about your business and you're telling them, and it feels like they're telling you the same story. And I always think of that, like, there's that Spider man meme where, like, the three spider men are, like, pointing at each other, right? And so that was kind of it. It's like, yeah, we got this busy business law firm and we're trying to find a really strong accounting and tax and wealth planning firm to work with. And the APRO people are like, we have this really strong accounting wealth planning firm, and we're looking for a business law firm to do it. And then eventually we just sort of like, you know, figured out that this was a perfect fit. And so, um, not only were we the first full service business law firm to get an ABS license, we were now the first ABS firm to combine with another ABS firm.

Speaker A: Lots of firsts. That's exciting.

Speaker B: How long?

Speaker C: Go ahead, go ahead, Chris.

Speaker A: How long did it take for you guys to do that dance, to make that integration and to agree on terms? And did you do the road tour to meet the leadership of Aprio? Love to hear kind of your thought process. Did you guys have deal killers that you're trying to overcome? Um, like walking law firms through union, you know, coming together mergers. There's always this list of deal killers. There's always this list of culture fit. Um, how did you walk through that?

Speaker B: So, like most independent law firms, like, we were not positioning ourselves to sell to private equity or to anyone. We had a vision in mind, we had a path. We knew we were going to get there. Um, um. And so we weren't teeing this up for like a huge ebitda, uh, and multiples. Like, we were putting everything we made back into the company to grow it. And so, so. And we got a lot of calls from people to you know, inquiring about, hey, would you sell? And different models. It just didn't fit with what we were doing, and we weren't even interested in it anyways. And the analogy is like, you know, someone shows up to your house that you live in, that you've raised your family in for 20 years, knocks on the door and says, hey, I want to buy your house. And you look at them and you say, it's not for sale. Um, eventually it gets to the point where it's like, there is a number where it's like, honey, grab the kids. Like, we're out of here. And I say that like, tongue in cheek. Um, because that's not really how it worked with Apria. But I will share that the first proposal, we just weren't interested. And I begrudgingly went to Atlanta to go meet their team. Quite honestly, I thought. And I've shared this with them, so this is something secret about it. Um, I thought I was going there to land a new client because they were in abs, they were trying to figure out how to make this all work. I thought, okay, maybe I can introduce them to some Arizona lawyers and help build out their Arizona law firm. Because a lot of my clients were other ABS law firms. And so I was kind of the guy advising people on compliance. So I go to Atlanta, um, begrudgingly, didn't want to go. I was so busy. Uh, show up to the boardroom, and it's like, CEO, cfo, head of hr, general counsel, head of the wealth planning team. And I'm looking around like, what are we doing here? And they just, like, went right into it. And within seconds, the CEO and I just hit it off. Like, we definitely had the same vision for the world. And he and I just literally start whiteboarding. And everyone else in the room is like, okay, these guys are like long lost brothers. So, um, um, left that meeting thinking, wow, these guys. These guys are legit. Um, um, and maybe they put on a show for me. But on that plane ride home, I thought, man, I need to really think about this. And so that was like the fall of. Call it fall of 2024. Um, between then and February was a lot of back and forth on, like, how this would work. But, um, beginning of February is when we signed the LOI, and then we closed in May of 2025. So once the LOI was signed, even though nothing was final at that point, we moved pretty quickly through due diligence.

Speaker C: So, uh, walk us through that value proposition that you whiteboarded in that room. Basically, because you must have had a pretty compelling idea on a unified basis of what accounting and law might look like going forward in the marketplace.

Speaker B: Right. We didn't have to get that creative. And the reason for that is the existing clients that we had at the law firm were asking for these services already. They're constantly asking us, do you know a good bookkeeper? Do you know a good cpa? I need tax advice on this. So we were constantly referring that stuff out. In the meantime, throughout aprio, which is a national organization, they too, like all of their professionals, were getting those requests of, uh, hey, do you know anyone that could do an estate plan? We need some advice, like, we need corporate counsel on our deal structure, or we're a foreign entity, we're setting up shop in the United States. You have attorneys that can help. So they were constantly referring work out, um, to other attorneys. And so it didn't take a lot of, like, brain power to figure out this would work because there was already a need, like, we were just the missing puzzle piece, um, for the other. And then we almost got to a point, like, we were shocked that no one else was doing this. Um, and so at that moment, you realize, okay, we can be the first again to combine these things and to do it with this huge national firm, which, by the way, had just brought on Charles bank as a financial sponsor. And so, um, it was just a very easy conversation where the ideas just started flowing. Where we quickly got into. It wasn't about, how can we do this? It was, how big can we get this?

Speaker A: Make this. Yeah, yeah, Andy, a couple questions around that. So you had investors in yours. How did you navigate that when that wasn't with this necessarily not being part of the roadmap so early? I guess.

Speaker B: So the good thing is, uh, our investors were sophisticated people, some of whom were CEOs of publicly traded companies who were. Had their own projects going on. Um, and they were very passive. Like, they supported the firm in the sense that they would send us clients. They would, um, provide strategic advice when we would put together budgets and how do we grow? But they weren't showing up at the law firm calculating our next move. They sort of relied on me to do that, which I'm forever grateful for that. And so when the opportunity came up, um, it was like, hey, here's the option, guys. The good news is, like, you're going to make a decent return, and it's going to be way better than what your guy or gal at Morgan Stanley just did for you over the past three years. The bad news is you're out. You're not coming along for the ride because the people that are coming are going to be part of the firm. And so there's no longer a room to just be a passive investor. Aprio or nothing. And they, they completely understood that. Like, they were happy for me, they were happy for the project. They were really happy to be involved in a really unique, um, really unique opportunity that was unlike anything else they were doing. And so I'm, uh, forever grateful to that team for their support and for their, for really like on a go forward basis to back the idea that like we were going to then get acquired by Aprio and they would get bought out.

Speaker A: Another question I have is, so you have those investors that actually were bought out, they took their chips and were happy. Um, here comes Charles Bank Capital Partners supporting the parent, it sounds like. Did you speak with them too? And were they part of the transaction to bring you on board to bring this merger together? I'm curious.

Speaker B: I did speak with them. Um, and I can't remember when, but they had their. The person that was in charge of the Aprio portfolio was in Scottsdale and just reached out. Um, so of course I wanted to meet them. And they're absolutely brilliant people. I mean, Charles bank is, I think, an $18 billion private equity fund. Super smart. If you look at their roster of people that are running that organization, they're just incredibly talented people. And so the Charles bank person comes to town and you don't know what to expect. You hear all of these stories about private equity. Um, the first conversation we had was his question was, how do we help you grow? What are things that we can do? And then the second question is, can I introduce you to other people in our other portfolio companies that you could potentially serve as counsel for? And I'm thinking, I thought they were going to come in with suits and start auditing everything we're doing. And the entire conversation is, how do we help you make this like 10 times as big as it is right now? So it was just, it was another moment where I thought, these are the exact partners that we need to be with right now.

Speaker C: So I have a killer question then for that, because if the investors, sounds like the investors now are locked in, they're locked and loaded. The value proposition is well understood. What's it like culturally in the belly of the beast between working with accountants and lawyers? Because once one's transactionally driven, the other one's usually relationship driven. Right. And so like, what's that like Navigating in the company.

Speaker A: Well, and there's an RIA too. So, I mean, there's more than just accounting there.

Speaker B: Yeah, this is a great question. That's why it's a killer question.

Speaker C: Exactly.

Speaker B: That's a killer question for me. I'll give you my personal experience, and then I'll give you the general response. My personal experience is I didn't fully appreciate that for my entire career, 20 plus years. The only people that I have been interacting with are other lawyers. Okay, so you're sort of like, in this community of, uh, this is how you think people are in general. So this was my first time sitting with someone who was not an attorney and realizing, like, oh, okay, there's really smart people out there that are. That are really great, like, that have great personalities that didn't go to law school. And like, their ego. Their egos are not there. Um, and they really care about their client and they're really good at their jobs. And so there was like this awakening of, oh, my gosh, there's all these other professionals out there that are as financially successful as law firms, but they don't practice law.

Speaker A: Which was great.

Speaker B: And, uh, just another reason why I was like, wow, this such a great partnership. As a general matter, I chuckle and say, if you had this stereotype lawyers and accountants, and I joke with my colleagues about this. Lawyers have huge egos and are generally annoying. Accountants are more nerdy. And so you throw those people in a room, um, and it's just interesting to watch. And so it's. It's, um. I'm happily, I'm happy to walk into a room of like 100 people I don't know. And I'm just that way. Like, I'm more outgoing. I can go do that and meet a bunch of people. And, um, I'm comfortable in that. In that environment. Some accountants are not. Right. But then you also have some lawyers that are like, just want to practice law and don't want to be bothered. And then you have your. The folks on the accounting side that are more of the business developers that approach it in a different way. And so, um, yeah, culturally, it's still like, it's kind of a breath of fresh air. Um, on top of the fact that lawyers generally think they're smarter than everyone and that they know everything. And when you put it into perspective, we're not. We're good at a certain thing. But if you look at how attorneys and firms run their business, it's laughable. And the accountants would make fun of most Law firms and how they run their books and their operations.

Speaker C: Because you're dealing with two extremes of risk tolerance. Those two entities. What's the decision making process like for getting new work and rate structures and things like that. Because you're dealing with very different people with appetites towards different risk profiles. How do you navigate that?

Speaker A: I'm going to piggyback. So rate structures and then also clearing conflicts. You're a large organization. How does that work?

Speaker B: Yep. Um, great compliance question. So our law firm really sits on an island. We have our own systems and our own client database. And we had to do that for the conflict, um, for the conflict check purposes. But what was really important and I think a benefit to us as part of this deal is Aprio looked at me and said, we want you to run this firm. They acknowledged that they did not know how to run a law firm. So this was not a situation where I was coming into an organization and then would have some new CEO of the law firm that I'm now like sending budgets to and asking permission to go to the bathroom. Um, they wanted to build around what we already had, which made it very easy in terms of how we structured our rates. They wanted us to continue doing what we were doing, but then backed by this larger national platform. Um, and then in terms of how the conflict checks and how rates are structured, the benefit of partnering with a firm like Aprio is their clients are already used to hiring professionals and having to pay for high level services that they're not asking for a discount, they're not asking for it to be done on the cheap. And so it's an easy conversation because when the client is hiring Apro to do whatever it needs, you know, part of a transaction, and they're already paying them a significant amount of money, the idea that they need to now hire a corporate counsel is not going to like break up the client relationship. They totally get it. And then they realize that our rates are relatively lower than most firms because we're based in Arizona. Our rates are just generally lower. Um, the client looks at it as like, this is a huge value add. Like I don't have to go hunt for another law firm. I don't have to have separate calls. Like there's same email address, like the same email handle. They hop on a teams call. We solve stuff relatively quickly. And so it's not a struggle to like set rates. It's not a struggle to share clients with Aprio and then to get those referrals. In fact, we're getting were overwhelmed with work, with all the referrals that were coming in from our colleagues at Aprio. So it's just I'm hiring and I need, I need people, I need more people asap.

Speaker A: Andy, um, you've been in the legal industry for quite some time now. Um, and having tipped your toe into a professional service organization like an Aprio that has multiple lines of business, um, are you learning anything from them? Meaning is there new ways of doing things or best practices that as you kind of talk about, you know, being in a room of accountants that are, they're different yet there's some related. So I'm curious, like, are you guys able to, um, improve operations or different approaches? Just curious.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Um, the benefit of having an accounting firm that's not only offering those services to the public, but that runs its own firm with the same precision and discipline, like, has been tremendous. Um, the reports that I get about what our margins are and, and what our performance is and how close we are to budget and whether we're exceeding budget, like, is so much more thorough and so much more precise than what we had before. Because almost every law firm operates on a cash basis. And it's like a very, very straightforward, almost juvenile business model. It's like we're going to bill a bunch of hours, we're going to send an invoice out, we're going to collect that money, and then we're going to pay all the partners at the end of the year until the account is down to zero. And then the next year, for the first three months, we're going to borrow money to hit payroll and then we're going to do a bunch of work and we're going to send invoice out and collect the money. There's no discussion of like, what's our budget, how much are we going to invest in tech, what's our growth plan? It's just like very reactive accounting firms, larger firms like this, large institutions have 1 year, 3 year, 5 year, 10 year plans where you're sitting down and saying, where do you think you're going to be this year? How many people do we need to hire? How many people do we need to hire today to be ready in six months for what we think is in the pipeline? What is in the pipeline? What geographic markets do we need to target? Where do we need to backfill? Who do we need to partner with? With the estate planning attorneys or the corporate attorneys to help expand services in these other markets? Like, all of that analysis is totally different than what we were used to, at a law firm. Um, and it's great. It's a really, really tight business model because you can look at, and I was just looking at reports today. Like you can look at where we're at year to date compared to last year. You can look at where we are probably going to be in the next three months and then in Q4 and, and then what we need to do to backfill all of those things. Like the analysis is um, it's awesome. Like I love it. I completely geek out on that. And we didn't, we just didn't have that before at a law firm because you don't, law firms don't operate that way. You might have a really talented CFO that's going to tell you what you think the revenue is going to be. But their goal is to figure out what's the partner distribution going to be in December. It's not about like where are we going to be in five years and what do we need to do? How do we invest back into the company?

Speaker C: So Andy, with all that amazing kind of granular information and intelligence, what is the plan for world domination? What do you think that you need going forward to ah, satisfy that?

Speaker B: I need more lawyers. So every conversation you see on LinkedIn or everywhere is about AI and whether AI is going to get rid of all the professionals. Um, our world domination is going to involve making sure that our clients understand that we're the one place where you can get all these services under one roof. Um, I don't know that we're approaching our one year anniversary with Aprio. I think, I would say 10% of the Aprio population. We're talking 3,000 employees and 300 equity partners. 10% of the population really understands that we have a law firm now and we are overwhelmed with work and internally we chuckle. We haven't even tried with much effort to like market this internally and we are already getting flooded with work. And so once everyone at the organization understands how it works, where we can practice, what we can do, how they can raise these opportunities with their clients in conversations, um, we're going to grow very, very quickly. And this notion that we could be 10 times our size within a couple years is like an absolute reality. So we do that through a combination of things. Um, you could do it with additional merged in firms like gobbling up other firms that were like Radix, that have centralized leadership and decision making. Where you pick a company up like that in every market where Aprio has an office, um, maybe you find a huge firm and merge them in, um, and then you expand with the existing clients and that organic growth and expand what you already have at Aprio Legal, what you already have at the rest of Aprio, expand the existing services and promote organic growth that way.

Speaker A: Andy, you mentioned this idea of referrals internally and you're only tapping into maybe 10% of it. Um, are the APRO partners incentivized? Are the attorneys incentivized to send work to you guys? And how does that. I'm just a little curious because obviously there has to be asymmetrical benefit for everyone to be on board for you guys to join. Can you pull my listeners a little bit into the incentive structure you're allowed to talk about as it relates to clients you originate clients that are already institutionalized inside of Aprio.

Speaker B: Right. So the good news at Aprio is the partners have ownership in the mothership, which is, you know, the dropdowns include legal and wealth and advisory and tax and audit. And so when, when we have a good year, all the partners have a good year.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: When wealth has a good year, all the partners have a good year. So it's very different from a law firm where, um, if you're an equity partner, whatever that means at a law firm, if you're in the estate planning practice group and the litigation team has a monster year, okay, that's good for them because based on their formulaic comp plan, they're going to have probably a bigger payout. And maybe you participate in that a little bit as an equity shareholder, but you're not running down the hall high fiving the litigators because law firms are so built to promote the individual. Whereas at Aprio, like I am high fiving them, like when we bring on a firm like we've done in several markets, when we bring on a firm in a new state that's not a law firm, be a CPA firm, small tax practice, whatever. I get really excited because that's a new opportunity for me to have a new source of work, a new referral source. So everyone's wired that way at the organization where everyone's incentivized to, to grow the entire company. We don't have a formula based comp plan, but it's all a function of growth, organic growth, originating work for everyone else at the organization. And so people are motivated to do that. It is definitely not like, um, it's very different than law firms where you're motivated to personally do well. The partners at Aprio are motivated to grow the entire Organization and um, with

Speaker A: Charles Bank Capital Partners, um, I'm assuming they're really driving with the existing equity partnership, top line growth and ebitda. Growth unto what that you're allowed to talk about. I mean, how are you guys positioning yourselves? Or how are you thinking what life looks like in five to ten years from now for the entire partnership? How are you guys doing that?

Speaker B: So there's not like a date, you know, where we're throwing a dart at it. I mean, you could look at traditional private equity models where it's a three to five year play and they're trying to three times their money. We don't really have those discussions. Um, okay, do I, do I anticipate that there will be, you know, another turn? I think so. I think everyone wants to make money. Like even at a traditional law firm, like the goal is to increase value and make money. I don't know. We don't have a set plan on when that will happen. Um, nor do we approach it that way. We don't look at, okay, it's the five year target. Let's gas up the EBITDA as much as possible. And then once we get to a multiple that we think is going to result in xyz, you know, distribution, um, then we'll stop. It's just not that way. Like we will all continue doing what we're doing. Growing the firm, increasing the value, increasing the ebitda. Ah, doing what's right for the client, growing the client base. Um, and that really aligns with like my view of the world. It's like I, I believe strongly that like, the people that just like work really hard and keep your nose down, you don't complain and you roll your sleeves up and grind through it like the cream eventually rises to the top. And for some people it happens really quickly. Some people are luckier than others. But no one has ever failed at anything, just like working their tail off. And uh, that's how the people at Aprio are wired. Like that is a foolproof strategy for success.

Speaker A: Yeah. And just to summarize for the audience, what you just said was you guys are not having your eye on the ball for another catalyst in three to five years or even having full attention on that, that you're really thinking more long term, head down, but are focused on clients and revenue and ebitda. Uh, um, but not overly focused like some PE firms do.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah. We don't have those conversations. I couldn't tell you whether, whether in 2027 or 2030 there's going to be another turn that's not really part of the conversation at all.

Speaker C: So, Andy, uh, how do you decompress from running the circus? Currently?

Speaker B: It's hard to turn my brain off. And I joke with AI that there's this movement of everyone turning their brain off and just asking ChatGPT or whatever how to ask questions or answer questions on a podcast like this. Um, how do I do? I've. I have. I have three little kids. Like, I love, you know, coaching them in sports. We had a little league game last night. So, um, I find that sometimes when I'm screaming, you know, at a football or baseball game, maybe I'm, I'm sort of relieving some of those daily stresses. Um, but. But yeah, I mean, I think, um, I get a lot of satisfaction out of. Out of building things and growing things, like, with high standards for myself, Like, I'm constantly chasing the next thing. Um, but I do what everyone else does. You know, I try and golf here and there. Like, I have my, my quiet time where I go to the gym and just focus on, you know, something else. Um, but it's hard to. It's hard for me to turn the brain off. Like, I'm constantly thinking about, what's our next move? Are we doing enough? Like, what do we need to be doing? What do I need to do today? What do I need to do to. In five years to get where I think we can go?

Speaker A: Andy, um, holding up a magic ball, uh, guessing the future of the legal industry. So which segment of the legal industry do you think is most at risk the next five years? I mean, there's a lot of things happening right now with AI, with private capital, with AI, native firms that has venture capital, all kinds of things happening. Love to get your perspective.

Speaker B: That's a tough one. Um, I think there is still a generation of attorneys that have a grip on the profession. And you can call them boomers or whatever, they've just done business a certain way for a really long time. And so I question what their clients will do when those attorneys don't have a succession plan. And that's not, that's not really practice group specific. Um, that deals more with how traditional attorneys approach their practice, which is, generally speaking, you're going to work until you can't breathe anymore. And there's a new generation of attorneys entering the market that they don't want that for a career path. And so I think the threat is figuring out, what do you do? How do you operate under those models where people want flexibility in where they work and when they can work and what kind of platforms they can use. How do you operate in a model where if you're using AI and you can only bill for the attorney time that you spend on it, like, how do you start pricing things differently and then change the client's perspective on value based billing? Because with AI, what no. 1, what people don't talk about enough is like, yeah, it makes you faster. You've paid for the software to make you faster. The client benefits from that, but they're not paying for that. And so you either have attorneys billing unethically, you know, billing six hours for a project that took three minutes on AI, or they're spending a bunch of money on the software and can't get the adequate payments, efficiencies and fees out of that. So someone's going to have to figure that out. Um, yeah, we'll see.

Speaker A: Yeah. And Andy, um, let's shift into advice phase. Uh, let's say we have a listener today. Our listeners that heard your story. You're the fifth ABS to launch in Arizona. You're the first corporate law firm launch. You're the first two, uh, combinations coming together on a corporate side. What advice would you give folks who are thinking of either doing what you've done or doing something like this in Arizona? Um, today I get a lot of

Speaker B: calls from people that knee jerk reaction is they want to start an abs. They heard about non lawyer investment. They just think I want to own a law firm. And 95% of those people, I end up telling them like, you don't need an abs. So I always, for people that want advice, I would ask, why do you want to do this? Um, because if you just want to find a way to like profit off of law firms or fee share with attorneys because there's a bunch of money to be made in personal injury. Like you can do that in Arizona? We can. Arizona, uh, attorneys can fee share with non lawyers. You could have strategic marketing agreements or whatever, offer up money for lead generation and just share fees that way. And that way you're not running a law firm. You're not dealing with the state bar, the supreme court. You're not having to do the multiple compliance, self compliance reviews that we have, or all these really tight restrictions that other law firms don't have to deal with. You can avoid all that, um, with just a basic agreement. But if you really want, if you have an idea that you can't do with a traditional law firm that's unique, that benefits the client and you're thinking long term, you're thinking about a long term exit potentially, then ABS might be a path for you. But I would encourage people to figure out why they want to do this and cut through it. Cut through the bs. If you want to do it because personal injury attorneys are successful and you want to get a piece of the action, okay, that's different than abs. If you want to do this because you believe there's a world for multidisciplinary services, or you believe that your 20 year paralegal should be able to own some part of your firm because that's the right thing to do, because that's what every other business can do, then it's something to consider.

Speaker C: Andy, I have one last question on the crystal ball metaphor here. So again, if I gave you a crystal ball pertaining to the regulatory environment, you could change one thing in the future. Going forward, what would you like to change on the regulatory front?

Speaker B: I'm not going to sit here and tell you that every state should embrace non lawyer ownership. Um, but what I would ask of other markets is to take a deep breath before you try and block everything that's going on. Um, and a good example of that is recently there's a, uh, the chief district court judge in Delaware issued an order that said if you're an attorney outside of Delaware and you want to appear in Delaware temporarily, it's called pro hoc viche. In our profession, if you want to appear pro hoc viche, you have to avow on an order that you do not work at a firm that has a non lawyer, owner, director, officer or person of similar responsibility. And so you can read that and think, okay, the judge just wants to keep private equity out of law firms in Delaware. But the way it's written, it would prevent any law firm that has a CEO, a cfo, an HR director that's a non lawyer from appearing in Delaware. And so, uh, it's another thing no one's talking about because my question is, well, how is a firm like Hush Blackwell, who has a non lawyer CEO, which I think is great, how are they going to practice in Delaware? How is any AmLaw200 firm going to practice in Delaware if their CFO or CMO or HR director is a non lawyer? That's all of them, right? And so these measures in California, um, and in Illinois and in South Carolina that are designed to keep private equity out of the legal profession, I think everyone just needs to take a deep breath and see, are you really, is it really just personal injury attorneys trying to protect their market share. Is that what's going on? And if it is, just say that. But like the things that you are doing are going to spill over into what traditional law firms already do and it's going to have like, it's going to have an adverse effect that's like not intended to solve the problem that they think exists.

Speaker A: Andy, um, please finish this sentence. The future is bright because the future

Speaker B: is bright because there are people in the legal profession that believe there's a better way to operate, that really care about the future of the profession, that have seen how it's been done and realize that that model will not work. Um, and those people have enough courage to withstand the criticism and they have enough courage, um, grit to be the pioneers in this space which at the end of the day creates a better world for clients. It creates a better world for lawyers. It just makes the world a better place.

Speaker A: Andy, how can people find you, follow you on social media?

Speaker B: Sure, I'm on LinkedIn. Our website is apriolegal.com the, the Aprio website is aprio.com aprio. Um, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. They can find me there and I look forward to connecting with anyone that has follow up questions.

Speaker A: Excellent. Andy, it's been an honor and a pleasure. Thank you for your time today.

Speaker B: Really enjoyed it. Yeah, I appreciate it. That was great.

Speaker C: Thank you.