Started in 1886 Trethowans Gets ‘Rolled Up’ By Lawfront – Artificial Lawyer

Lawfront, a ‘roll-up’ organisation backed by the Blixt investment group, and which is bringing in medium-size law firms, keeping their brands, but sharing services to reduce costs, has now bagged Trethowans, which started back in 1886.

This is Lawfront’s sixth large regional firm acquisition and the thirteenth acquisition in total, taking group fee income to over £130m, well on the way to becoming a Top 10 regional legal services business, they noted.

The way profit share operates between all the various parties is not clear, e.g. the owners of Lawfront vs the equity partners of each law firm that is ‘acquired’, and it’s also unclear how ownership of the entire organisation works, e.g. Blixt (the investment fund), Lawfront (the roll-up org), and the member firms (which have been traditional equity partnerships). But, either way, it’s a sign of the times.

Partner firms fulfil their growth ambitions through additional local ‘merge-in’ acquisitions and by leveraging Lawfront’s investment and expertise in people, IT, AI, marketing and business development, to accelerate organic growth, the group said.

Trethowans is a leading firm in the South and South West, based in Southampton, Salisbury, Winchester, Bournemouth and Poole. 

Neil Lloyd, Lawfront CEO, explained: ‘We provide a very credible alternative to the equity partnership model of ownership, addressing concerns of succession, legacy and the scale of investment required to remain competitive.’

As to the legal tech aspect, one key point is that a shared services roll-up like this can then invest heavily into technology to support all member firms, which they perhaps may not have been able to manage on their own, or had the tech teams to do so.

It would be great if Lawfront also moved to embrace fixed fees, provided price transparency, and invests heavily into legal AI and other areas of legal tech – (and on this last bit they have suggested that this will happen). That would then set them apart in the market in ways beyond their organisational structure.

You can find more about Lawfront here.