The law firm, Wood Smith Henning & Berman, has more than 500 lawyers with offices spread across 35 states and London, and its size and revenues position is very close to Biglaw. The firm has founders still active in the business, who are presumably ready to take the cash and retire, a fact that was cited by a merger advisor in the ATL article. That could sweeten the deal for them.

At this point, you are saying, “Wait a minute. There are ethical considerations that prevent this hook-up.” And you would be right. In almost all U.S. jurisdictions, it remains prohibited for non-lawyers, including private equity firms, to directly own law firms, and Rule 5.4 of the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct prohibits fee-sharing between lawyers and non-lawyers, creating more than just caveats for law firm participation in conventional acquisition models.

But the sales pitch for this deal is what is known as a management services organization, which allows a non-lawyer investor to own the billing and the software of a law firm at the same time that lawyers continue to control the “lawyering part” of the business. And some jurisdictions like DC, Arizona and Utah allow that arrangement under certain circumstances. On the other hand, the legislatures of California, Illinois and Colorado recently advanced legislation to restrict or regulate PE investment in law firms. So, it is a bit of a toss up, which means that the litigators are standing by.

If this management services organization model sounds to you like hard to pull off, you may be on to something. Like me, you may recall when PE moved into doctor’s offices and other healthcare, and the pros and cons of that are still being debated. Private equity also is behind the demise of neighborhood shopping centers and restaurants that are now vacant properties. The financial model of PE, simply stated, is based on high management fees which can strangle businesses and leave the corpses by the wayside.

So, is this a good idea for law firms? Will it spread to other deals or is it a one off? We don’t know. But keep an eye open because the Financial Times reports that Paul Weiss, Quinn Emanuel and Proskauer are among firms to have had conversations with PE groups or bankers to consider taking outside capital. So, this may only be the beginning of the story.

One of the important rights that is being discussed within the context of Gloria Steinem’s death is equal credit rights for women. Many young women today, especially, do not realize that the legislation assuring those rights is not that old and that until 1974 the right did not exist. Before then, women could not get bank loans or credit cards without the support of a male. Husbands and fathers were required to co-sign to provide the assurance that the woman would live up to her financial obligations.

I wrote a law review article about this in the early 1980s. Credit Opportunity for Women: The ECOA and Its Effects was published in the Wisconsin Law Review in 1981. At the time, I was a young associate working for a client on some credit matters and came across this history. I was active with the DC Women’s Bar Association, and I was asked to write a paper and present it to a joint meeting of the bar and students at Georgetown Law. That paper later became a law review article.

The thing I remember best about presenting the paper was the gasp in the lecture hall when I announced to the young women gathered there that six years earlier, when they were in high school or college, they could have been denied a credit card by Bloomingdales or Woodward and Lothrop, a DC favorite at the time. Presumably most of them had not applied for credit in the past, and these young women were as clueless as I had been. I think I noticed them clinging to their credit cards as they left the lecture hall.

There are many rights that women have fought hard for and won in my lifetime, but this one is special for me and affects women on a near daily basis. Think about it. How would a woman today carry on her life without access to credit? How would she shop on-line now that most of the shopping malls are gone? How would she renew her driver’s license without traipsing over to the closest DMV to spend half a day waiting in line? How would she secure a home loan?

Yes, babies, we have come a long way. Longer than you may have realized.

The author is David Burgess, Managing Director at Law Dragon, and is titled “The Structure Is the Bias: Why a Generation of Initiatives Hasn’t Moved the Numbers.”

Although I do not share all of the author’s assertions, I certainly understand the problem. I have been writing about the advancement of women lawyers for the past 20 years, and, fortunately during that time, I have seen women lawyers advance and prosper in the profession on a more consistent basis and without as many of the challenges and impediments that women lawyers of my generation encountered. I also understand that there is still a long way to go before equity is experienced for women in the profession, and I sincerely hope I am around to see it and to applaud it.

Here are some excerpts from the article.

On the subject of the billable hour:

A lawyer who reduces her hours to raise children is not judged against some abstract standard of contribution. She is measured, in six-minute increments, against colleagues with no comparable demands at home. Part-time and flexible working, the policies firms reach for first, do not solve this. They simply let a woman pursue the same impossible number on a pro-rata basis, with less visibility, less of the high-value work that flows to those who are always available, and a quiet question mark over her commitment.

On the subject of up-or-out partnership:

Its design is almost perfectly calibrated to exclude women. The decisive years, when associates must out-bill, out-network and out-originate their peers to win one of a handful of slots, fall precisely on the years of childbearing. And childbearing is only the most visible of the competing claims on those years. The same window, stretching from the late thirties into the forties, is so often when women become the primary carers for ageing parents as well, frequently while they are still raising school-aged children of their own … at the exact moment a partnership case has to be built and defended.

In summary:

The verdict on a generation of initiatives is in. They were not too cautious or too few. They were aimed at the wrong target. Until firms are willing to confront the billable hour and the partnership tournament … the numbers will keep telling the same story, year after year.

There is a lot to think about in this article. You can find it at https://www.lawdragon.com/news-features/2026-07-05-the-structure-is-the-bias-why-a-generation-of-initiatives-hasn-t-moved-the-number”

I have an inactive status, so I pay a reduced fee, but that fee is still substantial. I have chosen an inactive status because I have no intention of returning to law practice but I still want some of the benefits of bar membership. So, inactive status works fine for me and is not a financial burden.

However, what if I was a lawyer temporarily between jobs, who was expecting to return to practice soon? That person would not want an inactive bar status even though the reduced fee might be attractive under those circumstances. That lawyer would be hoping for a a short off ramp term and would want to be able to jump right back into practice without the hassle of converting from inactive to active status and the associated requirements and delays. That lawyer would want to keep an active bar status even though paying the fee might be very challenging under those special circumstances.

And what about the lawyer who is only able to practice part-time due to family responsibilities like childcare or care for elderly relatives? Would that part-time lawyer, who has a reduced income, be able to easily afford bar fees and the other add-ons that are typical for most mandatory bar association memberships?

Bar membership should not be a burden or a challenge to lawyers who have special circumstances and are just trying to hang in the profession. Mandatory bars should not discourage lawyers from keeping their licenses active in hope that their circumstances change and they can return to either part-time or full-time practice. And it does not seem fair to force lawyers, who are only able to have part-time incomes, to pay as much as those who practice full-time and have full-time incomes.

Why would we force any of these special circumstance lawyers to go through the pain of re-activation, including CLE requirements and waiting periods, if we could make it more comfortable for them to keep their licenses active and be ready to rejoin the profession on a moment’s notice?

It’s time for mandatory bar associations to give lawyers a break. It’s time for them to reexamine their fee schedules in recognition of the challenges faced by attorneys with special circumstances.

If this issue bothers you, too, contact your bar associations and register your discontent. Even though escalating bar association fees may not amount to a burden for you, they are a challenge for many lawyers, who we should want to keep in the profession.

I have written and passed two bar exams, but that was a long time ago and not worthy of this discussion. However my two children have taken bar exams and passed them in the last 15 years. So, I consider their experiences relevant, particularly about issues of the performance of bar examiners. Their experiences were completely different. One of them experienced no memorable issues with bar examiners, and the other one nearly had to abandon ship because of inept bar examiners.

So when I read an article about the NY State Legislature urging updated methods and responsibilities for bar examiners to address emergencies, it caught my attention. The article, link below, describes the very unfortunate incident that flagged the issue about the adequacy of bar examiners in NY State, which I am sure many of you knew about already because it got a lot of press at the time. However, situations do not have to be quite this dramatic for it to be obvious that bar examiners need to up their games.

Here is what happened to one of my kids. In what should be an anticipated situation, the computer software failed in the exam room AND the bar examiners had no idea how to fix the problem or even who to call for help. The Bar Association office was closed for the week (which also was a factor in the situation described in the article), and no one was available to troubleshoot with the technology provider, which happened to be in another part of the country. So, what to do? Call mom and dad, right? My husband and I were on a road trip, but my husband knew a guy (my husband always knows a guy!), and the guy was able to contact another guy who was able to contact the head of the Bar Association office and that guy got permission for our kid to complete the bar exam by writing the answers in blue book pages —— but only on one side of the page and NOT in the margins because the bar examiner was “Johnny on the Spot” to deliver the admonishment that nothing on the back of the page or in the margins would be read or considered. So, afterthoughts in response to a question, as brilliant as those thoughts might be, were worthless.

It is stressful enough to write a bar exam, and there is a reason why none of us ever want to write another one. So, adding additional stress because of ill prepared bar examiners, the inability to call on the Bar Association for assistance, and the utter nonsense of imposing stupid rules on a handwritten exam book rises to the level of cruel and unusual treatment and should be prohibited on constitutional grounds.

I urge you to read the article and then find out if the bar association where you are licensed has similar problems that need to be addressed —- like in the next three weeks before the July bar exams. Other governing bodies should follow the example of the NY State Legislature, and it should not take a near death during the bar exam to initiate such changes. It should not be asking too much for bar examiners to be capable of “human responses” as noted in the article.

Our kid made it through. All ended well. My husband knew a guy who knew a guy, and those guys performed well. But, let’s face it, all test takers do not have dads who know a guy who knows a guy.

It is time to stop throwing up new challenges for a profession that is already too challenging for young lawyers. We can do better. Let’s hope we do.

Here’s the article: https://abovethelaw.com/2026/06/so-maybe-bar-examiners-need-an-actual-plan-for-emergencies