Holland & Knight LLP has closed more than two billion dollars of law firm MSO transactions this year.

Holland & Knight LLP has closed more than two billion dollars of law firm MSO transactions this year.

I spent an hour with Josh Porte and Trisha Rich, the two partners who lead that practice on this week's Legal Innovation Spotlight.

They are THE leading experts on the topic of law firm MSOs.

Every partner knows Rule 5.6. You can pick up your book and walk across the street whenever you want. Non competes are off the table.

Trish pointed out that the rule protects a partner's equity in the law firm. It says nothing about equity in a management company.

Give partners equity in the MSO instead and, in her words, the MSO has more latitude around non competes.

Now add what firms are spending on AI.

Firms are putting real money into codifying partner knowledge and judgment.

Redlines, matter data, learning loops, avatars of the rainmakers.

Capture it once, reuse it forever.

In an MSO structure that digital asset belongs to the MSO, not the lawyer.

So the structure that brings outside capital into a law firm is also the structure that makes partners harder to lose AND their know-how easier to keep.

I asked Josh whether the MSO becomes the hive and the lawyers become the worker bees.

His answer was more careful than my question. For personal injury firms, yes.

The MSO owns the marketing funnel and the funnel IS the business...but that was true before the MSO.

For a corporate firm, a top M&A partner's clients still follow them out the door, and no MSO can stop that.

I think he is right today. However, I am not sure in five years once the firm's AI knows what that partner knows.