How Top Firms Are Getting 6x In MSO Law Firm Deals - #242

MSO law firm deals are reshaping family law in the US, and most owners still can't define one before the offer hits. 

James Peters of Law Hive breaks down MSO structures, law firm valuation, and rollover equity. We cover why family law fits this model and how AI-native firms scale. 

You’ll learn how these deals work, what pushes firms toward higher multiples, and whether selling your non-legal assets fits your growth plan in this episode.

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📄 CHAPTERS

0:00 - MSO Law Firm Deals And Today's Legal Market
7:16 - What "AI-Native Law Firm" Actually Means
13:04 - MSO Explained: Buying A Firm's Non-Legal Assets
15:33 - Deal Structure: Upfront Cash And Rollover Equity
26:00 - What Makes A Firm An Ideal MSO Partner
29:19 - Law Firm Valuation: From 3-5x To 4-6x Multiples
38:00 - Why Family Law Fits The MSO Model

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Transcript

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do you have to start with AI before you even have a firm to be AI I would say sort of philosophically, no. Right. If you take a firm and you say we're successful we want to do a little bit of a reinvention of ourselves and build ourselves a operating system from the core that is AI based, So I think of it as a firm that's got the whole workflow and the foundation all done around AI with a human layer on top of because we feel like there's a lot of efficiency and value we can bring to our clients and to our own practice if we convert to that. But it's really hard because we got to go build a layer underneath our, our team, right? Hello and welcome to the Sterling family law show. I'm Jeff Hughes. I'm your co-host, along with Tyler. Dolph is here as well. And we have a guest, James Peters. So James and I met a few. We're LinkedIn friends, I think. James. And then we met in person at a conference in New York City. Had a really good time just talking business and what we're seeing in law. And he has a very unique business that he leads, Law Hive. And so, James, I asked you to come on a day and just talk about what you're seeing in the marketplace. And so why don't we start with introducing yourself and telling us about Lawhive. Yeah. Great. We'll do. Yeah. I think we met on LinkedIn following our posts about moving into acquisition in the US as an initial driver. And then a Wisconsin roots got us connected early on. But as as all things in law do these days, they, you know, convened in New York with conversations. And that summit, I think, was really a statement on where we're at in this exact moment in time, where we're at a really unique place in the legal market. You and I talked about this a bit there, but this this confluence of AI as a really meaningful tool and outside investment via MSO models coming into law sort of together really at the same time and, and maybe almost like Apex Scene together right now, has created a really interesting space for us at Law Hive. We've been in AI Native firm since before that was a phrase, I guess Law Hive actually started back in 2020 and initially, you know, was was essentially a marketplace firm working with a variety of consultant solicitors over on the UK side of things. And. have started in the UK in 20. Started in the UK in 20. Yes. So. Found a lot of growth very quickly there. So law was, you know, just doing the AI thing before a lot of people were talking about AI in law. This all happened very quickly, obviously. I mean, we're only really talking five years of time here. And the entire market has shifted quite critically, really. But Law Hive had good early success over there. And, you know, that was a big driver to saying, hey, we could do this other places as well because AI is a technology is it's not. The law obviously is regional and specific to where you practice and what you practice. But the fundamentals behind AI are pretty fungible in certain ways. So if you're building an operating system, if you will, for a firm, the concept is you should be able to port that over to to other places and do equally impactful things there. So that that really drove Law Hive to moving into the US market. We've only been in the US for about a year now. overseas? Just to give our listeners some context. So law overseas we are about 150 to 200 employees. A lot of those are in product and technology, which is, I guess, sort of one of the reasons that it can make a lot of sense to have conversation with firms about partnering with us, because that's that's not the kind of product and technology staffing that most folks are looking at in a law firm context. So good, meaningful business on that side of the pond. And our core, our core tech team is still over there. So we've got some US presence, but really developing out of London for the most part on that piece of things. So when did you incorporate here in the US? We incorporated in December of 2024 in the US. I joined then and we essentially went through an acquisition right away in the US. So we we hopped into the market by doing an acquisition of a small law firm in Arizona under the ABS structure, and that was completed in late spring, early summer of last year. And we sort of soft launched in the US in the early summer of last year. And then what's your vision for Law Hive going forward? Vision for life going forward is it's really a story of basically two, two pillars, I suppose. Supposed to have three here, always three, but the two founding ones are really running a an AI native law firm that's based in Arizona. We're looking into essentially growing that firm and, you know, using it as our sort of proving ground for what we can do here in the US, but then also looking to expand our reach. And that's with the ownership restrictions in the US. That is an MSO story for us, really. So when we look at how to move into areas that are from our assessment, I guess ripe for improvement with technology, family law as we've discussed, is one of those that's a real opportunity area. You know, tend to be state specific and require a local presence. And with that, from a US growth perspective, we've really got to look into the MSO structure as a way of kind of increasing our reach, you know, powering more firms to be, let's say, more efficient, able to grow in a way that we think we can, we can really help with. So the firm that you acquired in Arizona, what type of practice firm is That is a general practice firm, really was doing mostly family law and sort of small business litigation type matters. So that was that was an acquisition that was really more centered around ability to get a starting point in the US and ability to get launched. Yeah. So we're only now really looking at this sort of ability to say, now let's sink in a little bit deeper in Arizona itself and really see what we can deliver for folks in that state, as well as some potentially federal type matters. No we are one acquire firms outside of Arizona. Expanding your reach. I want to get to that because I think that's the bulk of the conversation here. But I wanted to touch base back up a little bit on the term AI native. Now, you and I have talked a lot about this for our firms, but describe what that is. It's this is a good question because it's getting thrown around a lot right now. So what does it mean to be a native? I think there's different interpretations of that. From my point of view, to be a native means that, you know, core to your law firm operating system is an AI functionality. So it's not kind of building one tool at a time that happened to utilize AI to deliver things a bit better, which does have great opportunity for some firms to increase efficiencies by using tools here and there. I think from our point of view, when we talk AI native, it is built around AI as a functional core to the business and it has to be really start to finish. So from intake to uploading of customer data from forms that they give you, inputs that they give you to managing a case, to closing out a case. From our perspective, if if you're kind of AI infrastructure doesn't hold that context start to finish, it's not likely doing the the full extent of what it could do. So from an AI native point of view, for us, really, I mean, it happens to be that we we started with AI as we built a firm. And when you think AI native, you could think like, do you have to start with AI before you even have a firm to be AI native? I would say sort of philosophically, no. Right. If you take a firm and you say we're successful and we want to do a little bit of a reinvention of ourselves and build ourselves a operating system from the core that is AI based, that you can sort of work your way back into being AI native, if that makes sense. So I think of it as a firm that's got the whole workflow and the foundation all done around AI with a human layer on top of it is basically how I think of it. So like our firms what, 12 years old. So obviously we didn't start with AI native, but we want to become that because we feel like there's a lot of efficiency and value we can bring to our clients and to our own practice if we convert to that. But it's really hard because we got to go build a layer underneath our, our team, right? So we got to build a brand new foundation of the firm. So but it certainly can be done. But you're coming in from the standpoint you started there. In a lot of respects, it's easier if you start with a certain technology than having to go back. And like you said, build another layer underneath an existing firm and then sort of talk everybody into getting on board with the technology and all of that. But I'd agree with your your stance or your definition if you have that end and capability built in and were the exact same as you all in terms of with a human layer on top of it, where our point of view is, lawyers are critical to delivery of legal services. We're not trying to build anything that takes that out of the out of the system on our end, because we don't believe it's a value move from our point of view. So totally agree. Definition. We're really talking about end to end, context inclusive AI that helps you with the entirety of the workflow of your legal matters. With the right sort of touch points built in for lawyers to interact with that operating system. James, is your selling point to your legal team? Just go be. You get to go be an attorney. We'll handle all of the rest. It really is. I mean, this is the kind of concept that we've heard for a few years now with legal and tech of like practice at the top of your license sort of stuff, where you say we get some interesting conversations. And Jeff and I talked about this a little bit, like when you're looking at a successful firm and what their next stage of life looks like, you know, and you talk about growth paths for people. You get some firms that say, we're doing great. We're just sort of at capacity. And expanding the team linearly, like in perpetuity, doesn't make a lot of sense to us. Or are there ways around that? You know, AI tools are a good way to to get some advantage there. And similarly with folks who say we've kind of saturated our market or we're performing about as well as we think you can or a current market, and we want to expand into other markets and kind of a similar function there. Right. Your your AI operating system makes it easier for you to expand into your next market or your next practice area, things of that, of that nature. But in all of those cases, if you're talking to a lawyer about what does work look like, once you're using this, you really want the lawyers to be focused on judgment and strategy, not how do I get all the info from that client call into, you know, my system, things like that. Well, in our course of our conversation, I'm pretty excited with what you have to offer and what I think you're going to be able to bring to your first couple partners that you work with. And you mentioned an MSO. I know, like a lot of our listeners, the majority of them, our other law firm owners, family law in particular. Can you walk through, just give us a mental image or a vision of what it would look like for your first family law focused, larger firm that you would work with? What's an MSO? How could a firm from the UK have an ownership stake in a firm here in the US? All those questions are kind of swirling around my mind and everyone else is mine. So. Yeah, well, let's walk through this. I have a feeling that you've got a lot of pretty successful law firm operators who listen to you or a podcast, so they've probably been approached by people about this. I know that there's a lot of movement in the space right now, and there's a lot of interest in family law, but I'll go with the basics if that's okay to start. And really, I mean, MSO managed services organization. So when we talk about acquiring law firms, this actually came up at the the Holland and Knight summit. Right. We're not actually talking about acquiring law firms. We're we're talking about acquiring the non-legal assets of law firms. So that's what often gets talked about in terms of like the admin, the back office, the technology, things of that nature. So the legal practice stays with the lawyers who are, you know, successfully managing this firm. So in terms of the actual the lawyers who are providing legal advice, they they stay separate on their own, the a company like ours or we happen to be a law firm, which I think puts us in a little bit of a unique position here. But there's also just private equity in this space. Right. So how does somebody who is P or anyone else come in and buy a part of a law firm? It's really all about the structural details in terms of saying, I'm going to take on these non-legal assets from you, and then I'm going to provide services back to you. For some, for some investors, that looks a lot like sort of capital injections. For others, it looks more like a technology play. For some of them, there's all sorts of different ways that you can structure the details on this, but ultimately it's around picking somebody. If you're if you're a law firm who's looking to engage in this sort of a structure, looking for someone who provides the answer to your questions about where you want to go in the next few years. So if you're if you're looking at a growth story, what's important in a partner for you? Is it technology? Is it capital? Is it really, truly just taking the admin stuff off my plate? Because that'll give me more time to do strategic stuff. There's all sorts of different answers there. I think probably to get into a little bit of granular details on it. The way that these deals tend to be structured is there is an upfront payment for some sort of cash value of those non-legal assets, and then what they call something like rollover equity in the actual service Co itself, so that you've got an ongoing revenue stream from the the growth and efficiency gains of that firm experiences. So the. Yeah. talking about essentially every asset within the firm, with the exception of the lawyers and the client contracts. So everything pretty much outside of those two would be a non-legal assets. That'd be the least, you know, all of the computers, the goodwill, the marketing contracts, all that sort of stuff would, would, would be essentially be purchased from the lawyer. Yeah yeah. In some cases, if you're a law firm that owns your own real estate, some of these deals will even include purchase of the real estate. That's not something that's particularly a drive for us. But there are some some entities that look for that sort of thing when they make these moves. Yeah. Okay. And so the benefit to the lawyer is they, they get some cash upfront to sell their assets. Then they enter into an agreement with the managed service organization to basically lease out those services going forward on a continuous continuity basis. And you also mentioned roll some of the equity so they wouldn't get 100% of the purchase price. Let's say hypothetically, they would get 60 or 70, and the other portion would be converted to equity in the managed service or the MSO. And so as the MSO grew, they would benefit obviously, from their ownership stake in that particular business as well, Yeah. Yeah, exactly. 100% control over all of the legal decisions, with no direction at all from the MSO. Yeah. That's that's right, the MSO. So some MSOs, I think we are one of the, one of the partners who looks to do this. Would you know, part of the benefit would be to get like strategic growth advising from the MSO. So it is something that the MSO should be able to provide. But ultimately you're exactly right. In terms of that actual legal practice. It's completely the say of the individuals who run the law firm in that in that realm. So you hope to get a partner who can give you some good info to work with, but that understands that this is your game, right? The legal practice itself remains with the law firm, and there will be some advantages to working with an MSO that you might not have otherwise, but ultimately it's it's yours still, and you're right on that. The equity piece continues really in perpetuity. So as long as this this deal remains in place, you've still got that rollover equity. And if you're growing and operating at some decent level of efficiency, that means you've got a nice steady stream of income, regardless of what your path is with the firm from that point. So, James, you've been talking about looking to continue to expand and create partners here in the US. Tell us a little bit about the sales pitch of La Hive. Like why why would a firm want to partner with your company? And what's the benefit of doing that? So we're a little bit of a unique player in this space. I wouldn't say we're the only one operating this way, but we're not private equity. So we're not looking to basically, you know, inject some capital and make some changes and then move this thing to someone else in five years to make a profit. We're looking to partner with firms really are exploring growth. So that's one of the fundamental differences. We're we're not looking for a flip on these. We're looking to work with firms to get a growth strategy in place because it benefits us and it benefits the firm in the in the short and long run. Really, I think some of the other benefits that I talk about that seem to resonate with people. One is actually the AI native law firm aspect of it, and we get a lot of interest from firms basis, basically based on our tech capabilities. Not a lot of investors in the space have the team and capabilities that we have from a technology point of view, and that is meaningful. I think we're ultimately we're not, you know, in the business of selling software to these firms. But the software that we provide is is a meaningful impact for folks. So those components are a big piece of it. I think the other part of it really is related to the first piece, like AI native firm, but also we happen to be a law firm in both the UK and US, so we understand the importance of some of the distinctions we were just talking about a moment ago. You know, one of the things I would say to anybody who's looking at this from a law firm point of view is these structures are relatively new. They provide a really nice ability to access capital to get some sort of an exit for firm partners, etc., but they do have to follow, you know, a pretty like, rigid structure in certain ways. So making sure that you're partnering with someone who actually understands the space is important. I feel like we understand the space quite well, being that we operate a couple of firms ourselves and have, you know, at least I've got a reasonable amount of experience in this space. And we work with some outside partners from an ethics point of view, to make sure that everything is squared away. That that sounds pretty threshold level, but I do think it's important. So when you talk about like the the benefit of working with a law hive, I think we've established that we can grow a legal practice quite effectively. We've got the technology that many folks are looking for right now, and we've got the law firm operating experience. It's a little bit unique in this space. So hopefully those are sort of, you know, compelling pieces to get the conversation started. This is sort of thing is a big decision for anybody who has done this path. So there's a lot of relationship to be built in these, you know, purchases because it's just not the kind of thing that you want to do with someone who's not a partner you want to work with for the long run. So those those elements, though, get us started, I think. And then there's more conversation, obviously, to be had on that front. Let me let me back up on the MSOs, because I talked to a lot of family lawyers, and there's a lot of them who just are not familiar with that term. So you said it's a it's a newer. And I think what you're saying is newer in law, which is newer, newer in law. But it's been around for 30 plus years in dental, medical, chiropractic, vet engineering, accounting. And really, law is one of the last professions to see the rise of the MSO structure in law. But even here, the first one was that we know of, that I'm aware of was one that happened back in 2006, and it's happening almost on a daily basis right now throughout the US. In fact, there was a huge transaction that just announced a few months ago with Dudley Bowser down in Illinois. Excuse me, down in Louisiana. So there's there's a lot of historical precedent for this particular structure, and it works really well. That's a good point. This as a structural mechanism is not new, newer to law. I think the deal cadence for the last couple of years, or maybe not last year, but the couple of years before last year was a handful of these every now and then, essentially when when we were at that summit in New York, I believe they said they were actively working on 100 matters right now, which is I don't know what type exactly those all looked like. Right. But that's a pretty remarkable shift from something that was happening every now and then to something that is just full clip right now. And it is it's a it's done properly. It's a phenomenal structure to get some equity out of your firm and enable growth and enable downstream profits to continue to roll to you. It is great from that point of view. It's also great from a standpoint of just state planning. Yeah, yeah. great use of it. And that's not that's probably the dominant use of it. I talked to 2 or 3 attorneys just last week who are not using holiday night to do their MSO, who have created one on their own. So I'm meeting people on a weekly basis that are setting up an MSO or have set one up right now to to for state playing purposes is the main reason they give me okay. They, they, they died for some reason. They've got something that their family could extract some value out of that. And it's still the firm can still live on and serve clients. Yeah, that makes complete sense. You do hear a bit about that too, in terms of, you know, sort of any sort of planning for the future for a firm is traditionally quite difficult. So having a vehicle where you can actually have it set aside as a, as a business entity that folks can, you know, get the advantage of down the road is pretty fantastic. I know some firms that are great firms, but up until this it was virtually unsellable. You basically died in pain, and whoever was still at the firm took it over. It was basically how that worked. Now we're seeing those options start to spring up. So let's go back to law. I'm curious your tell us what you're looking for. What type of firm would be like an ideal partner for you? Walk us through that. When we look for firms, there's a there's a few things we look at. One is an area of law that we've identified as ripe for improvement from technology. Basically, you and I have talked about this before as well. Family law is one area where there's definitely room for improvement, even even with firms who have gone a pretty good distance today. With the pace at which technology is changing, family law has got a lot of runway for improvement there. There are some other areas as well, but that's that's an initial sort of gating item for us. We also, you know, we look for successful firms. So we're yeah, we're not trying to turn around firms where we say, oh, it's not working right now. But if we pull a few levers, we can make it work. That's not really our thing. We're looking for successful firms who are looking to accelerate growth. Really. And then we are looking for reasonable, healthy margins for a firm as well. So it's not just topline revenue. We tend to focus on firms that are 10 to 30 million in top line revenue. And then we. Healthy bottom line because a lot of these firms are in growth stages. We've got just a minimum threshold of a million from an EBITDA perspective. But I think it depends a little bit on how the firm is operating. Right. If a firm has sunk a lot of money into growth in the last year, it might not look quite as good on paper as another firm that's been sort of just cruising. So there's some conversation to be had on those points. But ultimately a firm that's operating profitable is is definitely a requirement. And then we actually look for a little bit of a mix of acquisition channels. So we're sort of intentionally avoiding this doesn't happen a lot in family law. But firms that are like all PPC based. Right. Because that's a tough model to to scale really. So firms that have a nice like set of distribution channels are good. Also not a big deal in family law. But we look at some other areas to and we try to not get super heavy concentration risk on like small number of clients. So relatively traditional probably in most respects. But maybe, maybe with the exception of the fact that we have this element in where we say we've got our own internal ranking of like runway for tech improvements for areas of law, and that's one that we take a hard look at as well. So from a valuation standpoint, I mean, historically firms that traded for one times profit or two times profit was the norm if they're lucky, if they even got a sale. So that's been the history. What are you seeing from a valuation standpoint? I know it's going to be depends. Right. But just let's just talk in ranges here. What are we looking at from a standpoint of value. So I will I will throw you know the big it depends caveat on it. And it depends on a lot of things. It's practice area its size and scale. It's, you know, sort of intent of the acquisition. So you'll you'll hear some people talk very, very, very big multiples that tend to only be associated with what they call platform acquisition. So that's, you know, I'm going to pick up a firm that I can use to sort of launch everywhere else, more or less in the realm of kind of like regional successful firms. I think last year was a realm where 3 to 5 was like relatively normal. That has become more difficult in this past year with the amount of interest in these sorts of acquisitions. So that's crept up a bit, you know, call it 4 to 6 these days in these sorts of realms. But this is a you'll you'll hear like numbers all over the place from folks on this. And ultimately it has to be something that makes sense for both sides of the equation on this. I think one of the things that's an interesting challenge that you run into from a buyer side is you have a successful firm that's growing, right? Like they want to just see what they can do to continue to grow for a while, and they're interested. But then you get this conversation where it's a totally understandable one where you say, well, you know, my dad this year is like 1.2, but I'm sure next year it's going to be three. So like, how do we work with that? And so yeah, yeah, it's hard to it's hard to pay out today on future success. Right. Like that's part of the gamble that we're taking with you when we join up with you is that that will continue. And and the structure, you know, you want it to make sense where that rollover equity, etc. makes the case like more compelling for somebody to to participate this sort of a sale and. just to be clear we're talking about firms that are in that 10 million top line plus minimally before Yes. multiples on their profit. So a firm that's doing 2 million I mean realistically the expectation should should be around that three 3 to 4 For would be aggressive for somebody who's at the 2 million I think. But if you've got something like really special set up and you just happen to be small still, it could it could be feasible. you anticipate, given what you saw last year and the fact that there's so much more interest this year. It feels like we're on the cusp of a kind of a a wave that's coming. Do you like if you could put your tinfoil hat on and and look at the future. Do you anticipate those continuing to creep up over the next 18 to 24 months? I suspect that they don't. But I want to I want to get Jeff's take on this from the folks that you've spoken to first, and then I'll give you my reason why I don't think. I don't think in 18 months they continue to go up. I think they continue to go up. So I'm going to take the opposite perspective. And my thinking is along these lines. One is that there's a lot of activity relatively speaking in the personal injury space. I was at a conference last week in Baltimore, that Vista conference that you may know about. So I was at that. So it was all pie related. There are there's a lot of there's a lot of discussion right now, not a lot across the finish lines other than that Dudley deal that I, that I mentioned, from what I can ascertain. And I'm triangulating a lot of conversations here. Okay. The the multiples are pushing that seven and a half to eight right now in that particular space, which is obviously different than family law. At the same time, the reason why I think they're going to go up is simply supply and demand. I don't think there's a lot of family law firms that are that are going to want to transact. There's hardly any transacting right now. So I think there's going to be a lot of buyers and not a lot of sellers, which are going to drive pricing up. That's my my humble opinion. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think in my in my assessment, I tend to take pie out of the equation when I think about this because it's a wild space like just absolutely wild. And it, it just warps all the numbers in all sorts of ways. It's also causing some regulatory backlash. Right? In terms of like MSO treatment from a legislation point of view. So it'll be interesting to see, you know, if there's really any impact of that, if that fall out of that fallout from the from the pie space in particular. And so if we go if we go just to family law, I wouldn't be surprised if it does continue to creep up a bit. I think where this will get really, really interesting. So if you say, you know, last year was really the sort of the the coming out year for MSOs and legal. So that gives us another 3 or 4 years before people start contemplating, you know, from the PE style investments, like what's the next move here? And can we now sell this to someone else for a profit or not? And I think that's where things will get really interesting in the legal space. So that won't change the sort of value proposition for somebody like a hive who wants to partner with firms for growth and see what they can pull off. But it might rattle the market a bit, but it's not. I guess as we talk about this, that's not going to hit in 18 months. That's more of a 3 or 4 years when that will hit point of view. And I do think it'll be really interesting to see if if the investors who have gotten in for a, you know, turnaround or able to get what they expect out of this or not. Yeah, that's true. That's a good point. So you're saying that the PE or the investors, they get in expecting A3X return end up with a one and a half x. Say they could That that dampens everything real quick. If that, if that's the case. Yeah. so just for the for the Tylers out there that are listening to this. What you're what I hear you saying is P comes in, buys a family firm for 4 or 5 x multiple in 3 to 5 years per their model. They want to then turn that firm and make a profit. And they don't. And they only turn it for a two. Then that's going to spread across the industry that maybe this didn't work That that will have ripple effects in the industry for sure. If that happens I think. more of a two of their of their actual investment. Not than multiple multiples. Not as important as how much Yeah yeah yeah. No it's strictly it's strictly return on investment. doubled, it's only A2X multiple jump, then, you know I think it's worth it to them. Yeah. For for those firms it's really just a matter of whether their exit matches their expectations or not. Right. Like what what that number is, is their own internal metric for success on those things. So it's a matter of whether they hit that or not I do I do think that that is mostly pie at this stage, because that's where most of the early plays of that sort landed. And we'll see, you know, sort of the exact counter to what I was saying earlier, where pie might be a little bit hard to work with because it's inflating the market. If they have some struggles in a few years, it might not negatively impact, you know, segments of the market that are performing well. So if if you get a little bit of an established set of, let's just say family law firms that have done this and are performing like, like we expect they would perform if they if they worked with us, then that might keep that market strong despite it just won't be over inflated by personal injury. It'll come down to what it should be for the other areas of law. I would argue, James, that family law is better situated for MSOs because of our consistent demand and not a whole lot of volatility in terms of like we don't have like a big settlement that all of a sudden we get $5 million infused into the firm. It's very consistent fee structure. Yeah, there's a reason that it's one of our primary leading areas that we want to explore. I'm aligned with you on that. There's there's really nice consistency. There's tends to be really good leadership at successful family law firms like their business minded enough that they've grown this thing to a certain size. And it's just it it's often an interesting combo of features for family law that make the conversations worth having. I think you're right on with that. The business interest that you're seeing a lot of family lawyers start to acquire and pick that ability up. When we first started 12 years ago, there were vanishingly few firms above $20 million in revenue, even above five. Now, there's, you know, there's hundreds now above that, because I just think it's become more of a more of a thing and family law to go get the education that you need to grow your firm and scale it a little bit. So it's been fun to watch that. Yeah, yeah, most definitely. And I think the I've seen a good number of models in family law already. It just seems like there's more creative thinking happening there than some other areas of a more traditional nature. So it's something's happening in the space that's so positive for sure. Maybe it's, you know, it's folks like you and some others who I know who are like out there and somewhat vocal about what they're doing and sharing with people. That probably helps quite a bit for, you know, an industry subset as well, I would think. Hope so. Well, cool. Thank you. It's been it's been a lightning conversation. I've really enjoyed our talk today. James, thanks for coming on and talking about what you're seeing. And to get Ahold of you if they're interested and maybe partner with Law Hive, how do they find you? And. Yeah. Well, okay. So you can find me for sure on LinkedIn as we connected. So James Peters and, you know, look me up with law if you'll find me pretty easily. But if you want to try to catch me directly you can email me to it's James at. And anybody who is in this space who's just interested in having a conversation about what this looks like, I always welcome the conversation 100%.