Prime Highlights
- Uplift Investors’ Orion Legal MSO will support Bottaro Injury Lawyers’ back-office operations in Rhode Island.
- The deal follows Uplift’s recent $670 million financing round.
Key Facts
- Orion Legal already supports personal injury law firms in Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana and Tennessee.
- The MSO model lets law firms receive outside investment without breaching rules against non-lawyer ownership.
Background
Private equity firm Uplift Investors said this week that it is investing in the back-office operations of a Rhode Island-based personal injury law firm, marking its fourth such deal since launching a management services organisation earlier this year.
Under the arrangement, Uplift’s Orion Legal MSO will provide back-office support, including marketing, finance, technology and administrative services, to Bottaro Injury Lawyers. The law firm will continue to be owned by its attorneys.
Uplift managing partner Doug Rosenstein said such partnerships reflected Orion’s commitment to helping firms grow through shared operational support, while preserving their independence, culture and client-first approach.
The deal comes about a week after the Darien, Connecticut-based private equity firm announced it had raised $670 million in financing. Orion Legal, a portfolio company launched by Uplift earlier this year, already provides back-office services to personal injury law firms operating in Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana and Tennessee.
In the United States, investors and other non-lawyers are generally barred from owning direct stakes in law firms or sharing in attorney fees. To work around these restrictions, the management services organisation, or MSO, model allows a law firm to spin off its non-legal operations into a separate entity that outside investors can own or partly own. The law firm pays the MSO from its revenue but does not share legal fees.
Separately, Opensity Solutions, which offers operational and technical support to law firms and professional services companies, said this week that it is launching its own law firm MSO practice, reflecting growing interest in the model across the legal industry.
