Why this work suits us
A good professional practice does not sell projects. It sells a relationship. The client comes back because the firm knows their portfolio, their history and their appetite for risk, and because the work has to be done whether or not anyone feels like commissioning it. Annual reviews, cyclical inspections, statutory reporting, dates set by a contract or a regulator rather than by anyone's mood. Clients rarely move, because moving means teaching somebody new everything the incumbent already knows.
That is recurring revenue in the truest sense, even if it has never been called that. It does not look like a subscription on the invoice. It looks like the same clients, the same instructions, and the same fee earners, year after year.
The problem these firms face is not the work. It is the ownership. The founding partners are in their late fifties or sixties. The people who could take over are excellent at the work and have no realistic way to fund a buy in at what the practice is worth. A larger firm would value the client list more than the team that looks after it. So the partners carry on, the next generation drifts, and the practice becomes harder to hand on every year it waits.
A practice with retained clients, qualified people who stay, and administration that has never had serious investment is the clearest version of what we look for.
What we look for
01
Fees that recur
Retainers, annual instructions, work driven by a calendar, a contract or a statutory requirement. Project and one off work on top is welcome, but there should be a base underneath it that renews without being sold again each year.
02
Clients who have been there for years
Relationships measured in years, with the instruction coming back by default rather than going out to tender each time. Low client turnover tells us more than any fee table.
03
Qualified people who can run the work
Fee earners and managers who hold the client relationships and the professional judgement, not only the founders. If every instruction still passes across one partner's desk, we should talk about what that means before anything else.
04
Standards set by a professional body
Regulated work, professional indemnity, continuing qualification. These are not obstacles to us. They are what makes the work hard to replace and the clients slow to move.
05
Administration that has never been modernised
Reports assembled by hand every cycle. Time and fees recorded in one system and billed from another. Compliance evidence gathered on request. This is not a criticism. It is where the most obvious gains are, and it is where the next generation's time goes today.
06
Partners planning to step back
Retiring within a few years, or already reducing their days, with a team that can carry the work and no clear answer yet on who owns the practice next.
What changes and what does not
The qualified people are the practice. Nothing about our plan works without them, and the rules do not allow it anyway.
What we invest in
- Getting work recorded once, at the point it happens, rather than typed up later for billing
- Reports and client deliverables built from the data already held, rather than rebuilt each cycle
- Compliance evidence assembled continuously instead of reconstructed when the regulator or insurer asks
- Knowing which clients and which lines of work are profitable, and which are quietly not
- Diarising the renewals, review dates and statutory deadlines that currently live in people's heads
What stays as it is
- Qualified professionals in charge of professional work, as the rules require and as the clients expect
- The client relationships and the fee earners who hold them
- The standards and the professional body membership the practice has built its reputation on
- The name, unless there is a good reason to change it and you agree with it
The firm that buys your fee income and loses your people has bought one year of it. We are not interested in one year of anything.
Common questions
Our work is regulated. Can a non practitioner own the firm?
In most professions, yes, provided the structure meets the rules. Ownership and leadership are set up to satisfy the regulator and the professional body, and qualified professionals stay in charge of professional work. We work that through with you and with your regulator early, rather than discovering a problem at the end.
We are a partnership. Does that complicate things?
It changes the structure rather than the answer. A partnership or an LLP can be bought in a number of ways, and the right one depends on who is retiring, who is staying, and what each partner wants from the sale. That conversation is usually the first one worth having, before anyone talks about a number.
What happens to the partners who are staying?
They stay, with a role agreed up front and, where it fits, a stake in the business going forward. The people who hold the client relationships and the professional judgement are most of what we would be buying. A deal that did not work for them would not work for us.
Most of our fees are instructions rather than retainers. Is that recurring enough?
Usually. What matters is whether the instruction comes back. If the same clients instruct the same firm every year for work driven by a calendar, a contract or a statutory requirement, that behaves like recurring income even if nobody has ever called it that. Purely project based practices with no base underneath are a harder fit.
Would you merge us into a larger practice?
We build groups of similar firms that are stronger together, and shared systems and back office are part of how that works. The clients, the fee earners and the standards of the practice do not get folded into somebody else's. If a group makes sense for you, it is something we would discuss openly rather than present after completion.
What size of practice do you look at?
Profitable and stable, with enough fee earners and managers to run the day to day without the founders in every decision. Smaller practices are considered as additions to a group we already own.
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If any of this sounds like your situation, let us buy you a coffee. We would like to hear where you are, what you are thinking, and work out together whether we are any use to you.
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