Baretz+Brunelle Acquires LexFusion

Business Wire 25-Feb-2025 6:00 AM

Leading Legal Industry Advisories Unite to Create Unparalleled Growth Firm

Baretz+Brunelle, the growth advisory firm to elite businesses in the legal industry, announced today its acquisition of LexFusion—the accelerator of premier legal tech companies and driver of innovation for the world's largest law departments and law firms in the age of legal transformation and AI.

Together, Baretz+Brunelle and LexFusion create an industry stronghold squarely focused on growth across the diverse legal asset class. As part of the transaction, LexFusion's three founders—Joe Borstein, Casey Flaherty, and Paul Stroka—have joined B+B as partners, and the LexFusion global team will be fully integrated into B+B. The deal represents a significant milestone in B+B's own growth trajectory, marking its first acquisition under B+B CEO Mike McNamara, the former CEO of Dentons US who joined last year, and solidifying B+B's position as the preeminent growth advisory firm to the legal sector.

With LexFusion, B+B increases its ability to deliver the thing that all businesses in the legal industry want—growth. The transaction extends B+B's reach across every segment of the legal market: buyers and sellers of legal services, businesses that support the industry, and capital providers that invest in the legal asset class. The strength of B+B's relationships with the world's leading law firms, combined with LexFusion's unmatched ties to in-house counsel, legal operations professionals, and legal technology companies, offers immediate value to each organization's client base, making B+B the only advisory firm that provides the legal market with multi-dimensional support that organizations need to succeed on the growth side of a balance sheet.

To B+B, the LexFusion team brings:

• An unmatched understanding of the legal innovation landscape, including which legal and AI-enabled tech tools are being deployed by corporate law departments and law firms, and their implications for client dynamics and legal service delivery.
• The ability to help law firms generate revenue, as the only advisory firm in the legal industry offering an outsourced chief revenue officer model.
• Marketplace intelligence everyone in the legal industry wants and needs, gathered through daily interaction with in-house counsel, law firm leadership, tech innovators, and investors.

"In countless ways, B+B and LexFusion are a perfect match," said McNamara. "Joe, Casey, and Paul are three of the top advisors in the legal industry, with stellar reputations, unrivaled connections, and near prescient insights. And what they have built into the industry's top technology accelerator is a wonderful complement to what Spencer Baretz and Cari Brunelle created at B+B. Now together, we will be even more powerful agents of growth for our clients."

Acting as outsourced chief revenue officers and industry advisors to leading legal tech companies, LexFusion maintains thousands of relationships with lawyers—both in-house counsel and at law firms—and professionals in corporate legal operations and law firm leadership. Companies that currently benefit from LexFusion's innovative approach include:

• Agiloft, the leading contract lifecycle management company recently acquired by KKR;
• DISCO (NYSE:LAW), the AI-powered e-discovery, case management, and legal document review company for enterprises, law firms, legal service providers, and governments;
• Factor, an AI-focused legal service provider for contracting and other complex legal work, backed by Carrick Capital Partners;
• Fides, the corporate governance/entity management platform backed by Sequoia, La Famiglia, Auxxo, and Angel Invest;
• Hotshot, the digital learning platform for law firms and law departments;
• LegalBillReview.com, the tech-enabled managed invoice review and legal spend management partner for mid-market and Fortune 100 law departments;
• LegalMation, the generative AI company for high-volume responsive pleadings, discovery requests, and other litigation workflows, recently backed by Aquiline Capital Partners LP;
• Litera, the global provider of market-leading legal workflow software for law firms, acquired by Hg Capital in 2019; and
• Macro, the AI productivity suite and workspace for law firms, banks, and anyone who works in the world of documents, backed by Andreessen Horowitz.

"Casey, Paul, and I could not be more excited about our union with Baretz+Brunelle. Our vision of what could be possible for LexFusion has taken on a whole new dimension," said Borstein, CEO of LexFusion. "Our daily interactions with top leaders in law reinforce how rapidly and dramatically the legal industry is changing. It's so exciting to think about the strength of B+B and LexFusion together at this pivotal moment for legal businesses."

On this transaction, JEGI Clarity (Scott Mozarsky, Jonathan Thackeray, and Eli Cooperman) served as financial advisor and Davis+Gilbert LLP (Brad Schwartzberg, Lindsay Waiser, and Gregg Brochin) served as legal counsel to Baretz+Brunelle. TD Securities (Andrew Forman) served as financial advisor and Polsinelli LLP (Paul Jaskot and Matt Rubino) served as legal counsel to LexFusion.

About Baretz+Brunelle

B+B is a growth advisory firm to elite businesses in the new legal economy. We focus on the things that drive growth in the legal industry—reputation, talent, revenue, leadership, capital, and innovation. For over 20 years, we have helped our clients build market-leading reputations, merge and acquire, manage crises, hire and accelerate top talent, make transformational business decisions, improve financials and operations, raise capital, deploy technology, launch new services, secure new clients, and dominate geographies and industry niches.

Our global clients are Am Law 100 and 200 law firms, elite boutiques, alternative legal services providers, legal technology companies, private equity firms and litigation funders, legal information and analytics companies, and other leading service providers and counterparties to the legal industry.

Founded in New York, our team includes former Am Law 100 C-suite executives and lawyers, marketing and communications mavens, award-winning journalists, corporate finance experts, digital marketing visionaries, legal technology gurus, management consultants, intelligence professionals, and legal talent advisors. For more information, visit www.baretzbrunelle.com.

About LexFusion

LexFusion is an accelerator of legal innovation—we serve as the nexus point between groundbreaking legal technology, in-house law departments, and law firms. Our value proposition is forming, and sharing, unparalleled market insights across the entire legal ecosystem as we foster a community of fellow travelers and along the way, helping forge business relationships that affect real change.

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McKenna Hixon mhixon@baretzbrunelle.com +1 847.946.9403 LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/baretz-brunelle