What a buyer reads first in a law firm's numbers.
I've been on the inside of a business that sold to private equity. Buyers skip the revenue slide and go looking for four things, and most firms have never measured any of them.
I was a senior operations leader at a $100M business that exited to private equity for over $300M. I remember what the buyers asked for, and I remember what we couldn't produce on the first request. Now that private equity is looking hard at law firms, the same four questions are about to land on managing partners who have never been asked them.
Bob has written about the deals themselves. This is about what happens when the data room opens.
Buyers skip the revenue slide
Every pitch leads with revenue growth. Every buyer nods and turns the page, because top-line growth tells them nothing about whether the firm works without the people selling it. What they want to know is whether the revenue is repeatable, whether it's traceable, and whether it survives the founder going on vacation. Four things, in the order they usually come up.
1. Intake conversion, by channel, by month
Inquiries in, consultations held, retainers signed. For each marketing channel. For each month of the last two years. If the firm can produce it, the buyer can model what another dollar of marketing buys. If it can't, the buyer assumes the worst and prices accordingly.
Most firms have the signed cases and the spend. Almost none have the middle, because intake lives in a receptionist's notebook and the CRM, if there is one, was set up by a vendor who left. This is the single most common gap, and it's the one that's cheapest to close if you start now.
2. Attribution that reconciles
The marketing agency's report says 400 leads. The intake log says 220 inquiries. The billing system says 60 new matters. A buyer will ask which number is real, and "all three, from different systems" is not an answer that survives diligence. Bob covers the mechanics in attribution that survives an investor audit. The short version: one pipeline, one source of truth, and a signed case that traces back to the inquiry that produced it.
3. Partner dependency
Buyers measure this bluntly. What percentage of revenue originates with the named partners? How many decisions a week route through the managing partner? What happens to intake if that person is in trial for three weeks?
A firm where the managing partner is the system, approving every engagement letter and fielding every escalation, is worth less than the same firm with the same revenue and a documented operation, because the buyer is pricing the risk that the system walks out the door. We've written about how firms end up there and how to build the architecture out of it.
4. Written process, actually followed
Not a binder. A set of SOPs for intake, conflicts, matter opening, billing, and client communication that the staff can describe without reading, with a dashboard that shows whether they're being followed. The test a buyer runs is simple: ask three employees how a new matter gets opened and see if the answers match.
The quiet fifth item
AI governance. Any buyer in 2026 will ask what AI tools the firm uses, who approved them, and what the written policy says about privilege and confidentiality. "The associates use whatever they want" is a diligence finding, not an answer. Jim's governance framework is the version we install.
Whether or not you ever sell
The point of this list isn't the exit. A firm that can answer all four questions runs better on a Tuesday than one that can't, whether a buyer ever shows up or not. Intake conversion you can see is intake conversion you can improve. Attribution that reconciles is marketing spend you can defend. A firm that doesn't depend on one person is a firm its owner can leave for a week.
Buyers simply ask the questions the firm should have been asking itself. The diagnostic is where we ask them first, in private, while the answers are still cheap to change.