The Future Is Bright Podcast

The Future Is Bright Podcast
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Enjoy a front-row seat as Chris speaks with thought-provoking C-Suite executives and leaders from corporations, both public and private, professional service firms, and of course, the legal industry from around the United States.

  1. 1d ago

    EP #81: Watching BigLaw Reinvent Itself with Gina Passarella & David Gialanella

    Two Law.com veterans who spend their careers interrogating law firm secrets turn the lens on their own industry's next twenty years, from partner comp black boxes to the real odds of a publicly traded law firm by 2040.  On this episode of the Future is Bright, Howard Rosenberg and I sat down with Gina Passarella, Group Chief Content Officer of Law.com, and David Gialanella, Editor-in-Chief of Law.com. Both have covered Big Law mergers for years and are now navigating one of their own, as ALM and Law Business Research combine into Centellic. That firsthand experience shapes how they talk about what firms hide, including from themselves. One tension comes up again and again. Firms love to talk about their AI strategy in public, but how many of them actually have one? Gina and David suggest the gap between AI messaging and AI reality is wider than most firms would admit. Partner compensation gets the same treatment. Averages sound clean in a press release. They rarely tell you what's happening inside a firm. The discussion turns to a scenario-planning project mapping the legal profession out to 2040, built around three forces: how much power shifts from lawyers to algorithms, whether the industry's tech stack consolidates or fragments, and who ends up setting the rules. Will regulators hold the line on the partnership model, or will client demand and private capital force it open? Gina and David don't pretend to know for certain, and that honesty is part of what makes their read on the industry worth hearing.   Episode Breakdown: 00:00 ALM's Merger with Law Business Research 01:32 Inside a Major Legal Media Merger 09:12 Business Model Shifts in Law Firm Strategy 12:55 What Law Firms Hide From Themselves 20:14 Partner Talent Mobility and Law Firm Business Models 24:17 Mapping the Legal Profession to 2040 29:20 Could Law Firms Go Public by 2040 32:29 How AI Is Reshaping Demand for Legal Services 39:16 The Data Law Firms Don't Want to Share Connect with Gina Passarella: Connect with Gina on LinkedIn  Gina Passarella's Web Bio    Connect with David Gialanella: Connect with David on LinkedIn  David Gialanella's Web Bio     Connect with Howard Rosenberg: Connect with Howard on LinkedIn Howard Rosenberg's Company web profile   Connect with Chris Batz: Connect with Chris on LinkedIn  Follow Columbus Street on LinkedIn Columbus Street Website  MergerWatch Website Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

  2. Aug 4

    EP #80: The Diminishing Few: Why Being a Top Independent UK Firm Is Now a Competitive Advantage

    What does it take to run a 200-million pound law firm without ever taking outside investment or merging with a bigger name? Roger Bull, managing partner of Burges Salmon, joins Chris Batz and Howard Rosenberg to unpack the five-year strategy his firm just launched, one built on 25 listening sessions with roughly 1,500 people before the partnership board finalized a single objective. In a market where large international firms are distracted by questions of US mergers and office footprint alignment, Bull argues that a UK-focused independent firm operating through a flexible network of preferred international relationships can out-position competitors chasing scale for its own sake. What does strategic clarity buy you that a bigger balance sheet can't? The discussion gets into the governance mechanics behind that clarity: KPIs set across revenue, headcount, and technology deployment, a mid-point strategic review built in by design, and a board that revisits assumptions every six months rather than waiting for the next five-year cycle. Bull traces his own trajectory from the employment team to the managing partner role and revisits a client meeting early in his career that reframed how he thinks about advisory relationships. In it, the lead partner spent the opening stretch on the client's market position before any project came up. He's equally direct about AI, framing it less as a productivity tool and more as a forcing function that pushes firms away from time-and-materials billing toward a harder question. Where does the advice actually create value, and how do you prove it? The most revealing data point from his listening tour wasn't tension between legal and business services teams. It was what happened when leadership removed the ceiling on ambition entirely. The bottleneck shifted from generating ideas to prioritizing which ones the firm could actually execute well.   Episode Breakdown: 00:00 Introducing Roger Bull, Managing Partner Of Burges Salmon 01:17 Listening Sessions With 1,500 People Across The Firm 07:58 Staying An Independent UK Law Firm Instead Of Merging 14:18 Leading A Law Firm Through Brexit, Covid, And Global Shocks 25:57 Measuring Law Firm Growth With Strategic Kpis 28:18 How Ai And Technology Are Reshaping Legal Services 31:15 The Biggest Surprise From The Firm's Strategic Listening Tour Connect with Roger Bull: Connect with Roger on LinkedIn Roger's Law Firm Web bio    Connect with Howard Rosenberg: Connect with Howard on LinkedIn  Howard's Company web profile   Connect with Chris Batz: Connect with Chris on LinkedIn  Follow Columbus Street on LinkedIn Columbus Street Website  MergerWatch Website Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

  3. Jul 21

    EP #79: Law Is Still a People Business: Gary Wingens on Leadership, Loyalty, and the Long View

    Gary Wingens led Lowenstein Sandler through Lehman Brothers' collapse and a global pandemic, and now he says AI won't shrink legal work at all, it will multiply it. Wingens spent thirty-nine years at Lowenstein Sandler, eighteen as managing partner, before stepping into the role of chair, and he built that transition on a principle most leaders resist: he refused to pick his own successor. That same instinct for stepping back at the right moment runs through his conversation with Chris Batz and Howard Rosenberg. At the center of it is a theory pulled from 1800s economics. Jevons Paradox holds that when the cost of a good drops, demand rises rather than falls, and Wingens argues the same logic applies to legal work in the age of AI. He backs it with a real number: a document review project a client refused at eight million dollars became a profitable million-dollar engagement once AI cut the cost of delivery. If that pattern holds industry-wide, what happens to a business model still anchored to the billable hour? He also draws a direct line between 2008 and COVID, two crises that felt eerily similar from inside the firm but produced opposite outcomes, one nearly breaking the business and the other proving that panic drives clients toward more legal help, not less. Underneath it all is a firm built on a specific kind of stubbornness, traced back to a founder who once walked away from a client rather than abandon his pro bono work, a conviction that still shapes how Wingens thinks about leadership and loyalty today.   Episode Breakdown: 00:00 Gary Wingens on Leading a Law Firm Through Crisis and Succession 10:08 Why AI Will Create More Legal Work, Not Less 28:17 Building a Pro Bono Practice Rooted in Firm Culture 39:12 Leadership Advice for the Next Generation of Law Firm Leaders   Connect with Gary Wingens: Connect with Gary on LinkedIn  Gary's Law Firm Web bio    Connect with Howard Rosenberg: Connect with Howard on LinkedIn  Howard's Company web profile   Connect with Chris Batz: Connect with Chris on LinkedIn  Follow Columbus Street on LinkedIn Columbus Street Website  MergerWatch Website Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

  4. Jul 7

    EP #78: Trying to Stop a Waterfall: Capital AI, and The New Legal Market

    The dam is breaking: law firm capital deals are closing faster than regulators can write the rules to stop them. Trish Rich of Holland & Knight and Lucian Pera of Adams & Reese are two ethics lawyers operating at the center of one of the profession's most consequential shifts, and their deal volume tells the story better than any headline. Trish's team closed six deals in all of 2025. By early June 2026, they had already closed fifteen. The players at the table have changed too. A year ago, this was almost entirely a personal injury story. Today, immigration firms, corporate law firms, and insurance companies are all asking serious questions about what MSO structures could mean for their businesses. So what about the regulatory pushback? Trish described it as trying to stop a waterfall by standing underneath it. Lucian was more blunt: the loudest opposition is coming from one segment of plaintiff's trial lawyers trying to protect their franchise from another. The same people backing restrictive legislation are often calling Trish and Lucian to get their clients in under the wire before it passes. The big law question is no longer theoretical. Lucian predicted that more than one major firm announcement is likely before the end of 2026, with structures leaning toward minority investment given the challenge of building consensus across hundreds of partners. When the capital comes in, the primary plan is talent, not technology. On AI specifically, Lucian was direct: if costs commoditize the way technology historically does, a small firm with the right tools could quietly out-earn a firm that spent hundreds of millions chasing the same outcome. The firms closing deals that actually work share one thing in common. They came to the table with trust, a shared business vision, and a plan for what comes next.   Episode Breakdown: 00:00 Law Firm Capital and MSO Deals: What's Actually Happening Right Now 03:04 Regulatory Pushback and Why Capital Keeps Winning 12:06 Insurance, Risk Management, and New Deal Structures 18:12 Best Practices for Successful MSO Deals 23:47 AI, Native Law Firms, and the Future of Legal Links Connect with Trish Rich: Law Firm Web bio: https://www.hklaw.com/en/professionals/r/rich-trisha-m Trish's LinkedIn Profile link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trisharich   Connect with Lucian Pera: Law Firm Web bio: https://www.adamsandreese.com/people/lucian-pera Lucian's LinkedIn Profile link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucianpera   Connect with Howard Rosenberg: LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hrosenberg/ Company web profile: https://www.baretzbrunelle.com/howard-rosenberg   Connect with Chris Batz: Connect with Chris on LinkedIn  Follow Columbus Street on LinkedIn Columbus Street Website  MergerWatch Website Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

  5. Jun 16

    EP #77: Aprio Legal: How Two ABS Firms Combined to Build America's First Integrated Legal + Accounting Platform

    Andy Kvesic left the job every lawyer wants to build something the profession had never seen. As CEO of Aprio Legal, he traded a general counsel role at a thriving family office for the harder, riskier work of acquiring a Phoenix law firm and redesigning how professional services actually work. The result is a historic combination: the first time two Alternative Business Structure firms have merged, bringing together a corporate law firm and a national accounting and advisory firm backed by private equity. Attorneys, accountants, wealth planners, and business advisors now serve the same clients under one roof. The idea came from watching entrepreneurs waste time and energy bouncing between disconnected professionals who never coordinated with each other. Arizona's 2021 rule change allowing non-lawyer law firm ownership gave Kvesic the opening to try something different. His merger with Aprio wasn't a calculated exit. It was the recognition that both firms were solving the same problem from opposite ends: Aprio's professionals were constantly referring clients out for legal work, and Kvesic's attorneys were constantly referring clients out for tax and accounting. Neither could fully serve their clients alone. Building the integrated platform also forced a reckoning with how differently law firms and accounting firms run their businesses. After two decades working almost exclusively with other lawyers, Kvesic found Aprio's infrastructure to be a genuine upgrade: multi-year planning, pipeline visibility, real margin analysis. For an industry that largely runs on a cash-in, cash-out model aimed at maximizing year-end partner distributions, the difference is significant. The legal profession is changing whether it wants to or not. The more interesting question Kvesic raises is whether the people inside it will have the courage to lead that change rather than resist it.   Episode Breakdown: 00:00 From General Counsel to Law Firm Owner: Andy Kvesic's Career Path 02:51 The Vision Behind Raddock's Law and the ABS Model 09:03 How Aprio Legal Became the First ABS-to-ABS Merger 14:57 Cultural Differences Between Lawyers and Accountants 24:33 How Accounting Firm Discipline Is Changing Law Firm Operations 29:35 Growth Strategy and the Integrated Legal Accounting Platform 37:52 ABS Advice and the Future of the Legal Profession   Connect with Andy Kvesic: Connect with Andy on LinkedIn   Andy Kvesic - CEO, Aprio Legal | Partner    Connect with Howard Rosenberg: Connect with Howard on LinkedIn  Howard's Company web profile   Connect with Chris Batz: Connect with Chris on LinkedIn  Follow Columbus Street on LinkedIn Columbus Street Website  MergerWatch Website Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

  6. Jun 2

    EP #76: Not All Capital Is the Same: Inside Burford Capital with David Perla

    When permanent capital, AI disruption, and a rapidly fracturing talent market collide inside the legal industry, the old rules for how law firms grow, get funded, and build their next generation of lawyers stop making sense.   David Perla, Vice Chair of Burford Capital, joins hosts Chris Batz and Howard Rosenberg to break down why permanent capital is a fundamentally different proposition than traditional private equity for boutiques and founder-controlled firms ready to grow, and why the AmLaw 100 is unlikely to move anytime soon.   The more urgent conversation is about what neither capital nor strategy can fully solve. Law firm leaders are making multi-year associate class decisions without any reliable sense of what their workforce looks like in twelve months. Startups that needed fifty people eighteen months ago now run on seven or eight. The associate pipeline, in-house departments, recruiting timelines: all of it is under pressure that is accelerating faster than most leaders want to admit.   Perla's advice is deceptively simple. Get curious. Ask hard questions of people who think differently. The firms that navigate this moment well are the ones willing to challenge assumptions before the market forces the issue.   Episode Breakdown: 00:00 Introduction: David Perla, Vice Chair of Burford Capital 06:05 Building Pangea3 and Pioneering Legal Outsourcing 12:51 How Burford Capital Invests in the Legal Industry 23:44 Where Private Capital Is Heading in Law Firm Investment 29:51 AI, Legal Talent, and the Associate Pipeline Crisis 39:23 Legal Tech Valuations and the Coming Shakeout 46:06 Advice for Law Firm Leaders Navigating Disruption Links Connect with David Perla: Company Bio: https://www.burfordcapital.com/about-us/our-team/david-perla/  LinkedIn Profile link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidperla/   Connect with Howard Rosenberg: LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hrosenberg/ Company web profile: https://www.baretzbrunelle.com/howard-rosenberg   Connect with Chris Batz: Connect with Chris on LinkedIn  Follow Columbus Street on LinkedIn Columbus Street Website  MergerWatch Website Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

  7. May 12

    EP #75: Fiercely Independent for 137 Years: Hughes Hubbard's Strategy in the Age of AI, Private Equity, and Rebalancing the Firm

    What happens to the modern law firm when AI strips away the advantage of size and leaves judgment as the true measure of value?   Robb Patryk joined Chris Batz and Howard Rosenberg to talk about why AI may reset some of the biggest assumptions in the legal industry. If sophisticated legal work no longer depends on armies of lawyers, what actually gives a firm its edge? For Robb, the answer is clear. Sharp judgment, trusted client relationships, and a strategy that knows exactly which problems a firm is built to solve.   This conversation gets to the real pressure point behind all the AI hype. What happens to training when junior lawyers no longer learn through hours of document review? What happens to growth when bigger no longer means better? Robb makes the case for a more deliberate future where independent firms can stay competitive, stay focused, and stay human while using AI to move faster and think better.   There is also a bigger leadership question running through this episode. How do you protect a firm's identity when the market keeps pushing toward consolidation, private equity, and scale at all costs? Robb offers a grounded look at what it takes to lead with conviction in a moment when the legal world feels wide open. Episode Breakdown: 00:00 AI in Law Firms and the Future of Independent Firms 08:02 Law Firm Strategy, Growth, and Practice Mix 12:33 How AI Will Reshape Legal Talent and Firm Scale 16:09 Private Equity, Non-Lawyer Ownership, and Law Firm Culture 23:45 How Independent Law Firms Stay Competitive Connect with Robb Patryk: Robb's Law Firm Web Bio  Connect with Robb on LinkedIn     Connect with Howard Rosenberg: Connect with Howard on LinkedIn  Howard's Company web profile   Connect with Chris Batz: Connect with Chris on LinkedIn  Follow Columbus Street on LinkedIn Columbus Street Website  MergerWatch Website Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

  8. Apr 28

    EP #74: US Only by Design: Why Polsinelli Stays Domestic with Chase Simmons

    What does it take to grow a 1,200-lawyer firm through chaos, competition, and industry change without losing the culture and discipline that made it strong in the first place?   Hosts Chris Batz and Howard Rosenberg sit down with Chase Simmons, Chair and CEO of Polsinelli, for a thoughtful conversation about leadership under pressure. As the leader of one of the largest full-service U.S.-focused law firms, Chase brings a clear point of view on growth, judgment, and the kind of institutional clarity that gets tested when the market shifts.   The conversation gets to the heart of how firms grow without losing themselves. Chase shares why Polsinelli has stayed intentionally U.S. focused, how leadership teams decide where to invest and where to hold back, and what hard moments can reveal about a firm's values. What helps a firm stay disciplined when the market keeps shifting? What becomes possible when leaders know who they are and refuse to chase every opportunity?   Chris and Howard also ask Chase about private equity, AI, succession, and the broader disruption reshaping big law. What emerges is a thoughtful discussion about stewardship, ambition, and the choices that give a firm staying power. It is a grounded look at leadership from someone who has helped scale a major firm while staying protective of the culture behind it. Episode Breakdown: 00:00 Polsinelli's Growth Strategy and Leadership Vision 03:08 Building a Law Firm Culture That Holds Up Under Pressure 11:56 The Future of Big Law and Industry Disruption 14:59 AI and the Changing Practice of Law 17:54 Private Equity and the Future of Law Firm Ownership 21:04 Leadership Lessons for Law Firm Leaders   Connect with Chase Simmons: Chase Simmon's Law Firm Web bio Connect with Chase on LinkedIn    Connect with Howard Rosenberg: Connect with Howard on LinkedIn Howard's Company Web Profile   Connect with Chris Batz: Connect with Chris on LinkedIn  Follow Columbus Street on LinkedIn Columbus Street Website  MergerWatch Website Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

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About

Enjoy a front-row seat as Chris speaks with thought-provoking C-Suite executives and leaders from corporations, both public and private, professional service firms, and of course, the legal industry from around the United States.

Information

  • Creator
    The Future Is Bright Podcast
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    83
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © The Future Is Bright Podcast
  • Show Website
    The Future Is Bright Podcast