Massumi + Consoli's PE Deal: Why Partners Took Pay Cuts

TL;DR: Some partners at boutique law firm Massumi + Consoli took a one-time cut to their equity distributions to help fund a private equity investment from Trive Capital into the firm's back-office and technology operations. The firm runs over 70 lawyers and does more than $100 million in annual revenue, betting the short-term hit buys infrastructure it couldn't otherwise afford.

What Happened at Massumi + Consoli

Some partners at Massumi + Consoli agreed to a one-time "scrape" of their equity distributions. The trade-off: fund a new venture called ElevenHundred+, according to Bloomberg Law. Co-founder Peter Massumi confirmed the arrangement in an interview last week.

The firm sold a piece of its administrative and technology operations to Dallas-based Trive Capital, splitting that back office into its own entity first, according to the same Bloomberg Law report. Massumi and Consoli founded the firm in 2015 after leaving Kirkland & Ellis, per the same reporting. It now runs more than 70 lawyers and does over $100 million in annual gross revenue, according to TradersUnion — a size that makes it a more visible test case than the smaller personal-injury shops that have tried this deal structure so far.

Here's the number that matters most for anyone weighing a similar deal: for firms with smaller partnerships, the initial hit to compensation can run as high as 50%, Eric Knickrehm, a Winston Taylor partner who advises private equity on legal MSO transactions, told Bloomberg Law. Bloomberg Law did not report the size of the Massumi + Consoli deal or the exact percentage those partners gave up, and I'm not going to guess at either number. I read a story like this the way I read a QA package: verify before you trust the headline.

Why Would a Law Firm Take Private Equity Money at All?

Law firms are partnerships, not corporations. A partner's payout traditionally comes from the firm's current-year profits, not from selling equity, because there's no stock to sell and no easy way to raise outside capital. That makes every technology upgrade, every AI tool, every piece of infrastructure come out of this year's earnings — a slow way to fund a buildout when your competitors have investor money behind them.

Private equity flips that math. A PE sponsor puts money into the firm's non-legal operations (technology, administration, back office) in exchange for equity in that entity. The arrangement runs on "equity incentive plans" meant to address rising lawyer compensation and retention pressure as private equity interest grows in corporate law, per TradersUnion. The partners who benefit from the upgrade help fund it upfront, by taking less pay this year. That's the trade Massumi + Consoli's partners reportedly made.

I've seen the same mechanic in accounting. KKR's Crowe Advisory deal runs on the identical structure. Outside capital buys the plumbing, never the licensed practice itself, because ethics rules in most states bar non-lawyers and non-CPAs from owning equity in the practice.

Law Firm Compensation, Before and After a PE Move

	Traditional partnership model	PE-backed back-office model
Who funds tech/infrastructure	Current-year partner profits	Outside PE capital into a separate entity
Partner payout timing	Distributed as earned, same year	Some partners accept a near-term reduction
Ownership of the legal practice	100% partners (required in most states)	Unchanged — PE cannot own the law practice itself
Ownership of back-office/tech entity	Partners only	Partners plus PE sponsor
Upside if the tech investment works	None beyond normal fee growth	Equity stake in the back-office entity itself

What This Means If You're Evaluating a PE Sponsor's Playbook

You are not writing this check. Trive Capital is. But if you hold, or are considering, a stake in a fund that does professional-services buyouts, this deal is worth studying as a sponsor pattern, not a law-firm story.

Trive structured the investment to buy the back office, not the legal practice. It won partner buy-in by handing them equity in the new entity instead of just cash. That is the downside-first question I ask about every sponsor: what does the sponsor keep if the thesis fails, and what do the people running the underlying business keep? Before you commit capital alongside a sponsor doing something similar, run the 12-point PE fund evaluation checklist. Ask who owns the upside, what happens to your capital if it doesn't work, and what the sponsor's exit timeline looks like.

Common Mistakes

• Treating a partner pay cut as a red flag by itself. A near-term reduction tied to a specific infrastructure investment is a different animal than a pay cut driven by declining revenue. Ask which one you're looking at.
• Assuming PE bought the law firm. In nearly every state, non-lawyers can't own equity in the legal practice. The capital goes into a separate operating entity, the tech and back office, not the partnership itself.
• Skipping the exit question. Ask what the PE sponsor's return timeline looks like and what happens to the partners' equity if the sponsor wants to sell in five to seven years.

FAQ

What is the average salary for a private equity lawyer in New York City? I don't have a verified, current figure for this specific role. Compensation swings widely by firm size and deal flow, so treat any single number you see online with caution unless the source names where it came from.

Who is the richest private equity partner? I'm not going to rank net worth here. Those figures shift constantly and rest on data I can't verify. If you're sizing up a PE partner's track record before investing alongside one, use my PE fund evaluation checklist instead of a headline ranking.

Are private equity firms responsible for layoffs? Not automatically, but often enough to price in. UK pensions firm Just Group cut roughly 30% of its staff across two rounds after Brookfield took it private, according to Sky News reporting carried by 3FM. Nothing in the Massumi + Consoli reporting points to layoffs, this deal is an equity conversion, not a cost-cutting move.

What are the latest private equity deals in professional services? This deal, PE money into a law firm's back office, sits inside a broader wave into professional-services support functions. I covered the same mechanic in KKR's Crowe Advisory deal, where private equity bought the operations, not the licensed practice.

The Bottom Line

Trive Capital didn't buy Massumi + Consoli's law practice. It bought the back office and got partner buy-in by making the partners co-owners of the upside, not just funders of the downside. Treat every headline about a "pay cut" like this one as an equity conversion first and a compensation story second. Get the next one of these before the wire coverage catches up, subscribe to the free AIN briefing.

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