We read with great interest Monday morning a release about Matthew Hudson, a former partner at SJ Berwin, O’Melveny & Myers and Proskauer Rose who has formed his own firm with seed backing from several private equity funds. Some of those funds plan to take a stake in Hudson’s law firm, MJ Hudson, when the Legal Services Act goes into effect in the U.K. next year, allowing outside investors to take stakes in law firms and firms to offer publicly traded shares. The investment in Hudson’s case will go the other way, too; Hudson is free to buy up positions in the PE funds that will invest in his firm, thereby ensuring that his interests are intertwined completely with theirs.
Even more: Hudson wants to move away from the billable hour and instead have his PE clients compensate him with a percentage fee based on the value of a particular transaction.
