Updated with a comment at 14.10 BST on 5 August
Francisco Partners announced today (5 August) that it will acquire Elite from TPG Capital and Thomson Reuters, which retained a stake in Elite following its sale to TPG in 2023.
Francisco Partners is no stranger to the legal practice management world: just under two decades ago it owned Aderant, and its president Michael Kohlsdorf is a former CEO of Aderant.
While TPG specialises in a broad range of investments, Francisco Partners, headquartered in San Francisco, specialises in technology businesses, particularly helping them to navigate inflection points.
It is fairly unusual for private equity companies to sell after just two years, but Elite says the acquisition will provide it with a new financial partner to help the company capitalize on its current momentum and continue to drive product innovation and growth.
Since partnering with TPG in 2023, Elite has undertaken significant restructuring, remodelling, and product growth, including the acquisition of payments and invoice management platform Tranch. The past six months has seen positive news such as UK top 20 firm Clyde & Co and Am Law 200 firm Clark Hill migrate to Elite 3E Cloud, but it also recently missed out on two as yet not public very sizeable cloud selection processes.
“With Francisco Partners’ financial support and extensive legal software and payments expertise, we are confident they are the right partner to help us continue to deliver our transformative products to the legal industry. Building on the success we achieved with TPG, this next phase positions Elite to scale faster, deepen our cloud and AI capabilities, and help law firms operate with greater speed, insight, and efficiency,” said Mark Dorman, CEO of Elite.
“Elite’s powerful, cloud-based platform for large law firms positions it perfectly for long-term growth,” said Peter Christodoulo, partner at Francisco Partners.
The transaction is expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2025, subject to customary closing conditions. Evercore served as exclusive financial advisor and Davis Polk & Wardwell served as legal advisor to Elite and TPG. Centerview Partners served as financial advisor and Kirkland & Ellis LLP served as legal advisor to Francisco Partners.
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Comment: Following posting this, the feedback so far is that this is a good move for Elite, which as market leader in the PMS space has experienced slower than expected progress in moving law firms from on premises to cloud software, albeit the speed of change is visibly increasing and they have had some sizeable wins. Francisco Partners specialise in software companies and are also focused on the legal sector, having invested in companies including LegalZoom and BARBRI. Elite will be hoping that a more experienced hand will be able to help them to continue to drive change but also understand the subtleties of the market in which they are operating. If you wish to comment you can do so below.