The Future Is Bright Podcast

It took Goldman Sachs 30 years and a billion-dollar partner exodus to finally vote for permanent capital, and Chris Batz suspects today's law firm partnerships are running the same clock. On the Future is Bright, Chris draws from Chapter 15 of Lloyd Blankfein's Streetwise to examine the parallels between Goldman Sachs and today's law firms. When rivals could advise and finance clients under one ro...

Mark Wasserman spent thirty five years building one law firm before staking his reputation on a bet almost nobody in the room believed in. Host Chris Batz and co-host Howard Rosenberg of The Future is Bright sit down with Mark Wasserman, CEO Emeritus of Eversheds Sutherland, to unpack the law firm merger strategy behind one of the industry's most unlikely transatlantic combinations. Wasserman walk...

Reena SenGupta invented the ranking system law firms love to hate, and now she explains why AI will make the legal profession more human. Reena spent thirty years measuring the legal industry from the inside, first building the Chambers and Partners rankings, then running the Financial Times Innovative Lawyers program for two decades. On this episode she walks Howard and I through what her latest...

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....

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 wh...

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 sa...

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 Jun...

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 merge...

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 tra...

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 clea...

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 l...

What happens when accomplished lawyers realize the traditional firm model no longer supports the practice they want to build? James Hacking, founder and CEO of Kindleworth, joins the conversation for a clear-eyed look at why more top lawyers are questioning the traditional big law model and what it takes to build something more aligned, more focused, and more sustainable. At the center of the disc...

What if the biggest barrier to justice in America is the legal profession itself and the solution begins by rethinking who is allowed to help people solve their legal problems? Chris Batz and Howard Rosenberg sit down with Natalie Knowlton of Stanford Law School's Deborah L. Rhode Center about the widening gap between the legal system and the people it is meant to serve. Millions of Americans cann...

A top AmLaw chair makes the case that the future of Big Law belongs to firms bold enough to put business leaders in charge, rethink the billable hour, and prove that remote attorneys can outperform the office. Joe Glynias, Chair of Husch Blackwell, joins Chris and Howard for a candid look at how a national firm grows without losing its footing. At the center is a deliberate structural choice: a no...

A Big Four firm just entered the U.S. legal market and the ripple effects could reshape how law is practiced, priced, and powered by technology. Tom Greenaway, Principal of KPMG Law US, joins Chris Batz and Howard Rosenberg to explore what that move signals for the profession. Corporate law departments face rising volume, flat headcount, and pressure to cut costs. The traditional billable hour mod...

What happens when a global law firm treats AI as a way to sharpen human judgment rather than replace it and uses change as a chance to rebuild stronger rather than cling to the past.   Client Centric Innovation anchors this conversation with Lorie Almon, Chair and Managing Partner of Seyfarth Shaw, one of the largest global law firms in the AmLaw 100. Lorie shares how she thinks about leading a fi...

Private equity is knocking on law firm doors but this conversation asks whether the legal industry is truly ready for the discipline control and long-term tradeoffs that outside capital demands.   Drawing on his background as a private equity executive with deep experience in investment banking and law firm operations, Adil Taha offers a clear-eyed look at what actually happens inside UK PE law fi...

Law firms are quietly rewriting the rules on growth power and ownership as consolidation, private capital and talent pressure push the industry toward a fundamentally different future. Chris Batz and Howard Rosenberg step back from deal headlines to talk about what 2025 revealed beneath the surface of the legal market. Mergers are no longer driven by geography alone and private capital is no longe...

What does it really take to build a national middle-market law firm that grows fast, integrates cleanly, and keeps its partners committed rather than walking out the door? Bob Hicks, chairman and managing partner of Taft Stettinius & Hollister, explains how middle market mergers have powered Taft's expansion without sacrificing culture or retention. Rather than chasing scale for its own sake, he l...

What does it take to build a high-stakes litigation firm that wins without Big Law scale while staying lean, values-driven, and firmly in control of its future? Chris Batz and Howard Rosenberg speak with Natasha Harrison, founder and managing partner of Pallas Partners, about what it takes to rethink the traditional law firm model from the ground up. Natasha shares why she left Big Law to build a...

A leader who built his career on high-stakes investigations shares how those experiences now shape the culture, standards, and direction of a top litigation firm. Matthew L. Schwartz, Chair of Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, joins Chris Batz and Howard Rosenberg to talk about what it takes to lead a litigation-first firm without losing the sharpness that defines its work. He reflects on a decade in th...

The legal industry is racing toward new business models, and Trisha Rich offers a grounded view of what that shift actually requires.  As a partner at Holland & Knight and a professor at New York University School of Law, she works at the center of the conversations driving MSO growth, ABS experimentation, and rising interest from Private Equity. Firms want support, investors want a foothold, and...

What happens when a 300-year-old law firm builds its future on client-led growth, global collaboration, and a culture that actually holds up across 29 offices?   Laura Cameron, Global Managing Partner of Pinsent Masons, shares how she won a contested election with a vision rooted in people, purpose, and progress. She explains why growth only works when clients lead the way, how culture becomes a s...

Elliot Moss didn't join a law firm to keep things the same. As Partner and Chief Brand Officer at Mishcon de Reya LLP, he brought a deep understanding of branding into a profession that often dismisses it, and changed how one of the UK's top firms thinks about growth and perception. He shares how clarity, consistency, and emotional intelligence turned Mishcon from a £45 million practice into a £38...

Many firms say they have a Law Firm Strategy, but few actually do. In this episode, Chris Batz breaks down what true strategy looks like inside corporate law firms and why clarity must come before growth. He introduces his framework for effective law firm strategy, the "three P's": positioning, perception, and competition. He explains how each reveals the gap between where a firm stands today and...