A quiet shift is reshaping how personal injury firms grow. For decades, trial lawyers ran their practices on a simple split. You won cases in the courtroom, you handled the business behind the scenes as best you can. Outside capital was scarce. Operations were an afterthought.
On a recent episode of the Trial Lawyer View by Synergy podcast, host I sat down with two people working at the center of this change. William Marra of Certum Group and Asim Badaruzzaman of Certum Legal Solutions. Their message was direct. The firms treating capital and operations as a strategy question, not a back-office chore, will pull ahead over the next five years.
Here is why, and what you should do next.
Capital was never built for plaintiff firms
A plaintiff-side case runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Mass tort dockets cost far more. Law firms have historically lacked access to the capital markets every other business uses. Part of the reason is hardwired into legal ethics rules.
Litigation funding closes a real gap. But before you bring in outside capital, a few points are worth understanding. The capital is non-recourse, so if the case is lost, you owe nothing back. Funders do not control your litigation, your settlement decisions, or your ethical duties.
One detail stood out. Funders back fewer than 5 percent of the cases they review. The diligence is significant. A funded case has cleared a higher merit bar than almost any other filing, which means the underwriting works as a screen for the civil justice system.
Portfolio funding changes the growth math
Single-case funding supports one matter at a time. Portfolio funding works differently. The funder contracts directly with the firm and finances part of the fees and expenses across a broader selection of cases. The firm keeps their normal full contingency arrangement with each client.
What does this give you? Room to take strong cases from clients when there would ordinarily have been no way to fund the expense or absorb the risk. More clients served. Lower funder risk across the portfolio, which usually means a lower return demand. For a firm built to grow, portfolio funding is a serious lever.
MSOs bring operations into one platform
The same logic drives the rise of MSOs in plaintiff law. An MSO operationalizes the parts of a law firm that aren’t the practice of law. Asim described a vertically integrated platform running a case from inception to resolution, with law firm functions handled inside one system instead of bolted on through scattered vendors.
His argument mirrors the one Synergy makes about healthcare lien resolution. Your staff burns hours on administrative work they were never trained for and do not get paid to do. Pull those tasks into an outsourced structure, and your team focuses on the legal work moving cases forward.
Asim made a sharp point about why this matters on the plaintiff side. Contingency fees are capped by regulation. So, every efficiency gain flows somewhere useful. Faster, cheaper, higher-quality delivery puts more money in the client’s pocket and frees the firm to take on more work.
The structure question is real
MSOs sit in a space regulators are watching closely. Critics call them a workaround for outside capital without going full ABS. Asim did not dodge the point. Rule 5.4 still bars fee sharing with non-lawyers. The MSO model already runs in medicine, accounting, and finance, so the concept is proven outside law. Arizona has opened the door wider with alternative business structures.
His view is plain. Done right, the MSO model is likely how a large share of future firms will run. Done wrong, regulators will write the rules for everyone. Ethical guardrails are not optional.
AI is already reshaping mass tort
Both guests use AI today, mostly on the operational side rather than for predicting outcomes. The bigger story is mass tort.
Asim explained the old way. You take a random sample of a docket, hand it to a data scientist, and build a predictive model of the full population. AI removes the guesswork. You run the entire dataset through a model, pull the metadata, and see the good, the bad, and the ugly across every plaintiff with high confidence. Then you negotiate settlement from a clear view instead of a sample.
Will noted the same tools sit on the other side of the table. Defendants and judges have them too. Critics have long argued litigation finance helps firms pile up dockets of weak cases. The argument loses force when both sides review every case instead of sampling.
Key Takeaways
If you lead a PI or mass tort firm, the guests offered a clear set of decisions to start on:
• Define your value proposition for restructuring operations. What do you gain, and does the move deliver better client outcomes or firm growth?
• Decide whether capital, operations, or both are your constraint, then weigh funding and MSO partners against the answer
• Educate your team on the tools now available, starting with younger lawyers, and treat fluency with AI and finance options as a baseline skill
The throughline from this episode is simple. Running your firm like a business is no longer optional. The lawyers who treat capital and operations as strategy will serve more clients, achieve better outcomes, and stay competitive as the market consolidates around the firms built early for this change.
🎧 Listen to the full podcast conversation on Trial Lawyer View here: https://partnerwithsynergy.com/podcast/william-marra-asim-m-badaruzzaman/
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If you want to grow and scale your law firm more effectively, consider partnering with Synergy for lien resolution. Learn more at: https://partnerwithsynergy.com/liens/