Akerman's office in Miami.

Akerman, a Florida-based Am Law 100 firm riding a seven-year streak of financial growth, recently introduced its first report about middle-market private equity dealmaking.

The “Akerman PErspectives Report” uses data from Pitchbook.com and tracks “often underreported yet significant activity of the sub-$1 billion and sub-$500 million private equity buyout funds,” according to a statement by the firm.

Overall private equity buyout fundraising for those market sectors has grown, Akerman's analysis concludes. Specifically, the firm's report states that for those sectors more than $154 billion of investment was realized in 2017, a 60 percent increase from the previous year.

Carl Roston, co-chair of Akerman's corporate group, led the team that created the report. Akerman hopes to seize profitable and growing opportunities now emerging for lawyers advising private equity clients that have leveraged buyout funds below $1 billion, Roston said.

Roston expects dealmaking by middle-market private equity firms to continue growing in 2018. One of the reasons that Roston is optimistic about such an uptick is what he calls “heightened interest in Section 1202 of the Internal Revenue Code, which allows PE funds to avoid the 23.8 percent federal capital gains tax on dispositions of qualified portfolio companies.”

That new tax wrinkle is especially useful for making profitable more modest-sized deals. And so what does the potential robustness of the middle-market private equity sector mean for Big Law? Potentially more business for firms that are not at the top of the Am Law 100, Roston said.

“Clients are looking for lawyers who are doing a high volume of transactional work who are very much interested and dedicated to this sector of the market,” Roston said. “Private equity clients want high volume complex LBO work and they are also insisting on a level of client service and continuity of staff.”

Such demands from those types of private equity clients create opportunities for Akerman, Roston said. The firm is not, he concedes, in the top tier in terms of private equity deals for leveraged buyout funds with more than $1 billion. Those deals typically go to firms such as Debevoise & Plimpton or Kirkland & Ellis (the latter of which raided Debevoise in December for its former funds head), both of which consistently place in the top ranks of private equity advisers, Roston said.

But Akerman has hired lateral partners from those firms who have both the sophistication and willingness to work deals beneath the $1 billion threshold for leveraged buyout funds. Akerman's private equity clients have the advantage of working repeatedly with the same teams of lawyers often led by individuals with experience working on bigger deals, Roston said.

“We are seeing an opportunity for firms that are not in the Am Law 20 but that have that level of sophistication to grow in this sector of the market,” Roston said.

Akerman, a 631-lawyer firm known for launching innovative new products, did recently see a group of Chicago-based lawyers break away to form their own boutique. But Akerman has kept growing, recently bolting on a six-lawyer shop in South Florida and hiring corporate and private equity lawyers in Austin, Texas, where Akerman opened an office in 2016 after absorbing a group of 30 lawyers from dissolving local firm Beirne, Maynard & Parsons.