It was dubbed the “big bang for lawyers” and was supposed to drag law firms into a modern era, allowing private equity and other external investors to sink their money into the legal sector for the first time. But since the Legal Services Act came into force in January 2012, there has been precious little dealflow to show for it.

Despite countless meetings between buyout houses and law firms over the past few years, traditional law firms have been unwilling targets for private equity. Just five deals between private equity and law firms have been inked and none of those acquisitions involved traditional big corporate law firms. Instead, private equity is being forced to look away from the obvious and look at niche players to get a piece of the legal market.