AffiniPay, an Austin-based payments company that operates the legal billing business LawPay, said June 9 in a news release it has purchased legal software provider MyCase from private equity firm Apax Partners. 

San Diego-based MyCase has 240 employees and all are joining AffiniPay, an AffiniPay spokesperson said. Together, the merged company will have 478 employees. MyCase CEO Jim McGinnis will become president of growth initiatives for AffiniPay, the spokesperson said.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the AffiniPay spokesperson said the combined companies are expected to generate about $200 million in annual revenue.

AffiniPay is partially owned by private equity firm TA Associates, which “supported the acquisition of MyCase with additional investment capital” and will be the majority owner of the combined company, the release said. 

The purchase means MyCase’s suite of legal practice management software tools will be integrated into LawPay’s payments platform, providing quicker payment turnaround and more payment options, per the release. 

The acquisition “will accelerate the adoption of digitization for payments and legal practice management software,” the AffiniPay spokesperson said. LawPay and MyCase will serve about 200,000 legal professionals in the U.S. and Canada, according to the release.

Integrating with LawPay will “take our combined solutions to the next level,” MyCase’s McGinnis said in the release. 

AffiniPay, founded in 2005, is an online payment provider for professional service markets beyond the legal industry, also including accounting, construction design and association industries. The company started with LawPay, which has about 50,000 law firm and 150,000 lawyer clients, AffiniPay CEO Dru Armstrong said during a May interview. 

Five years ago, AffiniPay launched CPACharge and now counts about 10,000 accounting firms as customers too. The company also recently introduced offerings for the architecture and engineering industries, Armstrong said. Across these segments, AffiniPay processes about $17 billion annually, per its website.

Armstrong said there’s plenty of opportunity in digitizing payment volume for underserved professional services industries, and there’s a lot of commonalities in how they run their practices and how they think about invoicing and collecting from their clients. 

Through a partnership with buy now-pay later provider Affirm, LawPay announced the launch of ClientCredit in September 2021; that installments option was released broadly in April, Armstrong said.

By Caitlin Mullen on June 13, 2022
Original link