Expertise
The subject-matter authority your firm has spent decades building.
For accounting & law firm leadership
The work is
changing.
The model
hasn’t caught up.
A path for the firms that intend to lead the change, not be consolidated by it.
Expertise-driven advisory for accounting and law firms. Start with new revenue lines, or with the whole firm.
What’s happening
Two pressures, closing at the same time.
If you lead an accounting or law firm, you are watching both at once: efficiency is compressing the hours you bill, and capital is consolidating the firms that stand still. Aging leadership and thin succession plans are making the sale look easy across both professions. The firms that modernize on their own terms keep their independence, and their upside.
11 of 30
11 of the top 30 U.S. accounting firms carried private-equity investment by the third quarter of 2025, with KPMG projecting more than half by the end of 2025. None did in 2020. Succession pressure is a leading reason firms sell.
KPMG Corporate Finance72% → 90%
72 percent of law firms now offer alternative fee arrangements, rising to about 90 percent among firms with more than 50 lawyers. The billable hour is already giving way.
Best Law Firms, 2025 survey of 4,852 U.S. firmsThe line between the professions is dissolving. KPMG's subsidiary KPMG Law US is the first Big Four-owned law firm licensed to practice in the U.S., approved in Arizona in February 2025. The distance between accounting and law is closing, and technology is what closes it.Arizona Supreme Court, Feb 2025 · reported by Bloomberg Law, LawSites
Our answer
Turn efficiency into new revenue, not lost hours.
We begin with your firm, not a preferred product, and build revenue that does not depend on rates and hours. We work with a vetted network of service providers, match them to your firm, and can build custom where needed. New service lines and efficiencies come first. Then your firm starts selling outcomes to complex problems, priced on the value delivered.
Becoming a solutions firm enables you to compete on four things you already own, now organized to work together.
Technology
Vetted point solutions that produce results, matched to your firm’s real needs.
Relationships
The trust and access that make your firm hard to replace.
Leadership
The judgment to steer complex problems to a solved outcome.
The firm today
Rates and hours
- Revenue capped by hours available to bill
- Efficiency shrinks the invoice
- Priced on effort, not outcome
- Vulnerable to consolidation and succession gaps
The solutions firm
Outcomes and value
- New revenue lines beyond the billable hour
- Efficiency becomes margin, not loss
- Priced on the value of the solution
- Positioned to grow and lead on its own terms
This goes beyond a technology project. It is a change to how the firm makes money, led by senior people who have done it before.
How we work
Two ways to begin. Three phases.
One or more revenue lines, or the whole firm: both lead into the same plan. Every phase is led by a senior executive, not handed to a tool.
Revenue lines
One or more new lines of business: each defined, built with the right service providers, staffed, and selling. Fixed fee per project, with shared value.
The evaluation
The whole firm: an outside-in read, leadership interviews, and a detailed opportunity map, sequenced. Fixed fee.
See the firm clearly.
The evaluation
- Interviews with your leadership team, and a read on continuity and future planning
- Your firm’s current state: brand, technology, clients, and reputation
- Immediate opportunities for new non-hourly revenue
- Immediate operating efficiencies
- A detailed opportunity map: everything we see as possible for your firm, drawn from our network of service providers
- A short and long-term plan for growth, including industries and services beyond today’s footprint
Execute the plan.
Where revenue lines begin
- Catalyze new business lines, one part of the plan at a time
- Deliver the efficiencies the work identifies
- Repeat the cycle across each element of the plan
- Carried by sales training and change management, so it holds inside your firm
Capture the upside.
On your own terms
- Continue the plan, revised as execution teaches us more
- Go deeper on firm continuity and leadership
- Pursue future growth: new markets, new services, new scale
The plan is not static. It is revised as we execute, so each phase runs on a sharper version of what came before.
The evaluation · deliverables
What the evaluation puts in your hands.
The evaluation is not a report that sits on a shelf. It produces a concrete set of deliverables your firm can act on straight away.
Detailed opportunity map
Everything we see as possible for your firm, drawn from our network of service providers, with the fit and the value of each laid out.
Strategic map for growth
A clear picture of where your firm can grow, near-term and long, and the path to get there.
AI data-quality analysis
An honest read on whether your firm’s data is ready to carry AI and solution development, and what to address first.
Solution-based lines of business
Identified solution-based revenue lines, each with a plan to deploy it.
New industry verticals
A plan for developing new verticals where your firm’s expertise can travel into fresh markets.
Identified efficiencies
Operating improvements your firm can put to work right away.
Relationships to build
The clients, service providers, and connections within the plan, mapped out so your firm knows where to invest.
Sprint-based deployment plan
A sprint cadence that turns the plan into deployed solutions and revenue, fast.
Who leads the work
Senior operators from inside these firms and from AI delivery.
Your engagement is led by experienced industry operators and firm leadership: one from decades inside professional-services firms, one from AI delivery, working directly with your leadership.
Scott Balestrier
Founder and CEO
Scott brings decades in tax and professional services. He has been a tax partner or principal at Ernst & Young, KPMG, and BDO, and has led practices and consulting firms of his own, including president and CEO of a business-development consulting firm serving financial-services firms, and CEO of a national consulting company. From 2017 to 2019 he was president of the Stevens & Lee / Griffin network, related companies in law and investment banking, and served as growth advisor to its chief executive. Most recently he was a tax principal at BDO focused on growth and expansion. His strengths are tax, business development, and the inner workings of professional-services firms across accounting, law, and investment banking, and he leads with fast, practical revenue wins before the deeper build.
Michael Katz
Founder and Chief AI Officer
Michael brings decades in operations, team leadership, and hands-on implementation. He led a design and animation department of up to fifty people at an Omnicom agency, and has run his own consulting practice serving clients from global enterprises to Main Street operators. Most recently he has consulted on AI integration for a multinational agricultural technology company and for a New England cleaning-and-restoration firm, in both cases delivering solutions that carry real work under human direction with full audit trails. His strengths are practical AI adoption, management, and translating business requirements into working infrastructure. He leads the firm’s AI-enhanced operating system and the deeper client customizations that build on early wins.
The team on any given engagement is built around the client.
Start the conversation
Let’s start with what is in reach.
The firms that turn technology into new revenue will define the next decade of professional services. A contained first step, one or more revenue lines or the full evaluation, then a partnership with our upside tied to yours.
or write to us: hello@mercaitor.com
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