Trinity Hunt exits IMS Legal Strategies after expert-witness platform build-out

Trinity Hunt Partners has exited its investment in IMS Legal Strategies, the Dallas-headquartered litigation support platform that supplies expert witnesses, jury consulting, trial graphics, and life care planning to law firms and corporate legal departments. Terms and the buyer were not disclosed in the release.

IMS, founded in 1992, says it has served over 21,500 clients across the US and UK, including 182 Am Law 200 firms and 366 Fortune 500 companies, and has supported more than 50,000 cases. That client base, concentrated at the top of the legal market, is the asset under the asset.

What changed under Trinity Hunt

The IMS that Trinity Hunt is exiting is wider than the one it bought. The company now markets a full suite spanning expert witness search and placement, consulting, life care planning, medical expert services, advisory, and surveying. Life care planning (the projection of long-term medical and care costs for plaintiffs in personal injury and medical malpractice cases) and medical expert services are adjacent verticals that fit the same operating model: a curated roster of credentialed experts, a sourcing-and-vetting layer, and a project-managed engagement on top.

IMS CEO James Crane framed the build-out around team and trust:

The disclosed metrics (21,500+ clients, 50,000+ cases, 30+ years operating) are cumulative-since-founding figures, not annualized run-rates, so they describe scale of franchise rather than current revenue. Buyer-side diligence will have looked at active matter count, repeat-firm concentration, and the mix between expert sourcing fees and the higher-margin consulting and graphics work.

Why a litigation expert platform reads like an expert network

IMS is not a financial expert network, but the structural similarities are close enough that the deal is worth watching for anyone tracking the broader expert-services category. Both models monetize the gap between a client who needs a credentialed human voice on a specific question and the cost of finding, vetting, and engaging that voice directly. Both run on a roster of vetted experts, project moderators or case managers, compliance review (conflicts checks for litigation; MNPI screening for finance), and time-billed engagements.

The differences matter for valuation. Litigation services is more deal-driven and lumpier than the subscription-leaning model the larger financial expert networks have moved toward. A single complex matter can run for years and generate substantial fees; a quiet quarter in trial calendars can compress utilization. The Am Law 200 and Fortune 500 client overlap is the closest analog to the bulge-bracket and large-fund concentration that anchors firms like Guidepoint and GLG.

What the disclosure does and doesn't tell us

The release omits the buyer, the multiple, and any revenue figure. Without those, the cleanest read is on direction rather than price. Trinity Hunt is exiting after a hold long enough to integrate medical expert and life care planning into the core expert-witness business, which is the standard mid-market PE pattern: buy a category leader, bolt on adjacent services, sell to a larger sponsor or strategic.

The likely next-owner profile is either a larger PE platform consolidating litigation services (a sector that has seen rolling consolidation across court reporting, e-discovery, and trial graphics for the last decade) or a strategic acquirer already in legal services looking to add the expert-sourcing layer.

The item to track is the next owner's identity, expected in subsequent filings or follow-up coverage. Until then, the signal is that Trinity Hunt found a clearing price for an expert-services platform built on Am Law and Fortune 500 relationships, in a market where comparable financial expert network exits have been thinner.