Trinity Hunt sells IMS Legal Strategies to Uplift Investors after 14-deal buildout
Nine-year hold turned a single expert-witness firm into a full-stack litigation services platform before exit.
Trinity Hunt Partners has sold IMS Legal Strategies, a litigation support provider, to Uplift Investors, ending a nine-year hold that turned an expert-witness sourcing business into a multi-service platform via 14 bolt-on acquisitions. The deal is Uplift's second since launching in 2025.
Trinity Hunt took a majority stake in what was then IMS ExpertServices in November 2017. The current entity, rebranded IMS Legal Strategies, now spans expert witness search and placement, litigation consulting, jury consulting, trial graphics, and courtroom presentation technology.
What got built
The 14-acquisition path stitched together four functional areas a litigation team buys separately today. Trial graphics and presentation came through The Focal Point and Z-Axis. Jury research and trial strategy came through Litigation Insights, MMG Jury Consulting, and First Court. Expert witness sourcing, the original IMS business, was deepened with Juris Medicus (medical) and Teklicon (technical). Damages and economic analysis was added via Analytic Focus and MacKenzie Life Care Planning.
That is a recognizable PE roll-up shape in professional services: buy a category leader in one adjacent capability, take cost out of overlapping G&A, cross-sell the combined offering to existing law-firm clients. Financial terms of the Uplift sale were not disclosed.
Where IMS sits in the expert-services market
Expert witness placement is a distinct adjacency to the financial expert network business. The buyer is the litigation team at a law firm or a corporate legal department, not a hedge fund analyst. The compliance perimeter is different: rather than MNPI screening, the gating issues are Daubert admissibility, conflicts checks, and prior testimony records. The economics are project-based and tied to active matters, not subscription-based.
IMS is one of the larger consolidators in that space. Other recognizable names in litigation-adjacent expert sourcing include Round Table Group (Thomson Reuters), JurisLogic, and the legal practice groups inside the major financial-services expert networks. The vertical has been quietly active for PE: predictable demand from a fragmented buyer base, recurring expert rosters that improve with scale, and limited tech disruption to underwrite against.
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