Ariz. Law Firm Partly Owned By Investment Firm Launches

Kevin Penton
Ariz. Law Firm Partly Owned By Investment Firm Launches

In the News

A Miami-based private investment firm has partnered with an Arizona attorney to launch a law firm in the Grand Canyon State focusing on legal areas such as medical malpractice and wrongful death, one of only 25 alternative business structures authorized by the Arizona Supreme Court.

Scout Law Group

A Miami-based private investment firm has partnered with an Arizona attorney to launch a law firm in the Grand Canyon State focusing on legal areas such as medical malpractice and wrongful death, one of only 25 alternative business structures authorized by the Arizona Supreme Court.

Scout Law Group will be based in Phoenix and headed by Steve German, an attorney who said Wednesday that he anticipates that the firm's financial backing through 777 Partners will allow it to take on cases more robustly and to increasingly work in areas such as mass torts.

We have the resources, the finances, and all the support we could possibly ask for to provide superior legal services," German said. "We feel very, very confident with our model.

German's business arrangement with 777 Partners - which has investments in businesses as diverse as the Sevilla Football Club in Spain, Brickell Insurance Group and several Asia Pacific airlines that work together as Value Alliance - will allow him to make day-to-day legal decisions in the litigation that the firm will take on, he said.

Every single decision that has been made, as far as which clients to retain, which ones to decline, whether a lawsuit should be filed, all those different decisions are solely left to attorneys, German said.

Steven Pasko, the founder and managing partner of 777 Partners, said Wednesday that his investment firm tries to be a good partner rather than try to run 50 different businesses. While his firm can provide shared services in areas such as human resources or in information technology, it otherwise allows each business to operate as it sees fit.

What we do is we find good partners who have a successful track record of running a particular type of business and we back them, Pasko said.

Arizona in August 2020 became the first U.S. jurisdiction to allow non lawyer ownership of law firms after the state Supreme Court voted to let nonlawyer-owned firms offer legal advice through an alternative business structure, or ABS, license.

The Arizona Supreme Court approved Scout's license in April, according to court documents.