Levenfeld Pearlstein, LLC provides legal and business counsel to sophisticated clients across a broad range of corporate, tax, real estate, financing, restructuring, estate planning, employment, intellectual property, and litigation matters. LP works with clients to understand the full impact of the law on their businesses and proactively addresses their legal issues so that they can quickly return to doing what they do best. While the firm possesses the resources and depth necessary to manage the most complex matters most efficiently and cost-effectively possible, it truly differentiates itself through its commitment to “The LP Way”. Unique among law firms, the LP Way is the firm’s model for creating an exceptional client experience.

Professional and financial services firms turn knowledge into value. Intapp securely connects that knowledge, making vital firm intelligence easy to find, understand, and translate into decisive action. Intapp solutions helps firms accelerate the flow of information across the business, activating expertise and sparking innovation.

McGowan Program Administrators (MPA) is America’s leading writer of specialized insurance programs, available exclusively through MPA on “A” Rated, Admitted Paper in all 50 states. For more than six decades, we’ve been dedicated to program business, delivering products that help brokers stand out through competitive pricing and coverage.

Since 1998, McGowan Professional has been one of the nation’s largest writers of Accountants E&O, advising firms and tailoring policies to the unique needs of the accounting industry. Through our Private Equity Solutions, we’ve supported hundreds of PE/CPA transactions, partnering with top private equity groups worldwide to provide professional liability coverage designed for today’s complex M&A landscape.

Daniel Hood has been editor-in-chief of Accounting Today since 2011; he joined Accounting Today as managing editor in 1998. A graduate of Georgetown University, he has also served as a business editor for the New York Daily News, and as a production editor for The Wall Street Journal Europe. He is the author of five novels and a guidebook to New York City.

Canopy helps accountants build the firm they’ve always wanted with AI-powered practice management that includes a CRM, secure document exchange, workflow, time & billing, engagements & proposals, as well as client intake and automations. Trusted by more than 4,000 accounting firms, Canopy’s solutions are SOC2-certified and data-encrypted.

For many firms, the decision to pursue private equity is not theoretical; it is a complex leadership conversation that touches every aspect of the firm, from culture and governance to partner economics and long-term strategy. In this session, accounting firm leaders who have evaluated — and in some cases pursued or declined — private equity will share how their leadership teams approached the decision-making process.

Panelists will discuss the internal conversations that shaped their thinking, the questions partners asked, the concerns that surfaced, and the factors that ultimately influenced their direction. This candid, experience-driven discussion will provide attendees with practical insight into how firm leaders are evaluating private equity today — and what they learned along the way, whether they moved forward with a deal or decided to remain independent.

Private equity transactions in accounting are evolving quickly. What began as a relatively new source of capital for a handful of firms has become a more sophisticated market with changing deal structures, different investor expectations, and new questions around governance, leadership control, compensation, and exit strategies. This panel will explore how PE deals are being structured today, what firms should understand about recapitalizations and future liquidity events, and how the role of investors is changing as the profession moves deeper into its PE era. 

Strategic investment in accounting is no longer a niche topic reserved for the largest firms. As firms confront succession challenges, capital constraints, talent shortages, and the need to invest in technology, leaders are exploring a wider range of ownership and growth models — from traditional mergers to alternative practice structures and private equity-backed platforms. This panel will examine how the investment landscape is changing, what is driving interest in outside capital, and how firms of different sizes are thinking about long-term sustainability and growth. Private equity’s appeal has largely centered on access to capital for technology, M&A, new service lines, and liquidity for partners, while also introducing a very different operating mindset for firms.