How We Started

The year was 2000, and Steve Best (Best Law Firm Solutions), Debbie Foster (InTouch Legal), Barron Henley, and Paul Unger (HMU Consulting) were attending a software conference in Toronto. Right off the bat, we hit it off. We became friends, and then sounding boards for each other when it came to running our small legal technology consulting businesses. We began to see each other more often at conferences and industry events, and we quickly realized that we had a lot of similar business philosophies and wanted to explore working together more closely. In 2004, Affinity Consulting Group was formed as a consortium of our three companies. Over the next five years, we were joined by Cindy Melfa (Legal Tech Solutions), Britt Lorish (Automated Horizons), and Sandy Adams (Strategic Legal Technology Solutions). It became clear that not only should we do business together, we should be in business together.

Starting in 2010, and wrapping up in 2014, we executed on a plan to formally merge our companies (and our people, cultures and product/service offerings) into a single company. Who would have known that what started as a friendly relationship between competitors that were six distinct and geographically diverse companies would grow into executing on a dream to become the leading provider of technology, management, marketing and finance solutions for law firms and legal departments of all sizes.

While we started by implementing specific technology and software solutions, we realized quickly that we could better serve our clients by focusing on their whole practice, offering the kinds of deep insight only a team with unmatched experience like ours could provide. We also understand the value of guiding our clients through a vendor-agnostic software selection process, but only after thoroughly understanding their needs and their opportunities to better leverage technology to build a thriving firm or department.

At Affinity, we believe that a strong, unified culture and symbiotic relationships are the keys to our success. Our team of loyal, seasoned consultants and trainers bring to every client relationship a kind of stability and institutional knowledge you simply can’t find anywhere else. Since our founding, we are proud to have continually delivered on our promise to become our clients’ trusted advisors and advocates. We do that by helping them to run more efficient and productive organizations by recommending solutions and strategies designed to meet their individual needs in the most cost-effective ways possible.