Spotlight On: Michael Platner, Managing Partner, Lewis Brisbois

Key points:

• • Lewis Brisbois is expanding its national platform while helping middle-market businesses grow and prepare for liquidity events.
• • Strong private equity demand and Atlanta’s business environment are creating new opportunities for business owners.
• • The firm encourages leaders to build long-term value by preparing early for future transactions.

July 2026 — In an interview with Focus:, Michael Platner, managing partner at Lewis Brisbois, discussed Atlanta’s business environment, the growing demand for middle-market companies, and how private business owners can prepare for liquidity opportunities. Platner speaks nationally and internationally on merger and acquisition and partnering strategies to help create value and liquidity while reducing conflict. He also hosts “Going Liquid,” a workshop series that guides business owners in preparing their organizations for future liquidity events. The South Florida Legal Guide has recognized Platner as a Top Lawyer for more than a decade. “Atlanta is a great place to build a world-class team for almost any business looking to grow value and wealth for stakeholders,” he said.

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How is Lewis Brisbois continuing to expand its national platform across corporate law, litigation, securities, finance, and industry-focused legal services?

The firm has been growing steadily for over 45 years by hiring talented lawyers in the markets where our clients want us to be. That is how we built such an effective office in Atlanta.

I manage our Fort Lauderdale and Nashville offices, but Atlanta was one of the main reasons I came to the firm. I went to Emory Law School, earned my MBA and law degree there, and knew I wanted to be in Georgia. My family lives there, I have a home there, and I am a Georgia lawyer. Being part of the Atlanta community is important to Lewis Brisbois, but it is also important to me personally.

Our business practice thrives on defending corporate America throughout the nation, particularly family-owned, entrepreneur-owned, and institutionally owned private companies. That is the No. 1 source of growth we have throughout the United States. I think we are the largest firm in the country with a priority focus on middle and lower-middle market businesses.

Our goal is to help those businesses maximize value for their shareholders, stakeholders, employees, and customers while bringing them the types of services that the largest public companies often take for granted. Some of our strongest relationships are with clients ranging from $10 million to $150 million in revenue that are growing quickly because of what they bring to their industries.

Atlanta is a vibrant community for attracting talent and business. Georgia has a favorable tax environment, strong educational infrastructure, and fewer unnecessary government hurdles than many states. There are many great universities there, including Emory and Georgia State, creating a strong labor pool.

Atlanta is one of our top offices in terms of lawyer concentration. To provide the services businesses need, it is not enough to have corporate finance lawyers. We also need strong employment lawyers, risk management lawyers, and intellectual property lawyers. We have two national leaders of our intellectual property law section housed in our Atlanta office.

How do you maintain a consistent client experience across a national footprint while staying connected to Atlanta?

It goes to the way we have grown our Atlanta office, which is by bringing in local lawyers, one by one, to create an environment that is nationally aware but locally focused.

In Atlanta, we already have significant relationships with the community through the lawyers who joined our firm and represent strong local institutions. We have not tried to import talent needlessly from other places to solve issues unique to Georgia companies.

That is how we create a consistent client experience. Clients want their lawyers to become part of their team and part of their business continuum. We try to achieve that with clients throughout the country.

At the same time, the needs of a client headquartered in Atlanta may differ from those of a client in California, New York, or Florida. We value the customized relationship our practice offers so we can understand not just how to manage litigation or transactions, but how to become part of a client’s business success.

What trends are you seeing in M&A activity and the private equity environment in Atlanta?

That is the sweet spot of my daily practice: helping private business owners scale and create wealth through liquidity events and transactions. That requires helping clients assemble the right teams of CPAs, commercial bankers, insurance providers, and private wealth managers. Atlanta is a great place to do that because there is such depth of talent and so many choices among firms of all sizes and experiences.

We regularly represent companies in Atlanta that are not just seeking corporate finance, but are also looking for liquidity transactions that allow successful private owners to take chips off the table. Those owners often become investors in the community with the proceeds they create in a vibrant business environment like Atlanta.

Right now, private equity has a tremendous amount of money on the sidelines looking to buy or invest in middle and lower-middle market companies. At the same time, the number of companies available to receive that funding is declining because so many private equity firms are buying them up.

If you own and are building your own company, you can be comforted by the fact that demand for companies like yours is increasing while supply is decreasing. We are entering another period where there is a vibrant market and many liquidity opportunities for companies that are properly positioned.

Professional investors have already set the standards for what they expect to see in these companies, so it is now much clearer what the roadmap looks like to bring a company to market and create multigenerational wealth for a family from owning and building a private company. That roadmap does not require a lot of guesswork anymore, but it does require a lot of hard work.

What is the focus of your Going Liquid workshops, and what should business leaders prioritize now?

For many years, we have helped business leaders develop their mindset as investors beyond simply being entrepreneurs or business operators. For many private business owners, their business asset is their largest personal asset, and the opportunity to create real wealth comes from creating liquidity events around that asset.

We help them access the roadmap created by the professional private equity and private owner community so they can start thinking with a liquidity-priority mindset. That means spending a portion of their time working on the business, not just in the business.

It is not just about thinking that one day they will exit and make a lot of money. It is about thinking every day about what they need to do to be prepared so that when an opportunity appears, they are ready.

Sometimes people appear lucky when they sell their companies for $100 million or $200 million, but the definition of luck is when preparedness and opportunity meet. Opportunity is not always something you control, but preparedness is something you do control.

The Going Liquid workshops and the learning attitude we take toward helping private business owners are all about preparedness and readiness. It is about making that a daily function of the business, not something that suddenly appears when it looks like it is time for a sale.

We are fortunate that in many markets, people recognize that our team is oriented toward helping family-owned businesses find their way toward that first major wealth-creating event.

Sometimes what we get paid for as experienced corporate and business lawyers is serving as English-to-English translators. This is a complicated world, but the better you understand something, the more likely it is that you can explain it simply.

Where do you see the biggest opportunities in Atlanta’s business environment?

I wish I were smart enough to predict which industries are the best to invest in at any particular point in time, because then maybe I would become just an investor instead of a lawyer and business counselor. What I do know is that Georgia has a good economy, and the U.S. economy seems to be growing.

There is significant opportunity for businesses to take advantage of the talent available and the business environment in Georgia, particularly North Georgia and Atlanta. The Atlanta area is a very large region with many tentacles. Alpharetta, for example, is now considered a suburb of Atlanta, when years ago it was raw land.

There is tremendous opportunity for lower-cost, high-quality talent, premises, logistics, and transportation, along with maybe the greatest airport in the United States. Atlanta has so many attributes. It is a center point for access to resources at reasonable prices that can help companies build.

Atlanta is a great place to build a world-class team for almost any business looking to grow value and wealth for stakeholders. It is also an innovative place where people and industries from across the country have migrated. Look at what has happened with the entertainment industry, but it goes beyond that. Energy and healthcare are also major opportunities.

The resource base for wealth management, accounting services, and investment banking is also very deep in Atlanta. It has become a great place to do business, build a business, and create wealth. That is what we like to help middle- and lower-middle-market company owners do: create wealth for themselves and their investors, who are often simply their families.

Want more? Read the Focus: Atlanta report.