“We have not run into issues that Benesch didn’t already have the expertise in solving. Their dental group within their Healthcare+ practice is second to none.”
Dr. Alex Giannini, Chris McClure, and John McClure
Co-founders
Aligned Dental Partners
Aligned Dental Partners provides strategic, operational and clinical consulting and management to help entrepreneurial dentists and DSOs grow and scale—while at the same time managing and growing their own businesses. Mergers, acquisitions, partnerships and finance deals are frequent and complex. Aligned Dental’s management team relies on Benesch not only to handle the myriad of regulatory, tax, real estate and corporate matters involved but also for novel, creative solutions that close deals and enable long-term successful outcomes across the board.
Could your business use a strategic, deal-savvy legal team? Learn more about our relationship with Aligned Dental Partners at www.beneschlaw.com/myteam.
The following is a testimonial from Dr. Alex Giannini, Chris McClure and John McClure, Co-founders of Aligned Dental Partners, an industry leader in dental consulting.
Tell me about Aligned Dental Partners.
Aligned Dental is a consulting and management company that works with entrepreneurial dentists and DSOs. Our primary focus is helping them build and scale their organizations and create value along the way. Having done that ourselves, we rely on our years of industry experience to help dentists and entrepreneurs who want to grow and scale their companies in a similar fashion. We consult strategically, operationally, and clinically, nationwide, and occasionally internationally.
In our strategic consulting capacity, we help our clients with high-level business strategy, raise capital for expansion, buy additional practice locations, work on partnership issues and position them to increase the value of their group practice. In operational consulting, we help them improve day-to-day operations, grow revenue and increase the practice's EBITDA, as well as build up their group’s management team. Clinical consulting is where we work with dentists and hygienists to increase productivity and enhance their clinical and communication skills.
How did you start working with Benesch?
We were introduced to Benesch through KeyBank back in 2011. At the time, we were working with the late Jim Hill, Benesch’s former Managing Partner. For the past decade-plus, Rob Marchant has been our lead Benesch Partner. We’ve also worked with a number of other Benesch attorneys in various practices: Andrew Fiorella in Litigation; Kathleen Vlasek in Real Estate; Sean Crowley and Julia Rolniak in Tax; Kristo Pantelides, Anthony Rossi, Martha Nikolaus, and Jennifer Garberich in Corporate & Securities; and Joseph Gross in Employment Law.
What does Benesch do for you?
The majority of our relationship with Benesch is as part of a project team, where we quarterback a project together with a dental company that has contracted with us. We bring in the legal team (Benesch) that ultimately contracts with our clients and we all work together strategically to solve various challenges for our clients.
In consulting, we solve a variety of problems. For example, we help with the acquisition of other dental businesses, so Benesch will help us with the purchase and sale agreements and assist with the entire acquisition process and any documentation required for the client to practice. We also work with quite a few consulting clients on the legal restructuring of their business, including the formation of entities, partner buy-in, tax issues related to various components of transactions and any litigation or issues that may arise for client practices.
Importantly, Benesch has been our legal team in a series of complex mergers in the dental industry, where we rolled up and started new companies. They provided legal guidance and backing and helped architect no less than a dozen large-scale mergers.
What do you like about working with Benesch?
They have a great office and a really comprehensive team that has helped us land the plane on countless deals. They’re thoughtful, creative and think outside the box. They respond immediately. We have not run into issues that they didn’t already have the expertise to solve.
Benesch has a unique understanding of our business. Their dental division within their Healthcare+ Practice is second to none. We’ve developed close relationships with the Partners and in dealing with the various practice areas we described. They’re also a reliable source for our clients, who provide very strong feedback on how they enjoy working with our team, which Benesch is a big part of.
What value have you found by working with Benesch?
They’re very good at getting to a successful outcome. They’ve been able to bring creative strategies that are not one-size-fits-all. So, when a client has a complex need—whether they’re trying to close on a practice or need a creative way to solve deal structure if they’re forming a new company—Benesch is able to bring unique options to the table in a creative fashion so we can get a deal done. Some attorneys would prefer to drag out the process and litigate, whereas Benesch comes to the table trying to work with opposing counsel to achieve a successful outcome.
What’s challenging about your business?
We work in a highly regulated environment and in highly regulated healthcare. There are more complex nuances to the business side of healthcare than many industries, so it requires creative structures and an immense amount of patience and understanding. We’re working with clinicians who have day jobs and are not always available and who don’t always have an understanding of the regulatory side of their industry. It takes nuance to deal with all of those factors, oftentimes having to work late into the evenings and weekends to accommodate the various schedules of our consulting team and our mutual clients that practice day to day.
Anything else you’d like to add?
As a consulting and management company, Aligned Dental has a variety of legal needs of our own. As we acquire and partner with other dental practices and dental businesses, we need a legal partner who is constantly available and aware of what’s going on in the DSO industry. Benesch has that knowledge base and experience we rely on to get our deals done. We’re at the perfect confluence of operations, clinical management and finances, so we need all of those to work harmoniously. Legal often overlays all those different parts and we have a good legal team that understands those specifics.
We have developed a unique reputation in the industry for being able to help dentists create, build and grow unique companies. We’re doing very complex work to help dentists be more competitive in an environment that continues to become more challenging to scale based on the saturation and consolidation that’s already taking place in the industry. So, since we’re doing some unique projects, we need legal counsel that’s able to represent those clients or those projects appropriately, get them closed and do so in a way that’s also scalable. Our clients depend on us to do that, and we depend on third-party advisors like Benesch, who are involved in our projects to achieve a successful outcome.