The model you are referring to works fine when the industry is expanding and/or legal entities turn over eventually.

Which is not uncommon.

It’s also one that is typically pretty good for customers that like to do an investment and then continue to reap benefits from it. The capitalization model.

The ‘lease’ model (SaaS) is good for customers with highly variable licensing/software needs or that expect extremely high turnover, and prefer to see these costs as, essentially ‘cost of production’. The cash flow model. It does require a lot of trust, however, that when the lease comes up for renewal the fees won’t be usurious.

Neither is necessarily wrong. A whole lot of folks are starting to realize the downsides of expenses coming out of cashflow though! And losing a lot of trust.