The Challenge
An industry-leading national company that has a business growth model including periodic acquisitions throughout the year of smaller peer businesses wanted to accomplish the following primary goals for the due diligence performed in connection with such acquisitions:
Reduce the overall cost of contract review as part of the due diligence process
Establish a process promoting quality, efficient gathering of data, early issue identification, key metrics tracking and real-time communication of critical information acquired during review process to key stakeholders, including outside deal counsel, the in-house legal team and the business management team
Capture and retain the data and knowledge acquired during the contracts review process in a manner that provides post-closing benefits, such as facilitating faster post-acquisition integration, as well as creating a post-closing playbook
The Solution
Legility delivered significant hourly rate savings as well as enabled client to:
- Identify & Present
Identify and present business-critical diligence information in real-time, thereby minimizing decision-makers’ review time of relevant data and enabling them to identify critical issues early in the process - Track & Institute
Track metrics and institute reporting habits, increasing predictability for budgets and timelines - Create Value-adds
Create value-adds such as automated creation of schedules and post-closing playbooks - Efficiency & Cost Savings
Achieve significant efficiencies and cost-savings through seamless conversion and importing of data into the client’s contract management system, reducing completion of post-acquisition data integration to two weeks after closing, compared with six months to one year for previous acquisitions
The Process
Project and Process Workflow: Legility’s project manager designed, in cooperation with the in-house attorney team and outside deal counsel, a tailored project and process workflow that:
Established clear responsibilities for all parties involved
Provided guidance for communication flow and streamlined the intake, analysis and sharing of information to achieve real-time efficient reporting and decision-making capabilities
Allowed for the real-time tracking of key issues/metrics, as well as review time and budget
Review Technology: Legility’s use of industry-leading relational database technology (instead of a traditional spreadsheet) in the review and abstraction of data not only provides for a thorough quality-control process and real-time standardized reporting of metrics to assist with time and budgetary demands, but also allows for:
Creation of standardized discrete data capture fields designed to minimize the amount of time that reviewers spend typing repetitive information while maximizing the multi-purpose usefulness of the data and promoting enhanced consistency in the descriptions of standard contract terms and issues
Multiple users to simultaneously access live data in a single place which equals real-time access and view by all team members, including in-house and outside counsel
Seamless conversion and exporting contract data in the format needed to import contracts directly into the client’s contract management system without further work/clean-up
The Team
Legility provided a core team of seven to 10 review attorneys, which promotes retention of knowledge and experience from transaction to transaction; this translates into heightened accuracy and consistency as well as improved efficiency. Legility also provided a core attorney leadership team, including a dedicated technology consultant and project manager, a team leader and an assistant team leader. The blended rate for the entire team, including consulting, project management, workflow development and QC, in addition to the actual review of the contracts, was significantly lower than the cost of the company’s traditional diligence/attorney rates.
We were able to achieve significant efficiencies and cost-savings through seamless conversion and importing of data into the client's contract management system.
6000+
Number of documents
