M&A: How to improve the efficiency of your closings ?

Whether you’re a corporate lawyer, an investment fund or an investment banker, now is still the time to ensure you’re properly equipped and ready for the summer closing rush. 

Closing deals this summer: the yearly challenge returns 

A warmer weather is by no means synonymous with relaxation for M&A professionals. The already tricky task becomes even more complicated as the vacations begin: lack of staff to finalize the closing, absence of the parties for the signing, etc. Sometimes this can wait until September, and sometimes not for strategic reasons. 

As all these pitfalls can make an already complicated process even more complex, organizing and planning your legal transactions with a legal project management solution tailored to your needs will enable you to anticipate these stressful periods as much as possible. 

It’s essential to opt for a solution with a simple, user-friendly experience to ensure total adoption by your employees, customers and colleagues. In busy times, you don’t have time to read a manual or call in a consultant. A solution with live customer support is essential, especially if you need help verifying the identity of different signatories remotely. 

If you want to organize a digital closing with the minimum of fuss, forget about e-mail or phone calls. Especially as your contacts will probably be quite busy themselves, or on the move. Instead, opt for a collaborative project management platform in SaaS mode (a software solution hosted in the Cloud, accessible from anywhere and from any device). On the platform, you can upload your documents for the due diligence, compile your closing checklist, exchange views with the parties’ lawyers in a comment thread, and organize your remote signing session. 

Rather than a Drive-type document-sharing platform, opt for a solution tailored to legal practice, enabling you to escrow documents, generate bibles and, above all, protect your data. Opt for a solution that complies with the highest security standards, and enables fine-grained management of access rights to guarantee complete confidentiality of participants and shared information. 

Closd, a collaborative platform for managing legal projects, offers a 360° solution and supports legal professionals in digitizing their operations, from the due diligence phase through to signing. 

10 tips to speed up your closings 

Discover 10 tips that can help you save time on manual or low-value-added tasks by using a collaborative solution like Closd: 

1. Use a single platform to collect your supporting documents – forget about emails and online transfers  
2. Invite participants to join the platform after setting up all the parameters  
3. Hide groups of participants from each other, so you don’t have to recreate a project for each potential buyer  
4. Activate identity verification for future signatories when sending the invitation, to save time on the signing session  
5. Automatically number your folders and files to improve communication  
6. Import and save your folder tree  
7. Save your closing memo templates so you’ll have them ready when the time comes   
8. Use your electronic signature tool’s scheduling tools to send documents at a precise time  
9. Use your solution’s automatic bible generation for a better customer experience: no more fiddly scanning and binding.  
10. Get an electronic safe with probative value to export originals directly and store them securely. 

By adopting these practical tips, you’ll be able to focus more on your legal expertise, destress your deals, improve transaction security and enhance your customers’ experience. 

Want to learn more? Contact our team for a free demo of the solution, or sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date with our tips for optimizing your leagl operations management!