Cybersecurity Leader Achieves Swift Due Diligence Success with Legalpeople

Problem

The global cybersecurity market is now a multi-trillion-dollar industry, protecting companies of all sizes and across every sector from evolving threats. One of our clients, a leader in the cybersecurity space, decided to enhance their platform by acquiring a UK-based email security provider that would further boost their delivery and reach.

After completing their letter of intent (LOI), our client was ready to conduct legal and financial due diligence in parallel with securing representations and warranties insurance. However, their LOI exclusivity period required a rapid review of key provisions in the target’s customer agreements. Their in-house counsel would be unable to meet the tight timeline without outside assistance.

That’s when Legalpeople reached out. A member of our business development team shared the value of our contract analysis services right when the client was presenting their offer to the target company. Recognizing the business value, the cybersecurity firm entrusted our team with the due diligence project, drawn to the cost-effectiveness and scalability of our solution.

Solution

Since time was of the essence, the Legalpeople team jumped into action. The client gave us access to their data room, which contained all the target company’s relevant documents. The project required us to review contracts for the target’s top 25 customers by revenue using a due diligence template provided by our client. After completing the document collection, we quickly learned the scope of the project was much larger than initially anticipated. The volume of documents quadrupled, but the original deadline remained the same. In order to keep the project on schedule, Legalpeople scaled up the contract review team in an abbreviated period, deploying a larger team of seasoned attorneys with M&A expertise from our deep bench of candidates.

Using the due diligence template provided by the client, we first created an AI-powered data model capable of yielding structured data values that allowed for real-time aggregate reporting. Our review included concepts like term, renewal, assignment, change of control, and termination, as well as commercial terms like limitation of liability and indemnification, to ensure a comprehensive set of actionable data around risk management.

Because our client was new to the structured contract data approach, there was an element of education to the whole process. We provided our client with sample due diligence data to illustrate the power of the final deliverable. Additionally, Legalpeople moved quickly through the documents, chronicling questions and providing notations to enhance the client’s ability to respond.

Result

Our client was extremely happy with the results. Their standard approach, relying upon an associate to review the documents, would have likely resulted in either a missed deadline as they dealt with four times the expected volume, or a significant increase in legal fees for the additional review resources leading to increased transaction costs and impacting deal economics. Instead, using our contract review services allowed them to confidently acquire their target company, expanding their technological capability and their world-class cyber-defense.