Due diligence

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Hi, this is Peter and welcome to TransLegal's lesson of the week.

Today we're going to be talking about due diligence, otherwise known as DD.

Now typically due diligence is the process by which a potential buyer of a company or a business, known as the target, investigates the target to determine whether or not to go ahead with the proposed acquisition and on what terms they'll go ahead with the deal.

Lawyers will often be instructed to review the target's documentation related to agreements with third parties, loans, real estate, environmental matters, intellectual property rights, etc., etc.

Alternatively, lawyers may be asked to perform a vendor due diligence, which is essentially the same process but carried out internally on behalf of a vendor or seller in preparation for sale.

Traditionally, as you can imagine, or perhaps you've experienced, due diligence has not been popular among lawyers since it can become repetitive and may involve long hours in dark rooms known as data rooms, trawling through copious amounts of documents. Today however, there are virtual data rooms and these are more commonly used. In virtual data rooms, documents relating to the target can be retrieved on-line from the comfort of one's own office.

That's it for today. If you have any questions about today's lesson of week, please leave them in the comments section below and myself or one of my colleagues will get back to you as soon as we can. Thank you.