“The new normal” in law firms demands a relentless focus on efficiency. Even complex transactional work offers opportunities for process improvement. Lexis is expanding the offerings of Practice Advisor and taking aim at market share now held by Practical Law Company (PLC) a UK company which was recently purchased by Thomson Reuters.Lexis Practice Advisor is a separate application from the LexisNexis research service, but it draws on some of the prime intellectual content behind the paywall to provide practical guidance on transactions. It also leverages Lexis Advance functionality including the search algorithm, filters, alerts and folders.

New Modules Today Lexis is announcing the addition of two modules: Mergers & Acquisitions (with Market Tracker), and Securities & Capital Markets. Prior modules include: Business & Commercial, Financial Restructuring & Bankruptcy, California, Corporate Counsel

According to Lexis executives, they set out to develop an easy intuitive product which optimizes workflow and mitigates key pain points of the transactional practitioner:: simplify the routine processes, reduce the learning curve, jump start the drafting process.

The Practice Advisor provides, Step by step guidance, how-to, checklists, model documents. Commentary is written by experienced practitioners who are both internal and external authorities.

“Crowdsourced” Content. Like PLC Lexis has hired experienced practitioners to develop the content. Here comes the crowd. Unlike PLC they have hired practitioners at Amlaw 100 firms to write the practice materials.”The meet our authors” section discloses who is providing editorial content. This is the first workflow tool I can think of which combines commentary  from both internal and external experts.

Lexis Practice Advisor – Mergers & Acquisitions with Lexis Market Tracker

The Lexis Practice Advisor Mergers & Acquisitions module covers the key areas of M&A transactions such as Public Company M&A, Private Asset Acquisitions, Private Stock Acquisitions and Private Mergers. It addresses the core activities of an M&A attorney – from structuring and planning a deal, handling preliminary agreements and conducting due diligence, to drafting and negotiating the main purchase or merger agreement, signing and closing. Built and managed by a team that includes experienced former Am Law 100 M&A attorneys, the Mergers & Acquisitions module also features content contributions from lawyers at Amlaw 100 firms. The advisor includes a variety of forms including: standard templates, annotated forms and negotiated forms. The forms are interactive and allow lawyers to add terms which are applied throughout the draft which can then be saved in Word.

Lexis Market Tracker

Lexis Market Tracker tool,  offers real-time insight in the M&A market with granular searching of  over 1,000 recent deals using over 900 deal points. Lawyers can search, compare and analyze relevant deals, negotiated terms, structures and provisions, enabling them to accelerate and optimize their deal negotiations and executions. It allows lawyers to analyze deals by law firm or deal terms. The filtering features allow lawyers to save hours of time in identifying and comparing deal terms conforming to specific criteria. The deal results can be downloaded into a spreadsheet. Searching by law firm  name allows a lawyer to see what terms opposing counsel has agreed to in a similar deal. One of the more advanced features shown below, illustrates how the report can compute analytics “on the fly” showing metrics for termination fees in Health Care  industry deals.

Termination fees in Health Care Industry

Lexis Practice Advisor – Securities & Capital Markets

The Lexis Practice Advisor Securities & Capital Markets module addresses the primary elements of securities transactions, including Private Offerings, IPOs, Rule 144A/Reg. S Debt Offerings and Follow-on Offerings and key filings, such as Proxy Statements and Periodic Reports. Featuring contributions from lawyers at preeminent law firms. The module offers legal analysis, cases, codes and SEC administrative materials, such as no-action letters, as well as compliance and disclosure interpretations and releases for key federal securities law topics. It also includes 50-state coverage for important issues under Blue Sky Law.

Up Next Additional releases this year will include Real Estate and Intellectual Property. They can be purchased as an annual all-inclusive subscription .Modules are available as stand-alone products or in conjunction with other LexisNexis subscriptions.