Following two years of process mapping, planning and development, Linklaters has launched due diligence platform ReportiQ, which manages the due diligence process from scanning a data room to generating a final report.
Built in partnership with Californian due diligence management vendor Wizdocs, ReportiQ enables Linklaters lawyers and clients to manage and track all stages of due diligence in one place.
Speaking to Legal IT Insider, Linklaters global head of practice innovation, Greg Baker said: “We have been working with Wizdocs on the design and development of this project for two years and we’re now rolling it out, which is incredibly exciting.
“The genesis of this was us looking at multiple suggestions on our ideas platform Ideas Hub around due diligence and improving the process around it. We had client and lawyer feedback, and ReportIQ is really the result of us pulling together multiple strands in a single platform.”
The project was funded by the practice innovation team, headed by Baker. It was led by corporate partner Timo Engelhardt in Germany, and supported by Jennifer Klement and Kris Sales in the practice innovation team.
Baker said: “The process mapping is one of the reasons why I’m so excited about it. We mapped out the due diligence process and spent time improving it. We said, ‘’These are the opportunities to make the experience better for the lawyers and clients, and bring in automation.’
“When we started on ReportiQ, there was a sea of yellow because it touched everything around it, from scanning a data room and working out what documents you need to review; to pulling together the team; to generating the report. It’s all covered by ReportiQ.
“The expression ‘end-to-end’ gets used quite a lot but this is genuinely end-to-end.”
According to Baker, ReportiQ does not overlap with ‘transaction management’ platforms such as Litera Transact. While in theory it is a replacement for other collaboration tools, Baker says that ReportiQ compliments features in tools such as HighQ Collaborate, which is used by the firm in the due diligence process.
ReportiQ is already fully operational in Germany and Belgium, and is currently being rolled out across all Linklaters jurisdictions with the UK, U.S., Sweden, Italy and Spain next in line.
Linklaters advised a leading industrials client on a recent acquisition. The multi-jurisdictional team was led by Engelhardt, working closely with teams in Germany, the UK, Italy, Belgium and Spain.
Engelhardt said: “The launch of ReportiQ has been game-changing, with both clients and internal due diligence teams immediately feeling the benefit. We achieved an enormous step-up compared to traditional approaches. The Linklaters team passionately developed this tool over two years with a view to accelerating and streamlining due diligence processes, enhancing accessibility of relevant information gathered whilst presenting key results in a significantly more user-friendly way. The careful design and building of ReportiQ demonstrates the innovative approach we take when building our tech workbench.”