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Research for Transactional Practice

This Research Guide is designed to provide guidance on conducting research supporting common tasks encountered in transactional practice..

Introduction

Market standard and deal point reports and tools allow researches to analyze and compare multiple deals, providing helpful insights to transactional lawyers. These tools help lawyers prepare for negotiations and drafting assignments. There are a wide variety of tools available for this type of research, including business information databases and specialized tools on legal research platforms. The resources you will have access to in practice will depend on your workplace. An explanation of the major resources available at BC Law are included below.  

Contact a Teaching & Research Librarian if you need to locate this type of data. We can help you identify the best database to use to obtain the information that you need.  

Practical Law What's Market

What's Marketa tool included in the West Practical Law platform, allows researchers to analyze and compare specific deal terms across multiple agreements and access the full text of the underlying documents. The information found in What's Market is used in practice to assist in preparing for negotiation and drafting by helping practitioners understand what is standard or common practice in the industry or legal market involved.  

What's Market includes databases with a variety of agreements and transactions including license, underwriting, merger, employment, lease, commercial and credit agreements as well as initial public offerings and spin-offs. Once you select a database you can filter the agreements by date, industry and deal value along with other agreement specific deal points and then compare multiple deals.

What's Market databases are not comprehensive with regard to dates of coverage or deals included.  Given the importance of finding agreements or transactions that most closely match those that you are working on, it is critical to first check the coverage of the database by clicking on theicon to determine the dates of coverage and any other limitations on the agreements included in the database.  

To locate What's Market:

 

Deal Analytics

Bloomberg's Deal Analytics has two searchable databases, one for mergers and acquisitions and the other for equity offerings. Both have over 25 searchable deal term fields that allow you to identify deals with similar structure and deal points to the deal they you're working on. Deal Analytics also let's you create a customized report that can be exported to Excel and will provide links to the underlying agreements to the deal if they are publicly available.

  • Deal Analytics: Equity Offerings : contains over 200,000 worldwide equity offerings
  • Deal Analytics: M&A : contains information on worldwide public and private M&A and venture capital transactions

To access the Deal Analytics database on Bloomberg Law, go to the Transactional Intelligence tab and from the pull down menu select Deal Analytics. Once in Deal Analytics select either Mergers & Acquisitions and Equity Offerings.

Deal Point Studies

Deal point studies aggregate and analyze data from transactions and present the information in a visible format. The reports provide insight into common practice and trends in the applicable market. Most deal point reports do not allow the researcher to manipulate or customize the data included in the report and do not provide access to the underlying documents.  One of the best known studies is the ABA Business Law Section's Deal Point Studies which include annual reports on Public Target and Private Target Merger & Acquisitions Deal Point Studies. Access to these reports require a membership to the ABA's Business Law Section but they are commonly available in many law firms.  

At BC Law, you can access a variety of deal point studies on Bloomberg Law's Transactional Intelligence Center in the In Focus: Deal Points site.  Bloomberg aggregates deal point studies from SRS Acquiom and those generated by law firms which analyze M&A, IPO and venture capital transactions.

Another way to locate deal point studies is to run a Google search.  A number of law and financial firms provide access to deal point studies for free as a marketing tool for their services. Just include the term "deal point" and terms describing the type of transaction you are researching.  

It is important to understand that deal point studies are usually based on information gathered from transactions that took place in the prior calendar year due to the time it takes to gather and analyze the data.  So always read the information about the study and how the data was gathered so you know what transactions are being included in the report.