There are many ways attorneys can make use of a virtual data room in their practice, including efficiently managing and storing data, securely transferring large volumes of documents outside the firewall and much more.
As I’ve discussed in the past, online collaboration platforms generally allow for far more secure communication than email and offer attorneys a secure online location for collaboration.
A virtual deal room is a convenient tool to securely organize and share large volumes of documents during the Private Placement process. An online document repository, or virtual deal room, is an attractive alternative to email for collecting and sharing this information in an organized fashion while keeping the data safe.
Recently, I have been talking to professionals that specialize in issuing private placements. A private placement is a funding round of securities that are issued to a select group of targeted, private investors. In my discussions, it has become apparent that there is an opportunity for professionals in this space to leverage the capabilities of a virtual data room, particularly if they manage more than one of these transactions annually.
The “why” of a business venture, for Sinek, is not simply the act of making money; rather, it points more to a cause, vision or purpose. He says most of us in our daily lives are pre-occupied by the “what” and the “how” – but are not driven by “the why.” I think Sinek’s correct – we spend much of our time just “getting work done” and don’t remind ourselves of “why” we even care to do it.
I watched an interesting talk by Simon Sinek on what makes certain companies or people achieve greatness. To explain his thesis, Sinek makes a very important distinction in defining what it takes to achieve entrepreneurial success: some people know “what” they do, some people know “how” they do it, but few people consider “why” they do it.
What I have learned is SaaS business forces you to focus on service. If a SaaS customer is not happy with your company’s support, s/he can “unsubscribe” with far less difficulty than if s/he was dealing with a locally installed system.
When I first went to trademark Firmex virtual data rooms as a software company, the trademark attorney told me that to trademark us as a product company I had to physically be able to “ship” something. “Send us a copy of your product on a disk with packaging.” My reaction was “huh?” – We have the internet – we don’t “ship” software on FEDEX trucks anymore, we let the internet take care of the distribution. According to the Trademark office, then, you’re not a software product company, you are a service company.
Firmex corporate clients are using their unlimited use virtual data room to share financial information with their auditors, setting up all their folders and documents online.
If anyone has ever had the pleasure of conducting a financial audit he/she is all too aware that it’s a time consuming process. The audit process has four main stages:
The process to take a new drug through pre-clinical and clinical trials is extensive. Since the Intellectual Property is so valuable and confidential, Life Sciences firms will generally limit the distribution of documentation in a secure virtual data room – they can watermark, restrict printing and save documents as required.
Many Firmex clients are Life Sciences firms developing new therapeutic medicines. What amazes me about this industry is the time horizon of 15+ years to take a drug from idea to market, costing millions, even billions of dollars. There are 3000-4000 early-stage research-driven firms funded by public markets or venture-capital that take on the technology risk of trying to develop new drug pipeline.
The recent advent of the kindle, the iPad and other paper eliminating devices serves as an interesting marker of just how archaic a practice it is to produce physical books for an industry as fast paced as M&A. Using a virtual data room to manage this process can accelerate the transaction process from the beginning, help manage costs and provide security measures that often fall through the cracks
Most of Firmex’s clients are now using the internet to distribute seller’s books or confidential information memorandums when managing a sell-side M&A transaction. However, there are firms that are continuing to create physical books, which can range from 50 to 200 pages. These books are typically distributed to a large number of potential buyers, particularly if an advisory firm routinely markets transactions to a database of private equity firms.
Virtual data rooms allow lawyers to store documents online, offering lawyers and their clients convenient access to important legal files.
In my last post we discussed how digital dictation systems can offer busy lawyers much-needed flexibility in the creation of legal documents. The next step, once you’ve created documents using digital dictation, is to store your documents online using virtual document management and collaboration systems. These convenient and efficient online platforms offer lawyers a 21st Century alternative to traditional document management systems.
Firmex is in the business of providing M&A advisors, lawyers and corporate executive staff a secure online data room for sharing critical operational, legal and financial documents with 3rd parties. Recently, a group of lawyers were convicted for trading insider information which was gleaned from picking through other lawyers’ client documents and another company was saved from losing all their documents in a fire by storing everything in their Firmex virtual deal room.
Firmex is in the business of providing M&A advisors, lawyers and corporate executive staff a secure online data room for sharing critical operational, legal and financial documents with 3rd parties. Not surprisingly, as the company’s CEO, I run into resistance from senior partners and executives about putting critical and highly confidential company information on the Internet. They are worried that it’s “not safe.”
In late 2008 we at Firmex were discussing strategy around enhancing our data room service for client satisfaction and planning for the future. We identified the need for a benchmark to measure our success in delivering our service to our clients. We also needed a better understanding of how clients feel about we deliver, and what they need in the future to enhance their experience.
In late 2008 we at Firmex were discussing strategy around enhancing our data room service for client satisfaction and planning for the future. We identified the need for a benchmark to measure our success in delivering our service to our clients. We also needed a better understanding of how clients feel about what we deliver and what they need in the future to enhance their experience.
Digital Rights Management, commonly known as DRM, refers to the ability to protect various types of electronic media. In recent years, DRM technology has become topical because of its role in protecting digital music and movies that make their way online. However, DRM also plays an important role in the financial transaction world offering security to those who share documents online in Virtual Data Rooms.
Digital Rights Management, commonly known as DRM, refers to the ability to protect various types of electronic media. In recent years, DRM technology has become topical because of its role in protecting digital music and movies that make their way online. However, DRM also plays an important role in the financial transaction world offering security to those who share documents online in Virtual Data Rooms.
With cloud computing, just as with any other type of storage of confidential client information, lawyers have the ethical obligation to exercise reasonable care to ensure that the cloud computing provider will preserve confidentiality and security of the data.
Lawyers have ethical duties to protect sensitive client data. When it comes to storing information in “the cloud,” just as with any other form of storage, taking steps to ensure that confidential client data is protected is imperative. Unfortunately, there are very few ethics opinions that have been issued on this topic, causing many lawyers to fear the potential ramifications of storing confidential client files via the cloud computing model.
Over the next few months, we will be making Firmex simpler for our clients to administer their virtual datarooms / workspaces and interact throughout the application
As developers we constantly focus our attention on the performance of our Firmex platform. While this concentration will always be an important aspect of what we do, it is imperative to direct our attention to exactly what we are developing and how it is being used. Since launching the new Firmex service-based architecture, our web application has experienced huge gains in speed and performance, paving the way for us to develop new ways to streamline workflow for our users.
An important consideration in the deployment of a Virtual Data Room is the question of who will serve as the gatekeeper to the Virtual Deal Room, determining what information is appropriate for posting and what level of security and access to assign to such information.
The use of a virtual deal room (“VDR”) has become commonplace in modern merger and acquisition practice, replacing the formerly prevalent document room. The advantages of a VDR include reduced cost; reduced security concerns; accessibility to multiple parties simultaneously and 24/7; reduction in actual deal time; and an electronic data trail establishing who saw what and when.
Firmex’s software engineers, busily developing hyper-secure code that drives virtual data rooms full of mission-critical documents that are accessed by 10,000s of users every month, should be treated to an open creative space that is as dynamic as their work.
Ad agencies and design firms, as creative shops, have always used the design of their spaces to inspire their employees to creative heights. But, really, it’s in every business owner’s interest, no matter what industry, to build an employee environment that invites creativity and productivity.
Virtual data rooms offer law firms an encrypted method of communication that is far more secure than the unencrypted email currently being used by many lawyers.
As discussed last week, the unencrypted email systems used by most law firms are inherently insecure and place confidential client data at risk.
Firmex’s unlimited use virtual data rooms expand the use investment banks have for their deal rooms exponentially; hasten deals to close and help avoid unnecessary risk.
In any deal, time is risk. The longer it takes to close a deal, the greater the potential for the transaction to get derailed. Being prepared ahead of time is one way to avoid time delays and risk.
A technical overview of recent data rooms and the speed enhancements for large transactions that are saving our clients considerable time and money when managing transactions with thousands of documents.
Because data room performance is important to our clients, we recently released the first wave of our new software architecture to address the growing demands of our customers.
Lawyers and law firms can avoid costly air travel delays by taking advantage of innovative alternatives to face-to-face business meetings, such as virtual data rooms or online workspace services, which offer a cost-effective way to organize and deliver content online.
Let’s face it, these days, business air travel is a costly proposition—it’s expensive and takes up valuable time. Read more…
The Due Diligence M&A process involves buyers and sellers of businesses connecting with other buyers and sellers to complete transactions. In today’s market place, the process of Due Diligence has been streamlined by collecting the information in digital format and sharing it online in a virtual data room.
In the business world, Due Diligence refers to the act of investigating information related to people and businesses. This can be on a voluntary basis as in conducting a background check on a future employee, or it can be a legal requirement as in investigating the legal issues around a corporate takeover bid. However, the most common type of Due Diligence performed in business typically relates to that which is performed in relation to a merger or acquisition (M&A). Read more…
Most virtual data room providers charge per dataroom, page, number of users. Which are the benefits of an unlimited use virtual deal room model? Why does such a model makes sense?
It has always puzzled me as to why virtual data room providers charge per data room or per page or total number of users. How can any company running a deal know exactly how many pages of documents they will have? Or how many users are going to access the deal room? Read more…
Are you wondering what a virtual data room is and what is it used for? This article should answer most of your questions. If you want to know more, just drop us a line and we will be happy to answer.
A virtual data room (“deal room” or “data room”) is a secure web-based document repository generally used for buyers or investors to perform their due diligence on M&A transactions or investment. It is however an increasing trend in top legal firms to use virtual document rooms to support business and commercial litigation processes for external collaboration and file sharing. Read more…
A traditional data room is a secure room where hard copies of corporate documents are kept for confidential review. Data rooms were primarily used for the sale of businesses. Prospective buyers would schedule time in the “data room” to perform comprehensive due diligence on the business or assets they were potentially buying. The buyer had [...]
A traditional data room is a secure room where hard copies of corporate documents are kept for confidential review. Data rooms were primarily used for the sale of businesses. Prospective buyers would schedule time in the “data room” to perform comprehensive due diligence on the business or assets they were potentially buying. The buyer had to travel (often fly) to the secure location. Then the buyer spends long-hours and often days sifting through thousands of documents. If there were more than one buyer, then each buyer would have to schedule certain days for “data room” or secure deal room access.
Over 250 financial and legal advisory firms are using their own, privately branded Firmex data rooms. Firmex-powered deal activity was up 255% in Q1 2009 versus a 10% decline in Q4 2008. According to Firmex’s M&A advisory clients, the increase is a result of sellers bringing deals back to market. The majority of the increase occurred late in Q1 2009, and the trend is continuing into Q2 2009.
There has been much talk about the “boom and bust” of client extranets and deal rooms. In the late 1990s leading firms such as Allen & Overy and Clifford Chance invested millions building their own deal rooms. Neil Cameron, legal consultant, quoted in LegalIT article : Five Year Review Back To the Future (October 2005) [...]
There has been much talk about the “boom and bust” of client extranets and deal rooms. In the late 1990s leading firms such as Allen & Overy and Clifford Chance invested millions building their own deal rooms. Neil Cameron, legal consultant, quoted in LegalIT article : Five Year Review Back To the Future (October 2005) , says that clients are not interested in using their law firm deal rooms. That in the future law firms will use their clients deal rooms.
On this note I spoke to Gillian Stacey at Davies Ward who have been running numerous deals on “their” deal room for clients. I asked her if clients have been giving any push back on using the Davies deal room? The answer was an emphatic “no”! She says that clients are not in the business of running deals. Many simply do not have the deal frequency or inclination to invest in the technology.
