Davies Ward Phillips &Vineberg LLP on “Going Virtual”
Davies is the lead counsel on hundreds of commercial and financial transactions each year. Many of those transactions involve hundreds of participants, numerous jurisdictions and thousands of documents. The due diligence process often consists of searching through paper documents; and negotiating closing documents through a barrage of email attachments. Both processes, central to financial transactions, are vulnerable to oversights, errors and delays. Looking to better serve their clients through improved deal management, Davies began a search for a system in which all parties could review and exchange documents more effectively and efficiently.
Initially Davies evaluated the available third party virtual data room services. They found that depending on third party virtual data room staff who are unfamiliar with the deal to categorize and manage information was prone to error and slowed down the process. Further, virtual data room services did not provide a facility for closing documents to be posted, negotiated and executed Davies also wanted to have complete control of the information flow in the deal from due diligence through to closing books. In late 2005 Davies adopted Firmex™ technology to provide its own online facility, “Davies Deal Room”, to enhance service to clients.
Since creating “Davies Deal Room” , the firm has had over two-thousand registered users and has run over thirty transactions with over a million pages of deal information. Investment bankers have enthusiastically participated in uploading diligence information. All parties involved have a more efficient means of finalizing transactions and much greater “real-time” visibility on the deal’s progress. The firm’s vision to launch the enterprise-wide “deal room” has further differentiated the firm, reinforcing its leadership position as a top business law firm both in Canada and internationally.
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About Davies
Davies is a business law firm with a reputation for being at the center of Canada’s most important business transactions. In Thomson Financial’s M&A league tables for the first half of 2006, Davies was ranked in the top twenty-five M&A law firms worldwide. From 2001 through 2006, Lexpert® ranked Davies the top corporate law firm in both the Toronto and Montreal markets, relative to firm size.
About Firmex
Intuitive, affordable, pervasive – thousands of companies choose Firmex Virtual Data Room (VDR) solutions to securely share their highly confidential documents. Leaders in corporate and financial transactions, M&A, compliance, litigation, and procurement value Firmex’s ease of use and outstanding support to profitably accelerate their online document sharing and collaboration projects. More information about Firmex can be found at www.firmex.com.