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At the 2024 Legal Geek conference, Atticus’s Paddy Skinner hosted a panel discussion with National Grid and Linklaters on the role of legal technology in major transactions, focussing on the energy providers’ recent rights issue. Joining Paddy was Harriet Hill, Senior Legal Advisor at National Grid and Cissy Murray Brown, Corporate Associate at Linklaters, who were both involved in the transaction and utilised legal tech tools, including Atticus. 

Using the right technology enabled the issuing company and its advisors to streamline traditionally labour-intensive processes and significantly improve collaboration.

Working on multiple disclosures

In May 2023, National Grid launched a fully underwritten rights issue to raise approximately £7bn, to fund infrastructure investments aimed at supporting the energy transition to net zero. The rights issue was critical to National Grid’s financing strategy to achieve this ambitious target.

As Harriet Hill explained, this rights issue occurred alongside the company’s year-end, which also involved verification of the annual report. By implementing the right technology, National Grid could align these two processes. 

Past practices vs. tech-enabled processes

Harriet compared this latest transaction with a previous rights issue in 2010 before National Grid adopted legal tech. The previous way required extensive manual documentation and verification, often leading to the duplication of effort. This was a cumbersome process but Ensuring that all market disclosures were accurate on a business-critical deal was essential.

The introduction of the legal tech platform, Atticus, significantly expedited the verification process. Instead of relying on physical documents and spreadsheets, the in-house team, external lawyers at Linklaters, and other stakeholders can now collaborate on a central digital platform.

The benefits of legal tech

Cissy Murray Brown outlined three main reasons why technology has become a fundamental part of Linklaters’s pitches for large transactions, particularly rights issues.

  • Cost efficiency: Clients are increasingly interested in how their law firms deliver value for money. Platforms like Atticus reduce the time spent on processes like verification, ultimately lowering costs for both the client and the law firm.
  • Improved resource allocation: Legal tech frees up time spent on low-value tasks such as manual verification. Legal teams can focus on more complex, value-adding tasks, such as drafting key transaction documents or strategising the structure of the deal.
  • Team wellbeing: Long hours spent on repetitive, administrative tasks can lead to burnout, particularly in high-pressure, high-stakes transactions. Legal tech that automates and streamlines parts of the process helps keep teams engaged in more substantive work, improving job satisfaction and reducing the risk of burnout.

Technology’s role in National Grid’s rights issue

The Atticus platform played a pivotal role in transforming National Grid’s rights issue, particularly in its ability to integrate multiple documents to avoid duplication of work. The teams were able to corroborate the prospectus, as well as National Grid’s annual report and responsible business statement on one platform.  This made cross-referencing much simpler as the teams could verify the same information that appears throughout the different documents in one go.

Another important feature was simultaneous collaboration. The in-house legal team at National Grid and the external Linklaters team could work on the platform at the same time, with materials being uploaded and verified in real time. This minimised delays and issues could be resolved more quickly. The platform also enabled key stakeholders, such as banks, to get involved earlier, avoiding a rush of last-minute changes.

Most notably, using Atticus eliminated the need for spreadsheets—which many lawyers find to be difficult and unpleasant to navigate. Cissy remarked that using Atticus has become non-negotiable–her team will avoid spreadsheets for note-taking purposes during any future verification exercises.

Key reflections 

For in-house legal teams, Harriet recommended the early adoption of technology and greater collaboration with external counsel. Further, bringing everyone on board early in the process makes implementing tech solutions smoother and more effective. 

Cissy added that the user experience of any legal tech must be intuitive and simple, to ensure that all stakeholders, particularly non-lawyers, can get value.

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