An 8,500-document challenge
The High Yield Debt team at Ashurst had a challenge that would make any legal team sweat.
In just one week, they needed to review an offering memorandum, verify countless statements, and simultaneously review a data room of documents for wider verification and due diligence.
When they opened the data room, the scale became clear: approximately 8,500 documents in an unstructured format.
But that wasn’t all. The offering memorandum had ballooned from 300 to 550 pages during the process. Multiple versions required verification, and comfort letters needed to be drafted—all in the same tight timeline.
The old way wasn’t an option
Historically, these tasks would be done manually, digging around in data rooms and using Word or PDF versions of the offering memorandum.
This is painfully time-consuming, creates a high risk of work repetition, and fails to offer ways for teams to work together.
With thousands of documents to review and a deadline that wouldn’t budge, the team knew the traditional approach simply wouldn’t work.
In comes Atticus: a solution for global collaboration
Atticus presented multiple ways to automate the process.
Global team coordination
Multiple workspaces allowed people to work simultaneously, with individual audit trails and workflow procedures giving matter leads complete oversight of teams working across US, UK, India, and Singapore.
Automated markup and assignment
Atticus allowed the team to automate the markup of statements requiring verification and assign them to multiple reviewers simultaneously.
Version control that preserves work
When receiving revised versions of the offering memorandum, Atticus automatically transposed existing work and exact match mark-ups, dramatically reducing repetitive tasks.
Adopting Atticus has become the new normal for significant high yield debt matters and aligns to our firm’s strategy to outpace change through innovation, ultimately improving our clients’ experience with Ashurst.
Jacques McChesney
Partner, Ashurst
From complex to coordinated
This way of working delivered impressive results:
- 550+ pages of offering memorandum verified with multiple updates throughout
- Four international teams working in coordination across US, UK, India, and Singapore
- 50-75% time reduction for comfort letter preparation
- Zero duplicated efforts thanks to the collaborative workspace
What began as a solution for an impossible timeline has become Ashurst’s new approach for significant high yield debt matters.
The firm can now handle complex, document-heavy matters across multiple jurisdictions with greater efficiency, accuracy, and client satisfaction.
