Case Study - Commercial Real Estate Investment Firm

The Client

Commercial real estate investment firm

The Challenge

Major, Lindsey & Africa Interim Legal Talent’s client developed an aggressive acquisition strategy that would require strong internal legal support. Unfortunately, their in-house legal department consisted of only three legal professionals and a much more robust legal function was required to support the long-term M&A plans of the organization. While the leadership team wanted to keep the work product in-house, they required a solution that would also keep their legal expenses under control.

The Solution

Interim Legal Talent’s client sought to build out an M&A focused legal team that would be comprised of two lawyers and two paralegals capable of handling pre- and post-acquisition matters. After performing a needs analysis and gaining an understanding of the sophistication, legal training and background of the desired M&A legal team, we presented the client with a plan to engage legal consultants for immediate work with the potential to onboard the consultants as full-time employees as they built out their legal department. This would allow the GC and C-suite to engage interim attorneys and paralegals on an initial set of deals and build standards/protocols and best practices.

The team would be responsible for running point on M&A deals, managing outside counsel relationships; creating/managing term sheets and acquisition checklists; and administering confidentiality, contractual and MoU matters. Then, post-acquisition, they would work with the acquired entity to streamline legal processes; modernize contractual, IP and litigation practices; and improve legal strategy to ensure efficient adoption.

Ultimately, the GC and C-suite would have the option to grow the legal function with the pace of the business and allow for cost control as the acquisition strategy played out. 

The Results

Our client’s GC and C-suite was able to aggressively pursue their acquisition strategy by building out an acquisition-dedicated legal function through the use of Interim Legal Talent. Over the course of the three-year process, our client hired several of our consultants as full-time employees and brought in numerous other legal professionals on a contract basis to complete the project.