F&R jurisdictions, client news, AI & Technology and BD activity update

France Spotlight

The Paris Finance & Restructuring team is part of a Corporate Finance team in the broadest sense, which includes a full service offering in finance and restructuring, corporate, tax, and dispute resolution matters. The team has extensive experience assisting clients on complex domestic and cross-border transactions. It advises corporates, private equity project sponsors and financial institutions and has developed a strong expertise and track record, enabling it to provide integrated support throughout the transaction lifecycle, including structuring, due diligence, drafting and negotiation of corporate documentation on a broad range of M&A and JV transactions (SPA, APA, JVs agreement, shareholders agreement, etc.) and advising on traditional financing schemes or financial tailored mechanisms such as earn-out price, convertible bonds, ratchet warrants, specific governance rules.

Representative corporate matters include transactions in the Energy, Industry, Real Estate, or Retail sectors, such as advising a Middle Eastern sovereign-backed real estate investor on the disposal of its minority stake in a leading French leisure and hospitality business, with the Corporate and Tax teams working closely together on the structuring and execution of the transaction.

The team also advises leading banks, financial institutions and corporate entities on the implementation and restructuring of simple or complex credit facilities on the domestic and cross border transactions, including security packages, with a particularly strong expertise in project finance (renewable energy), asset finance (aviation and real estate), acquisition finance (including LBOs) and factoring.

Client Focus (GB Bank)

AI & Technology : Introduction to Legora 

A select few members of the F&R team have received Legora licences for the next phase of DWF's pilot of Legora.

What is Legora?

Legora is an AI platform built specifically for legal work. Much like Copilot, the Legora interface primarily interacts with users via a chat-based AI assistant. Legora's purpose is to reduce time spent on repeatable activity and enable fee earners to focus on judgement-led and client-facing work. It is an assistive tool, meaning that it does not replace legal expertise, and outputs must always be interpreted in professional context.

How could Legora be used for work in the F&R Team?

Legora can be effectively used to assist with the following (as tried and tested by members of the F&R team):

• Amending corporate authorisations to add detail as further documents to approve come to light or rolling out corporate authorisations for other obligors.
• Translating notes from a call with a client or partner, itemising out a list of comments on a document, into a tracked changes mark-up of that document.
• Analysing loan and security documentation and producing a summary report on key terms / answering targeted questions about those terms to assist with due diligence.
• Producing a table summarising charges registered against an entity and their key features (although note that Legora cannot currently extract live information from websites such as Companies House, per below). There is a specific function ('tabular review') that enables Legora to extract and compare specific data points (such as parties, dates and key clauses) across many documents at once into a structured grid.
• Bulk producing ancillary finance documents such as security notices or cover letters (e.g. cover letters enclosing notices of charge or assignment).
• Updating schedules to put at the back of agreements (such as security agreements) to include further details around underlying documents / agreements.
• Checking documents for cross-referencing / typographical errors and checking that defined terms are used consistently and accurately.
• Sense checking documents - if you have prepared a document you can upload it to Legora, ask it to explain the purpose of the document and if it considers that anything has been omitted.
• Reviewing and summarising amendments to / comments on finance documents received from the other side to aid our reporting to clients.
• Completing lender reports and legal opinion checklists.
• Legal research.

What are the practical limitations of Legora?

Legora can produce inaccurate, incomplete or fabricated output, including plausible-looking but false references. DWF manage this by treating all AI output as a draft that must be reviewed and validated by a legal professional.

At the moment, Legora is not capable of extracting and analysing live information from external websites and registries such as Companies House.

Legora currently displays limitations when interacting with Microsoft Word. As a result, the members of the F&R team have found that Legora does not properly know how to read tracked changes within a Word document. Documents that Legora produces (especially if in Word) often contain some formatting issues.

Legora's output is only as good as the prompt it is given. The more detailed the prompt, the better the output. Always make sure to optimise outputs by including (1) the objective, (2) the context, (3) the format of the desired output (i.e. outcome) and (4) any particular behavioural instructions. Key behavioural instructions in an F&R context include asking Legora to specifically state where information is missing, any assumptions it makes and any questions it has before it can perform the task. Asking Copilot separately to improve a prompt before putting it into Legora is actually recommended by the DWF technology team in order to ensure that prompts are of the best quality!

Legora answers the question that it is asked. It does not appear to "think around" a point (unless specifically prompted to do so, with guidance).

If you are interested in getting in involved and becoming an ‘AI champion’ in the future, please get in touch with Daniel Blake (Daniel.Blake@dwf.law). More information on working with AI can be found here : AI Hub

Watch this space for many more F&R and business-wide updates on AI, Copilot and Legora!

DWF and F&R Business Development Activity 

 ISDA Derivatives Trading and Treasury Forum 

Non Financial Misconduct Forum

Held at DWF's London office in September, the Non-Financial Misconduct (NFM) Forum, delivered in collaboration with the Employment team, attracted more than 40 registrations from legal, HR and compliance professionals keen to understand the impact of the FCA's new rules. The event provided timely insight into the significant challenges firms face in addressing workplace conduct issues, particularly in relation to senior management accountability, regulatory expectations and increasing employment law risks. The strong level of engagement and discussion throughout the session highlighted the importance of a joined-up approach between legal, compliance and HR teams as organisations prepare for a rapidly evolving regulatory landscape. 

 Wealth Management Forum

DWF LATAM Day

We were delighted to host the first-ever DWF LATAM Day at our London office last June, bringing together a fantastic group of over 100 business professionals with a shared interest and experience in Latin America. The event featured four engaging panel sessions followed by a vibrant networking reception, creating a valuable platform to connect, exchange insights and explore cross-border opportunities. It was a great success, with strong participation from key LATAM and British stakeholders and excellent discussions on both inbound and outbound work across the region.

A big thank you to everyone who attended, especially those coming from Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, Central America, and Brazil, all of whom contributed to making the day such a meaningful and impactful event.

                

Market Snapshot - (Venture Capital Update)

The Venture Capital working group has released its latest article contributed by Ian Ouaknine, Paul Pignatelli, Graham Tait, Oliver Perkins and Martin Garcia Filipe.