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Mergers and Acquisitions - Drafting and Negotiating Documents for Corporate Transactions: Commercial Databases

A round-up of print and electronic resources devoted to creating the documents involved in the purchase and sale of business organizations.

About this Page

This page highlights M&A databases and services available through the commercial research services (Bloomberg Law, Lexis, Westlaw)  available to Loyola law students. They are listed in alphabetical order. Links to stand-alone treatises, practice guides and form books can be found here.

Bloomberg Law

Bloomberg specializes in business information. There are a number of extremely useful M&A resources available via Bloomberg Law

Transactional Intelligence Center:

Bloomberg Law's Transactional Intelligence Center is one-stop shopping for the transactional lawyer. It can be accessed by searching for 'transactional intelligence center' in the main search box or from the 'Browse' drop-down menu to the left of the search box. Among its many useful tools are:

  • Precedent documents: Bloomberg Law's Precedents Database enables a researcher to search across more than one million publicly-available agreements sorted into more than 600 categories.
  • Sample agreements and clauses: under the Drafting Practical tile, Search Sample Agreements to locate all the sample agreements available on Bloomberg Law in a single place, including Bloomberg's collection of annotated forms.
  • Practical guidance: Bloomberg's Practical Guidance Library provides transaction timelines, forms, checklists, document overviews, drafting guides and surveys for a myriad of different corporate transactions. In addition, it enables researchers to search clause descriptions, M&A resources, and step-by-step guides on a range of different merger and acquisition transactions.
  • Due diligence: Bloomberg's Due Diligence Toolkit provides one-stop shopping for checklists, documents, practical guidance and analysis for securities offerings and M&A.

Lexis

Lexis has recently rebranded its search platform (formerly Lexis Advance) to Lexis+. As part of that rebranding it reorganized its interface. Lexis+ for Law Schools does not include a searchable EDGAR database, but there are other resources that are helpful for M&A drafting

Practical Guidance: Lexis Practical Guidance > Corporate & M&A.

  • Lexis now categorizes it's resources by 'experience'. On the left-hand side of the screen one will see three experiences: legal research, practical guidance, and brief analysis. One way to locate practical guidance materials is by practice area. The Corporate and M&A practice area includes practice notes, forms, clauses and checklists relating to corporate transactions and deals.

Mergers and Acquisitions Practice Center: Legal Research > Practice Area > Mergers & Acquisitions

  • From the 'Legal Research' experience on the left-hand side, choose Practice Area and then Mergers & Acquisitions. The M&A Practice Area includes cases, statutes, administrative materials, and secondary sources related to M&A. Of particular interest here for drafting are the forms available from Mathew Bender treatises under 'Forms.'

 

PLI PLUS

PLI PLUS is an ebook platform that provides access to treatises, course handbooks, and answer books on a variety of topics from the Practising Law Institute (PLI), a highly-regarded non-profit continuing legal education organization. Relevant topical titles include:

Westlaw

There are a number of ways to locate information relating to Mergers & Acquisitions on Westlaw. Below are some of the best places/ ways to search.

Practical Law - Corporate and M&A

  • Practical Law resources include practice notes, standard documents and clauses, checklists, toolkits, legal updates, market trend tools, state-specific guidance, and more. Resources are organized by topic, resource type and jurisdiction. Topics for Corporate and M&A include public M&A, private M&A and spinoffs.
  • Practical Law can be accessed either from the main Westlaw drop-down menu or under Content Types on the Westlaw Edge main page.

Westlaw Business Law Center

  • Westlaw's Business Law Center includes precedent examples with deal information, regulatory insight and current news. The Business Law Center Research Library includes thousands of precedent forms and sample agreements organized by topic.
  • The Business Law Center can be accessed under 'Specialty Areas' on the Westlaw Edge main page.

Sample Agreements

  • Sample Agreements provides access to over 1 million executed business agreements with language, clauses, and provisions drafted by leading law firms and in-house counsel. Agreements are sourced from EDGAR filings. There is a separate topic for M&A transactions. Coverage begins in 2000.
  • Sample Agreements can be accessed under 'Specialty Areas' on the Westlaw Edge main page.

Westlaw Form Finder - Corporations

  • Westlaw Corporate Form Finder allows one to search across all corporate forms from all West publications and form books. One can also browse or search individual form book sets.
  • The Corporations Form Finder can be accessed by choosing Forms under Content Types on the Westlaw Edge main page and then by choosing Corporations from the 'Forms by Topic' menu.

 

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