LEXPERT MAGAZINE
|
MARCH 2019 19
LEGAL TECH FEATURES
portunity to help commercialize DealMak-
er as part of its effort to promote innova-
tion in the practice of law," says Goldstein,
who is "counsel" at Dentons but no longer
practises law and is at pains to emphasize
that he does not speak for the firm. "When
DealMaker launched in the summer of
2018, Dentons was its pilot customer and
subsequently created a separate innovation
hub in downtown Toronto where Deal-
Maker is currently based."
DealMaker emerged several years ago
from when Goldstein, then practising
in New York, and Kacaba, then at Aird
& Berlis LLP in Toronto, concluded (in
Goldstein's words) that "the amount of
friction and inefficiency involved in com-
pleting [private placement] securities trans-
actions was nuts."
Here's how Goldstein describes what he
saw: "Documents come out, investors fill
them out, they make mistakes, the brokers
catch some of the errors and send them on
to the lawyers, who catch even more errors
and in turn ship the documents back to the
brokers," he says. "And while the lawyers
are chasing documents and signatures, the
clients have no idea what's going on."
In a world of cloud-based services, elec-
tronic data rooms and the likes of Dropbox,
Goldstein and Kacaba surmised that there
had to be a better way. e reaction from
the legal community suggests that Deal-
Maker achieved that goal in spades.
"Several national firms, multiple securities
boutiques and a number of full-service mid-
size firms are using the soware," Goldstein
says. "e feedback has been really positive."
DealMaker works by mapping out the
securities law process flow across North
America. Investors wishing to participate
in private placements must be "eligible"
under the applicable securities law. Eligibil-
ity is verified by having potential investors
fill out and sign certain documents.
What DealMaker does is eliminate
complexity in the eligibility determina-
tion process by asking investors a series of
