Discover how AI-powered guided workflows are helping law firms complete due diligence in hours while improving consistency across deals
Highlights
- AI-powered workflows help law firms complete M&A due diligence in hours instead of weeks.
- HighQ combines AI-assisted review with Practical Law expertise for consistent, structured outputs.
- Lawyers focus on judgment and strategy while AI handles document extraction and categorization.
M&A due diligence has become the proverbial logjam in deal completion. Law firms routinely face thousands of documents in virtual data rooms, while deal timelines compress and client expectations rise. The result? Associates spend hundreds of hours on document review and data entry rather than analysing risks and advising clients.
This fragmentation creates real consequences for firms and their clients. As Catherine Chang, Senior Specialist Legal Editor at Thomson Reuters, explains, “Deal timelines are more compressed than ever, but the volume of documents keeps growing. The fundamental challenge is figuring out how to process and understand massive amounts of information quickly enough to make informed decisions without missing critical issues.”
In a recent webinar on transforming due diligence with HighQ’s AI-powered guided workflows, Thomson Reuters experts explored how technology is addressing these challenges and the practical solutions firms are already implementing.
But the problem extends beyond volume alone. Large deals require teams of junior lawyers and specialists working together, which introduces inconsistency. Different reviewers make different judgment calls on similar provisions. Varying experience levels lead to uneven issue spotting. At the end, an M&A associate must reconcile and combine all reports into one cohesive output — a time-consuming task that delays delivery to partners and clients.
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A workflow-aware solution
Many AI tools entering the market function as generic document reviewers, missing a fundamental need: a system that reflects how lawyers actually run deals, not just how they read documents. HighQ’s due diligence guided workflows address this gap by combining AI-assisted review with Practical Law expertise, creating an intelligent system that works the way lawyers work.
Rather than manually reviewing each document in a virtual data room, lawyers start by selecting from pre-populated question sets organised by practice area and document type. They can pick specific questions, add their own, or use entire question sets for employment agreements, commercial contracts, or other categories.
The system then automatically scans the VDR, identifies and classifies relevant documents, and answers the selected questions by extracting requested information. Instead of reading through 100 commercial contracts to find which ones have change of control provisions, the system does this work and presents findings in a structured format. Lawyers can click through to see the exact source document and specific clause, allowing them to verify findings, dig deeper, and make their own judgment calls.
Where lawyers add real value
This raises an important question: what role do lawyers play when AI handles the mechanical work? The answer centres on judgment, strategy, and client counselling.
Catherine Chang offered a clear example: “The system can tell you that 15 of the target company’s material contracts have change of control provisions that require consent. That’s extraction and categorisation. The system can’t tell you whether those provisions are likely to be waived, whether the counterparties may be difficult, how those requirements may affect the timeline, or whether the deal needs to be restructured entirely to avoid triggering those provisions. That’s where lawyers add value.”
HighQ eliminates hours of reading, extracting, and compiling data, so lawyers can spend more time on analysis and advice. What used to take deal teams days or weeks of manual review can now be completed in hours, allowing lawyers to focus on what they do best.
Built for collaboration and consistency
Prejay Tailor, Senior Client Solutions Consultant at Thomson Reuters, emphasised the importance of structured outputs. “Law firms really want Q&A answers pushed directly to somewhere central. In this case, into the iSheets module within HighQ.”
This integration matters because the entire deal team can collaborate in real time within the platform they already trust. Senior associates can review findings, add notes, and flag issues so everyone stays on the same page. When new documents get added to the data room — which happens constantly during due diligence — the system detects those changes, processes new materials, and updates findings automatically.
The result is consistency across reviewers and deals. Firms deliver faster, more reliable due diligence without compromising quality or increasing risk.
What comes next
Sreeram Karthik Sonti, Product Manager at Thomson Reuters, outlined the vision. “We’re not after producing these work outputs in isolation, but it’s all in connection to each other,” he said. “What we’re aiming for is to deliver this as an end-to-end solution and experience for transaction management.”
The roadmap includes improved document analysis capabilities — what the experts call “deep due diligence.” This will enable the system to detect relationships between documents, understand which are primary and which are supporting, and group related materials automatically. The goal is moving beyond extraction to sophisticated legal reasoning.
The practical path forward
Due diligence no longer needs to be manual or fragmented. HighQ due diligence guided workflows combine AI-assisted review with Practical Law expertise and collaborative workflows to help firms deliver faster, more consistent processes.
The solution works directly with deal rooms, produces structured risk summaries automatically, and generates first draught due diligence reports ready for lawyer refinement. Everything happens inside HighQ, allowing teams to ingest, review, collaborate, and deliver client-ready outputs in one secure workplace without switching tools.
Ready to see how HighQ can work for your firm? Watch the full webinar to explore the platform in action.
