Pascal Georges is Of Counsel within the firm Jeantet. He specializes in mergers & acquisitions, and more specifically in private equity. He advises French and foreign investment funds in LBOs and investment transactions, and also advises teams of managers in these types of transactions. He has used Closd for numerous transactions.
For our teams, it is the opportunity to replace the tedious and time-consuming work (…) which leaves us more time to devote to what is at the heart of our business – legal advice.
Closd: Hello Mr. Georges. Could you present Jeantet and the cases your firm handles in a little more detail?
Jeantet is an independent French business firm. Our teams, which comprise of approximately 150 lawyers, are spread over six offices in Europe and Africa and work in all aspects of business law, both in consultancy and litigation.
More specifically, within the Private Equity team, we advise investment funds in all of their LBOs and Private Equity transactions.
Why did you choose Closd and which of your need(s) does the platform meet?
The use of electronic signature solutions is a natural and inevitable development in our profession: They considerably facilitate and accelerate our operations, for both our clients and for our internal teams.
For our clients, it is the assurance that their transactions will be completed without delay and that they will receive the signed documentation almost immediately, all while benefiting from the legal certainty offered by the electronic signature.
For our teams, it is the opportunity to replace the tedious and time-consuming work of compiling, printing, and substituting pages and checking print jobs for several dozen documents due to be signed during M&A processes, and the almost instantaneous upload of agreed-form documents which leaves us more time to devote to what is at the heart of our business – legal advice.
Closd’s real competitive advantage over other electronic signature providers is its interface, which enables the entire pre-closing process to be organized, more specifically by allowing parties to validate agreements to be signed, to collect CPs, to sign certain documents and keep control of them until the closing is successfully completed, to pre-register signatories a few days before the closing (avoiding the risk of a signatory being rejected at the last minute on the day of a closing), and more.
All of this is done very easily thanks to the simple and intuitive interface (which spares the need for each of our employees to do 2 hours of training to understand how the product works) and by signing onto a zero-paper approach that also does good for our planet.
Could you describe the types of transactions that you carry out on the platform?
We mainly use Closd for LBO transactions, which involve a large number of documents to be signed.
We have since extended its use to signing a whole range of documents, from a simple term-sheet to commercial contracts, including the corporate housekeeping (minutes of shareholders’ meetings, board of directors or committees).
How would you assess your use of Closd, and what were your clients’ reactions to the use of electronic signatures for your closings, and more generally to your collaboration on Closd?
We have been using Closd for over a year and a half now and are very happy with it. Lockdown has undoubtably made it easier for even the most reluctant of our clients to embrace the use of electronic signatures, and the simplicity of Closd’s interface has played an important role in its easy adoption by the whole team.
The availability of Closd’s teams is also a huge asset, especially when it comes to the organization of signature pages on the day of a closing.
Finally, having former lawyers who understand our business perfectly as interlocutors allows ongoing optimization of the platform, that meets our expectations as closely as possible as the product evolves.
In conclusion, we can say that Closd has enabled us to speed up (if not systematize) the use of electronic signatures thanks to its simple and intuitive interface, which is acclaimed by our clients as well as by our colleagues and internal teams.
Thanks to Mr Georges for his testimony. If you want to learn more about Closd, schedule a demo now!
