Earn out provisions in merger agreements

I met with a corporate partner from an AmLaw 200 law firm a couple of days ago to discuss the firm adopting our www.RealDealDocs.com product across the firm’s entire transactional practice as a resource for the attorneys to find and leverage legal agreements in their research and drafting.  I mentioned that, in addition to providing access to millions of profiled legal documents, they could also find specific deal clauses and provisions within specific types of agreements, and he nearly came out of his chair (in a good way).

It turns out that his team had spent several hours looking for earn out provisions in a merger agreement to help them draft a term for a deal they were working on.  Eventually they found a couple of examples, but it took an entire afternoon to do so.  We spent 30 seconds searching for those types of clauses and found about 200.  The point was taken – he wanted to spend his time finding the best terms, not just digging around to find a couple of terms.

Here’s a link and how to find those merger agreement earn-out provisions, which you can review for free (it’s easier than it seems – I have to walk you through to find the page, but you can click on the link in Step 3 to get to the clause search page):

1)  Go to www.RealDealDocs.com

2)  Click on the Search Now tab

3)  Click on the “Search for Clauses” tab

4)  Select “Mergers and Acquisitions” from the Deal/Documents pull down menu

5)  Select “Agreement and Plan of Merger” from the Specific Document type pull down menu

6)  Enter “earn out” (without the quotes) in the “Clause Heading” search box, and then Search

Again, you can view all these provisions, and over 10 million other clauses, for free.  To view the entire agreement the clause came from, you need to be a member, but there are a range of very affordable membership options which pay for themselves in time saved and value added the first time you use it.

He (and his firm) are already busy using RealDealDocs.com to leverage the work of hundreds of thousands of leading corporate practitioners.  Are you?