Legal due diligence at sSa Legal is directed towards identifying legal risk before a transaction, investment, claim or other significant decision is undertaken. The exercise extends beyond reviewing documents already supplied and may require determining what material is absent, whether important representations can be independently supported and whether legal issues not immediately apparent from the presented documentation may affect the proposed course.
Depending upon the nature of the assignment, due diligence may encompass ownership and title, contractual obligations, pending or potential litigation, statutory and regulatory issues, authority of persons executing documents, encumbrances, liabilities, public records and inconsistencies within the documentary history.
A legal opinion ordinarily addresses identified legal questions upon an available factual record. Legal due diligence can extend further by examining the reliability and completeness of that record itself and identifying legal questions or risks that may not yet have been recognised by the parties.
The objective is to enable an informed decision based upon identifiable legal and documentary risks rather than assumptions arising merely from the apparent completeness of the documents presented.