Mishcon de Reya and Orbital Witness collaborate to improve the real estate due diligence process through property datasets and satellite imagery.
Whether acting for a buyer, vendor, developer, investor or capital provider, every property transaction entails some degree of due diligence. Understandably, clients want to receive actionable advice as early as possible due to the financial and time restraints that such transactions often operate under. However, the risk evaluation involved can take time, as lawyers must reference multiple, disaggregated sources of information about the property, which must then be assimilated and compiled into a final report that is easily accessible for the client.
At Mishcon de Reya, we are harnessing the power of technology to enable us to carry out the due diligence process faster and more efficiently, providing information within the timeframe and format that our clients demand. The real estate department’s use of proptech, including automation and visualisation tools, AI and structured databases, enables us to automatically unlock data from legal documents and interrogate information sources, allowing our clients to make decisions in real time.
Our collaboration with Orbital Witness has further enabled us to accelerate the due diligence process, using satellite imagery to innovate the preliminary investigations of title. Orbital Witness joined MDR LAB, our incubator programme for tech start-ups in the legal space, in 2017 and we have worked closely with them in the development of their product. Nick Kirby, Managing Associate and Real Estate Technology Specialist at Mishcon de Reya has found the product allows him to “access property information more efficiently, assess ownership structure in seconds, and carry out a comprehensive inspection of the property to detect potential issues from day one.” Satellite imagery comprises the core of their platform, which is then aggregated with property and legal data from a range of sources, including the Land Registry, Ordnance Survey, and local councils.
This reduction in the time required to gather and assess key information has enabled us to return initial findings more quickly in a high quality easy-to-interpret visual format, and has resulted in valuable time-savings to clients.
For more information, please contact Nick Kirby.
