A workbook for junior lawyers · English law
Legal Due Diligence
A plain-English workbook on the buyer's investigation — how deals are scoped, data rooms are read, red flags are found and reports are written. Built around one fictional exercise: the diligence Atlas Payments Group plc, a London payments group, ran on Solaris Digital Assets Europe Ltd, an Irish crypto-asset firm supervised by the Central Bank of Ireland, before agreeing to buy it for €42 million in a deal codenamed Project Sunrise — written up in a complete training red-flag DD report you can read finding by finding.
Chapter 1 is free to read in full. Buying the edition unlocks the rest — the other eleven chapters, the complete Sunrise DD report and the final exam.
How this workbook works
Read
Each chapter explains one part of the exercise in plain English — no assumed knowledge. If you have done our M&A edition, you have already seen where this investigation's biggest find ended up.
See it in a real report
Concepts are anchored to specific findings of the Sunrise DD report — an original training document with an executive summary, risk ratings, nine workstreams and a Q&A log.
Test yourself
Every chapter ends with a 10-question test (pass mark 8). Finish with a 40-question final exam. Your progress is saved to your Solon profile, alongside your other editions.
The case study: investigating Solaris
April to June 2026. Atlas has signed heads of terms to buy Solaris for €42 million, and the seller's team opens the data room to Blackwood & Steel — Atlas's lawyers. Twelve weeks after heads of terms, their red-flag report lands: most of Solaris checks out, several findings need fixing or pricing, and one document — a regulator's inspection letter filed at data room reference 7.4.1 — reshapes the deal:
This workbook follows that exercise end to end. The full DD report is on this site, and chapters link straight into its findings — then M&A Foundations shows the SPA those findings shaped, clause by clause, and Finance Deals & Syndicated Lending explains the €40 million loan that funded the deal.
The modules
Reference shelf
The Sunrise DD Report
The complete training red-flag report — every finding anchored and linkable.
Glossary
Diligence language in plain English.
Final Exam
40 questions across all twelve chapters. Pass mark 32.
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M&A Foundations
The deal this diligence served — private M&A under English law, with the full share purchase agreement.
Finance Deals & Syndicated Lending
The loan that funded it — syndicated lending with the full facility agreement.
GDPR Explained
The data-protection workstream, expanded to a full edition. Coming soon.