What does it really take to get a deal across the finish line, and what happens when the tools supporting that work match the pace, complexity, and expectations of modern legal teams?
In this conversation, MD Black, Head of Customer Success at DealCloser, brings the perspective of someone who has spent nearly two decades inside high-stakes deal environments and now helps firms rethink what better transaction management can look like. Her view is practical, grounded, and optimistic: the future is not about adding more technology for its own sake, but about giving deal teams smarter ways to work, stronger visibility into what matters, and more space to focus on the judgment, strategy, and client service that technology cannot replace.
It felt like organized chaos.
We had to use so many different strategies to keep everything moving: Excel trackers, Word checklists, document lists, task lists, email chains, and physical files. On large deals, I was usually supporting an internal team of five or six people, plus the partner, the client, and the other side. Keeping everyone informed demanded a constant flow of emails, status updates, and version checks.
I often felt like the ringmaster. Members of the team would come by my desk asking the same questions because I was the person trying to keep the whole deal organized and everyone informed.
There was also a very physical side to the work. We had meeting rooms full of flexifiles holding manila folders, with one folder for each document on the checklist. Lawyers would mark up documents by hand, I would collect them, make the changes, run redlines, print the new versions, and put them back in the folders. Then the process would start again.
Once the documents were finalized, the signing process began. It was one of the most crucial and stressful parts. Every signature page had to be manually flagged. We had to check IDs, collect pages, tick them off against a signature matrix, and triple-check that every signature was accounted for. If even one page was missing, the panic started.
Then came the closing bible. We had to build the index, send documents to the print shop, check every tab, check every signature, and fix anything that was missing. If one document had to be added, you might have to move hundreds of tabs. A closing bible could take weeks to a month to produce.
The delay had a commercial impact too. Clients might receive the final bill before they received the closing binder, by which point they may have forgotten how much work had gone into the deal. That often led to bill disputes and write-offs. At the time, it was just how deals were done, but looking back, there were so many places where firms lost time, money, and energy.
The first tools I used were really closing binder tools. They were not full transaction management platforms in the way we think about them today. They helped us build digital closing binders, but we did not yet have the full online checklist, collaboration, and document management experience.
Even then, it changed the way we worked. It forced us to communicate more clearly. We had to know whether a document was still in draft, whether it was final, whether it had been signed, and whether it was ready for the closing set.
The real turning point came when e-signature became more widely accepted. That was when lawyers and clients could really feel the process speed up. Suddenly, the signing process and closing binder process were faster, clearer, and less prone to human error.
It also changed the client experience. Clients started to see the team as organized, competent, and in control. It was not just about practising law well. It was about how the client felt about the legal services they were receiving.
When the process was chaotic, clients became frustrated and panic would ensue.
When the process was smooth, clients felt supported. They felt like they had a strong team behind them. That mattered.
It’s surprising how many firms are still managing deals the way I used to, with manual processes, even though transaction management technology has been around for more than a decade. I really empathize with those teams because they haven’t had the opportunity to experience how much automation and transparency can improve the way their transactions are managed.
A checklist is only one part of the deal.
A checklist could be a Word document or an Excel spreadsheet. Moving it online does not automatically transform the transaction. A transaction is an ecosystem. It includes the checklist, but it also requires communication, collaboration, document versions, signatures, approvals, client updates, external parties, and the closing set.
One of the things people do not always talk about is how transaction management supports the billing partner. In a law firm, you want the partner who owns the client relationship to look like the most informed, competent person in the room. That partner needs to know what has happened, what is outstanding, where the blockers are, and what the client needs to hear next.
That is very hard to do if information is scattered across inboxes, hard drives, associates’ offices, document management systems and personal trackers.
When a partner can go into a tool like DealCloser and see an overview of the deal, they can answer questions the client has not even asked yet. That changes the conversation. It changes the client relationship.
So, transaction management is not just about saving labour costs. It is about delivering a better client experience. It helps the firm look more organized, helps the partner be more prepared, and helps the client feel confident that the deal is under control.
The biggest warning sign is when people say, “The lawyers do not have time.”
I hear that and think: that is exactly why you bought the tool.
I understand the hesitation. Learning new technology takes effort. Lawyers are busy. Everyone is under pressure. But if a team is too busy to spend even a short amount of time learning a tool that will reduce that same busyness, the current way of working is not sustainable.
It does not need to be a huge lift. Start with one hour. Then maybe 30 minutes the next week to ask questions. Once people start using the tool on real matters, they begin to get that time back.
The firms that struggle most are often the ones where the technology was purchased, but the workflow never changed. The tool sits there, but people keep using email, spreadsheets, and old habits. Then they never see the value.
The firms that succeed make space for adoption. They support their users. They make the tool part of the way the team works, rather than an optional extra.
In my view, AI in transaction management should start with automating the administrative, process-heavy, non-billable work: the areas where legal teams lose valuable time on low-value work.
I’d use it first for repeatable processes: setting up matters, checking information, facilitating signature page creation and collection, identifying gaps, surfacing potential issues, automating workflows, and leveraging previous work from similar deals as a strong starting point.
That is where AI can provide immediate gratification while also giving lawyers and deal teams time back.
But AI should not replace legal judgment. It is not something you set and forget. It did not go to law school. It does not understand the complex, emotional nuance of a deal in the same way a lawyer does.
When you are using AI for legal work, the human still needs to be very close to the output. I think of it almost like holding a brush. You can use the tool, but your hand needs to stay on the brush.
For process work, though, go to town. If it is repeatable, structured, and administrative, AI can be incredibly useful. It can help free the lawyer’s brain to focus on practising law and driving better outcomes for their clients.
I think we are still learning how to use AI properly.
I compare it to the microwave oven. When microwaves first appeared, they felt almost like magical technology, and some people thought they would replace ovens entirely. Over time, people learned what they were good for and what they were not. A baked potato works well in a microwave; steak does not.
AI is similar. Right now, everyone is testing what it can do. Some outputs are useful. Some are not. We are learning what needs to be prepared differently, what AI is excellent at and what it should not touch.
In five years, I think transaction teams will have a much clearer understanding of how to structure their workflows so AI can support them properly. We will know which parts of the deal process can be automated and which parts still require human judgment.
The biggest opportunity is time.
Time kills deals. The longer a transaction takes, the more likely it is to go pencils down. That is frustrating for the lawyers, the clients, and everyone who has spent weeks working on something that never completes.
If technology can remove blockers, speed up process-heavy work, and help teams coordinate better, more deals should close. That does not mean replacing people. It means helping people do the work faster, with fewer errors and less frustration.
The future of transaction management is not scary to me. It still needs us. But it may just let us do the work 40 times faster so we can focus instead on what is most important to us and our clients.
That is exactly where DealCloser is focused.
The future of transaction management is not just about making the old process digital. It is about making the process easier and smarter.
That starts with bringing the transaction into one connected workspace. The checklist, documents, signatures, parties, approvals, status updates, and closing sets can all live in one place. When that happens, the team has a clearer picture of what has happened, what is outstanding, and what needs attention next.
AI makes that experience even stronger.
Cloe, DealCloser’s AI deal assistant, is already helping firms move beyond simple automation and into practical, agentic workflows. It can identify and extract signature pages and automatically place e-signature tabs with a single prompt. That is exactly the kind of repeatable, process-heavy work that slows deal teams down, but does not require a lawyer’s legal judgment every time.
We also know firms are already investing in powerful AI tools that support other parts of the legal process, such as document drafting, review, and analysis. DealCloser is not trying to force firms into one closed system. By integrating with industry-leading AI-powered document review tools like Thomson Reuters’ CoCounsel Legal, we’re bringing that intelligence directly into the transaction workflow, where the deal is already happening. This reduces context switching and gives users access to more essential tools across the full lifecycle of the transaction.
Our MCP server and connector strategy opens that door even wider. It gives firms more flexibility to connect DealCloser with the systems and AI tools they already use and the ones they will use in the future. That creates endless opportunities for smarter workflows, deeper automation, and better ways to move deals forward.
For us, innovation is not a one-time release. It is a commitment. DealCloser is relentlessly focused on driving the industry forward, helping firms move beyond manual administration, static checklists, and disconnected tools.
That is how we see the future of transaction management: not as technology replacing people, but as technology giving people more time, more clarity, and more confidence to get deals closed.
To see how DealCloser can help your firm reduce manual work, accelerate deal velocity, and deliver a better client experience, request a demo today.