Sarah Tyler

When our firm closed a $4.2 billion cross-border acquisition last year, the partner leading the deal told me something I'll never forget: the AI tools we deployed saved us from walking away from a deal that became one of the most successful integrations in our client's history. That moment crystallized a truth many of us in corporate law are still grappling with—the transformation of M&A practice isn't coming; it's already here, reshaping how we approach everything from initial target screening to post-close integration oversight. The evolution of AI in M&A has moved beyond theoretical promise into tangible value creation across the deal lifecycle. Having worked on dozens of transactions over the past eighteen months where AI played a central role, I've witnessed firsthand how these technologies fundamentally alter the economics, velocity, and quality of corporate transactions. The stories from these deals—both the successes and near-misses—offer valuable l...

After spending fifteen years in M&A advisory, I've witnessed countless deals stumble not because of poor strategy, but because of execution inefficiencies that could have been avoided. The manual processes that once defined our industry—endless spreadsheets for valuation analysis, weeks spent on legal due diligence, and integration planning that stretched timelines beyond what clients could tolerate—are no longer tenable in today's accelerated deal environment. The introduction of intelligent automation has fundamentally altered how we approach every stage of the M&A lifecycle, from target identification through post-merger integration. My first encounter with Intelligent Automation in M&A came during a particularly complex cross-border acquisition where the target company had operations in fourteen countries. Traditional methods would have required months of document review alone. Instead, we deployed automated due diligence tools that processed thousands of contr...