How Aracor Helps In-House Counsel Navigate M&A Complexity and Save 85% of Review Time

Meet Richard Christesen

Richard Christesen is the Senior Commercial and Corporate Counsel at Constructor Group, a multi-faceted ecosystem dedicated to advancing the fields of science, education and technology. Motivated by the “Constructor Theory”, the Group combines extensive educational opportunities, research capabilities, and commercial services to allow for the next wave of technological breakthroughs that will help overcome tomorrow’s challenges.

Since joining in 2022, Richard has played a pivotal role in managing, interpreting, drafting and negotiating commercial contracts, international compliance, and high-stakes mergers and acquisitions. His expertise spans privacy law, regulatory navigation, and deal structuring across borders.

The Challenge: Analyzing and Aligning Deal Terms Under Tight Deadlines

In a critical investment restructuring with Constructor Capital, Richard Christesen faced a high-risk legal scenario: a breakdown between the stated terms of a deal and the legal language used to implement it. While summaries suggested that Constructor would be included in future share transactions, the actual documents—across shareholder agreements, amended articles, and investor rights terms—told a different story.

This wasn’t a simple matter of checking definitions or locating missing terms. It was a subtle shift in obligations that, if left unaddressed, could have permanently excluded Constructor from meaningful participation.

Richard had already spent nearly 10 hours reviewing documents and consulting with legal peers and opposing counsel. Each interpretation differed, and none provided clarity. Even when key clauses were reviewed in isolation, the deal logic across documents remained opaque. “Why does this say X when the summary says Y?” became a recurring—and unresolved—question.

Richard didn’t just need a redline. He needed a partner that could synthesize intent, structure, and enforceability across a dense, multi-party transaction.

The Aracor Solution: A Co-Intelligent Legal Partner, Not Just an Analyzer

Richard turned to Aracor’s deal intelligence engine—a legal platform purpose-built to close the M&A transparency gap and to provide insight, clarity, and confidence in dealmaking.

Unlike traditional contract review tools, Aracor served as a co-intelligent legal partner—one that could reason across documents, highlight misalignments, and propose surgically precise changes. Richard didn’t just feed in documents and get summaries. Instead, he engaged in a back-and-forth prompting process:

· Asking Aracor to compare specific clauses across multiple documents

· Investigating “why” a particular clause undermined the stated summary

· Exploring counterfactual scenarios: “What if this trigger is moved forward? What changes?”

· Requesting revision suggestions that addressed the issue without redrafting entire agreements

This iterative process helped Richard identify insights that even opposing counsel had overlooked. He said directly:

“Aracor helped identify subtle but critical wording changes—something we couldn’t bring to the surface even after 10 hours of review and back-and-forth with counsel.”

Aracor acted not as a tool, but as an extension of Richard’s legal reasoning—capable of navigating logic, language, and rights structure in a way that augmented his own judgment. It became a deal co-pilot with the ability to interpret, question, and recommend based on the actual shape of the transaction.

The Results: Strategic Clarity and Substantial Time Savings

With Aracor at his side, Richard was able to gain a significant competitive advantage both in time savings and in strategy:

· 85%+ Time Saved: Richard reduced a multi-day review cycle to less than 2 hours with Aracor.

· Negotiation Shortened: A complex multi-party negotiation call, expected to last several hours, was resolved in just 45 minutes.

· Rights Preserved: Small, strategic changes to clause language ensured Constructor was not inadvertently excluded from future liquidity events—aligning documentation with actual deal intent.

· Legal Position Strengthened: By identifying what others missed, Richard was able to negotiate from a position of clarity and confidence.

Beyond productivity, Aracor gave Richard something more valuable: trust in the integrity of the deal process. Where even seasoned legal teams fell short, Aracor delivered deal intelligence that matched the complexity of the transaction.

Testimonial

“With Aracor, I didn’t just save time—I closed the M&A transparency gap that even experienced counsel couldn’t articulate. It gave us clarity, leverage, and speed in a critical moment. It’s like having a second brain focused entirely on the logic of the deal.”

— Richard Christesen, Senior Commercial & Corporate Counsel, Constructor Group