This document summarizes a webinar about managing global real estate portfolios. It discusses understanding a company's real estate portfolio, appointing and instructing external lawyers across jurisdictions, forming a real estate strategy, and implementing processes to manage legal services globally. Key points covered include conducting due diligence on property holdings, selecting an appropriate legal model, appointing a legal project manager, and developing standard documentation and reporting procedures. The webinar provides advice on both short and long-term steps to take to effectively manage a multi-jurisdictional real estate portfolio.

1. Sue Buckworth, Susan Samuel and Michael Conroy Harris
Eversheds LLP
June 2013
Managing global real estate portfolios
Strategies for managing multi-jurisdictional
legal services

2. Project Managing Global Real Estate
• The challenge of managing multiple global real
estate deals across time zones
• Ideal world: a single point of contact, your
advisors are aware of and implement your
requirements
• The reality can be quite different:
mergers/acquisitions, organic growth or
centralisation of core corporate functions, with
little structure in place for the appointment of
external solicitors

3. Project Managing Global
Real Estate
In this webinar, we will cover:
• Understanding the portfolio – “What have we
got?”
• Identifying the lawyers in each jurisdiction –
“Who have we been instructing, how have we
been appointing them, and how should we be
appointing lawyers going forward”
• Is the portfolio fit for purpose – “Does the
business need space in that location?”
• Forming and implementing your real estate
strategy

4. Polling question
Are you satisfied with the level of information held
by your company in relation to its real estate?
A: YES
B: NO

5. Understanding the Real Estate Portfolio
• Great records: copy deeds, property schedules,
management files or even a property database
• Incomplete records:
– Rental roll – accounts
– Office location map and work back from there!
– Appoint external surveyors to identify what
you have
• Carry out a legal review of your portfolio (more
on this later on)

6. How have we been instructing external
lawyers to date?
• Organic growth can lead to the disparate / ad
hoc instruction of external lawyers
• Usually local contacts are used, or lawyers are
selected from Chambers guides
• What have been the parameters for the
appointment - cheapest or best in class?
• More importantly, how has legal risk been
managed in these processes?

7. Choose your preferred legal model
• Find the most appropriate and effective model
for your business
• How?
– Canvass opinion across the business
– Decentralised approach – allow local business
heads to appoint (but how do you manage
legal risk?)
– Centralised approach – lay down formal
processes to appoint lawyers
– Appoint a legal project manager to do it for
you

8. Processes for instructing external lawyers
the structure
• Structure for obtaining legal advice:
– a single point of contact (a legal project
manager) co-ordinates appointments
– a formal procedure is put in place for selecting
and instructing external lawyers:
• a formal tender process
• standard terms of engagement
• prescribe a formal reporting
format and procedure

9. Processes for instructing external counsel
reporting and SLAs
• Reporting formats and procedures should cover:
– your requirements for matter management
– fee reporting
– value added programmes
– budget and time agreements
– success criteria
• Service Level Agreements:
– key performance indicators

10. What is the greatest challenge to you in managing
the delivery of legal services across jurisdictions?
A: Disparate levels of service
B: Scoping the instruction
C: Understanding the market level of fee for each
transaction
Polling question

11. Streamlining service delivery:
saving you money
• Clear scope of services for each transaction
• Cost transparency and certainty: fixed or capped
fees?
• Regular updates and progress against budget
• Set out:
– deal milestones/timescales (when do we need
to move into the building?)
– your service delivery expectations
– what happens if advice is needed outside of
scope?

12. Streamlining service delivery:
saving you time
• Client manual - sets out:
– administrative steps which must be followed for
each transaction
– external panel firm arrangements
– contact details for the legal team, secretariat,
accounts, tax and insurance contacts in your
business
– requirements for invoicing and payments
– standard form clauses and negotiating positions
• Standard form documents, such as leases

13. Standardising documentation:
before you begin
How you will procure your next project?
• Not sure yet?
• In the same way as the last one?
• As set out in your recent strategic review?

14. Standardising documentation:
allocating your resources
• No two buildings are the same – but should their
contracts be?
• Do you have enough resource to project manage
construction projects in-house?
• If you’re outsourcing project management, do
you do it on a project by project basis?
• Will you benefit from framework agreements?

15. Standardising documentation:
leveraging your buying power
• What’s your attitude to project risk?
• What’s coming through your project pipeline?
• Are you maximizing the impact of the global
economic factors and the current market?

16. Standardising documentation:
off the shelf or made to measure
• Will industry standard contracts work for you?
• Do you apply your own Golden Rules?
• What changes do you need to make?

17. Polling question
How do you identify all of the legal and regulatory
requirements which apply to your company’s real estate
in each jurisdiction?
A: Rely on our local real estate lawyers to give us
pragmatic advice
B: Rely on the local business head to investigate /
research the position
C: Rely on real estate consultants to provide this advice

18. It’s not just about the real estate....
• Corporate entity to take the real estate interest
• Business and trading licences
• Employees and employment law
• Pensions
• Trademarks / IP
• E-commerce and Logistics
• Tax
• Health & Safety/Regulatory
• Construction

19. It’s about speaking the same language
• Translation shouldn’t be a disbursement that
follows down the line
• You need to know the implications of having
contracts in different languages so you can budget
cost and time accordingly
• You need to be clearly guided on the myriad other
procedural points that impact you (registration,
notarization, legal capacity and so on)

20. Our guide to international real estate
http://www.eversheds.com/sites/global/en/what/
services/real-estate-law/real-estate-guide.page

21. When it goes wrong
• At best – impact of timescales for the project
• At worst – penalties and fines and damage to
local business reputation
• Sometimes there is nothing you can do, for
example:
– the real estate local market does not allow
flexibility in leases
– local law / statute
– new laws arise during the contract term

22. Polling Question
Is your company’s current real estate strategy about:
A: Growth
B: Rationalisation
C: Maintaining what you have got

23. Is the portfolio fit for purpose?
• “Why do we have three offices in this city?”
– new customer requires a base near them
– hangover from business acquisition or merger
• Business drivers for change:
– premises costs
– require an agile workforce i.e. hot-desking
– teams not communicating with each other
– growth in the business
– contraction in the business

24. Real estate due diligence
• Legal review of the portfolio:
– term
– monetary liabilities
– dilapidations
– break clauses
– liquidity of the asset
– alienation provisions
• The legal review will allow you to implement
your real estate strategy

25. Your real estate strategy
the first six months
• Short term (0 – 6 months):
– decide on an appropriate legal model
– appoint a legal project manager
– implement a process for selecting and
appointing external solicitors
– implement processes for document storage
and records
– diarise and implement key dates (ie lease
expiry dates, dates for serving break notices)

26. Your real estate strategy
the first year
• Medium term (6-12 months):
– draft and produce an SLA
– implement internal fee budgeting and
reporting systems
– implement the SLA, fee and reporting
requirements amongst external lawyers
– compile and circulate internal matter reporting
on current transactions
– set up data sites / extranets with real estate
documentation so that it is all to hand
–

27. Your real estate strategy
the second year
• Long Term (12-24 months):
– implement a key dates system across all of the
portfolio
– agree and implement the internal processes for
notification and escalation of real estate issues /
risk events
– develop and circulate a legal manual to external
lawyers
– agree and implement a supervision protocol that
works for you
– arrange training on real estate issues/legal risk
events

28. Keep testing the strategy...
• Make real estate a rolling six monthly board
agenda item
• Ask the business heads what is on the horizon
for their part of the business (acquisition or
contraction of the business?)
• Request regular updates from your external
lawyers on the relevant law in each jurisdiction
• Require internal legal sign offs before new real
estate can be acquired or legal services can be
instructed, so that you can ensure processes are
followed

29. Our contact details
Sue Buckworth
suebuckworth@eversheds.com
Susan Samuel
susansamuel@eversheds.com
Michael Conroy Harris
michaelconroyharris@eversheds.com

30. Questions

31. Name here, Eversheds LLP
Date here www.eversheds.com
Eversheds LLP 2013© Eversheds is a limited liability partnership.
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