How Broken Tools Perpetuate Internal Legal Spend

Securities Teams Deserve Better: Flying Blind with Outdated Tools

The modern securities team faces a stark choice: rely on legacy financial printers with their manual processes, or struggle with basic cloud tools that weren't built for securities work. Securities teams are stuck between two bad choices - like an airline trying to decide between paper maps or a consumer GPS app for navigation. Neither tool was built for the complexities of modern flight.

The "Cloud Solution" Problem: 

Examples: Workiva, ActiveDisclosure, Toppan-Merrill Bridge

Current cloud-based platforms are essentially Google Docs with a filing button slapped on top. Make a simple formatting change? Watch the entire document cascade into chaos. Update a number in a table? Prepare to spend the next hour reformatting. Need to manage multiple versions during legal review? Good luck tracking changes across conflicting drafts. These platforms fundamentally misunderstand the complexity of securities work, forcing teams to waste countless hours fighting with basic text editors that lack securities-specific features.

The Manual Burden of "Modern" Tools

The daily reality for securities professionals involves constant battles with these inadequate tools. Simple updates to tables require complete reformatting. Cross-references break between versions, requiring manual rebuilding. Document formatting falls apart after routine changes. Teams spend more time managing document versions and fixing broken formatting than focusing on the actual substance of their disclosures.

Drafting even basic disclosures becomes unnecessarily complex. Without automation, teams rely heavily on outside counsel to draft and review standard language that could be automated. A simple earnings release means paying partners $1,000+ per hour to copy-paste and modify previous disclosures. Form 8-K drafting becomes an expensive game of document archaeology - searching through old filings to find similar language, then paying outside counsel to review and adapt it.

Teams waste hours recreating standard disclosure language that could be templatized and automated. Instead of focusing on material changes and strategic decisions, they spend time managing document versions and fixing broken formatting. The result? Inflated legal bills and wasted internal resources on work that modern technology could handle automatically.

The XBRL Tax

XBRL tagging remains perhaps the most egregious example of outdated processes. Teams dedicate an astounding 40-60 hours per quarterly filing to manually applying and validating tags. Despite this massive time investment, manual tagging remains prone to inconsistencies and errors that can trigger SEC comments and fines. It's a process that should be automated but instead consumes vast amounts of skilled professional time.

Section 16 Filing Friction

Form 4 workflows perfectly exemplify the broken state of existing tools. Teams manually track beneficial ownership changes across a multitude of sources. The lack of integration between ownership tracking and filing systems creates endless coordination headaches. What should be a straightforward process becomes a complex project requiring constant attention to avoid missed deadlines.

The Real Cost

This inefficiency creates a massive financial burden beyond just the direct costs to filing agents ($2,000-3,000 per 8-K, $15,000-20,000 per quarterly filing for XBRL). The hidden cost lies in the endless hours of internal team time wasted on manual processes and outside counsel fees for document review. Every rush submission or late-night filing compounds these costs.

A Path Forward

Securities teams deserve tools actually built for their needs. Modern technology can provide intelligent formatting that understands disclosure documents, automated XBRL tagging integrated into the drafting process, and version control designed for legal review. The days of fighting with broken tables, cascading formatting errors, and manual tagging should be behind us.

Securities teams can't deliver efficient, accurate disclosure using tools designed for general word processing or legacy systems built for the print era. They need modern, specialized platforms that understand their workflow and eliminate manual overhead. The only question is how long teams will continue to accept tools that waste their time and increase their costs.