RegReview By Wolters Kluwer: Finally, Rule-Checking And SEC Filings Made Simple

Preparing SEC filings is a mainstay of any securities lawyer’s practice. Unfortunately, the tedious process of rule-checking goes hand in hand with filing and can take up huge chunks of your precious billable time. The securities laws are constantly changing, and staying on top of them is no small feat. Attorneys have traditionally spent hours identifying changes in the law and confirming that that their filings comport with the most current regulations. Even with all the advances in technology, there’s never been a tool on the market to make the rule-checking process more efficient.

Until now. Meet RegReview from Wolters Kluwer. The latest offering in the company’s suite of exceptional securities law products, RegReview is here to streamline the rule-checking process and make your SEC filings exponentially more efficient.

RegReview builds upon Wolters Kluwer’s existing products, RBSource (which helps you find statutes, rules, and regulations) and RBSourceFilings (which helps you search SEC filings) to give securities researchers the additional tools they need to do a complete job with SEC filings. With the Wolters Kluwer suite of products, it’s easy to examine other actual filings and pull key language from regulations to make sure that your own filings are as complete and as up to date as possible.

An Improved Workflow for Rule-Checking

The beauty of RegReview is that it’s targeted specifically at a process that lawyers perform on a routine basis, but makes that process efficient and less prone to error. Even though securities laws and the accompanying SEC guidance are constantly and rapidly changing, particularly in light of things like cybersecurity, rule-checking no longer has to be seen as a necessary evil. RegReview makes it easy.

Whenever you open a form or filing in RegReview, there’s a built-in feature that automatically creates a checklist for you of everything you should be reviewing or considering for that form. The form is divided into sections, so you can work your way through it section-by-section, rather than viewing it all as one overwhelming task.

The checklist is more than simply a list of topics to consider — it links directly to the relevant underlying information, be it the actual regulations, relevant SEC releases, or other formal guidance from the SEC explaining what information you need to be disclosing and how. Official form instructions don’t do much to make filing easier, because they’re full of complex cross-referencing that leaves you flipping back and forth between a bunch of documents. RegReview, on the other hand, links it all up for you, making it a breeze to find the information you need, exactly when you want to refer to it.

The Easiest Way to See Changes in the Law

One of the biggest challenges in preparing SEC filings is determining how the laws have changed since your last filing. Tracking down old versions of the law is difficult enough. If you do manage to find them, you’re then faced with the time-consuming exercise of comparing them line by line with the latest law to determine exactly what the changes are and how they might impact your filing obligations.

Not any more. RegReview incorporates an ingenious feature called Point-in-Time that automatically does all the work for you. Through an ongoing collaboration with Propylon, Wolters Kluwer has harnessed advanced technology to create a database of redlined comparisons between current laws and their prior versions. A dedicated editorial team monitors content on a daily basis to keep abreast of the changing legal landscape. As a result, you can always see exactly what’s changed in a given law and when it changed.

Simply pull up any major statute or regulation, and Point-in-Time automatically flags any content that has changed in the last five years. No more line-by-line comparisons of different versions of legislation. Right within your handy checklist, you’ll see flags indicating what’s changed, as well as links to the actual document and redlines against prior versions. No matter how diligent you are, this level of comparison information is nearly impossible to get on your own.

Between the Checklist and Point-in-Time features, it’s hard to imagine a more efficient and thorough way to complete your rule-checking and prepare SEC filings that you can trust to be error-free. And if you’re a junior associate working on your first 10-K, 10-Q, 8-K, or S-1, RegReview not only makes your job easier, it’s a great way to learn the ropes as you go. You can think of it as a practice tool, a research aid, and an educational resource all rolled into one convenient package.

Better yet, they’re always making enhancements. For example, they recently launched a check-box feature, allowing sections to be marked complete so work isn’t duplicated and the overall filing can be easily monitored and managed. You can even print a consolidated report of the whole process at the end to provide a big-picture view of your team’s work. They’ll also be adding collaboration features in the future to further help manage the process.

Simply put, RegReview is a game changer for anyone who routinely prepares SEC filings and handles rule-checking. What used to take hours can now be accomplished in a fraction of the time, with an unbeatable level of accuracy to boot. With RegReview, you can spend less time researching and drafting SEC filings, and more time focusing on the important work of advising your clients.