Interview with the Owners
How do you simplify due diligence?
When choosing a service company to conduct your legal due diligence, protecting your client and your firm’s reputation requires a service company with experience, legal expertise, fair and ethical pricing, and consultative services throughout your entire transaction.
Below, Kristen and Tim answer a few of the questions they’ve received about their company, Do Diligence, LLC!
What level of experience does the team at Do Diligence, LLC have?
When I have a search or filing question, I want to talk to an experienced professional who is comfortable talking with me about the applicable statutes that affect my transaction. I also want to speak with someone who truly understands the UCC forms and nuances of the filing offices, and is able to help guide me through complicated situations and transactions.
Kristen Reese
Tim and I have been in the UCC search and filing industry for a combined 46 years! We have each conducted thousands of lien searches across the United States and internationally, filed thousands of filings, and we’ve seen every possible scenario imaginable. Between the two of us, we have also presented over 200 CLE seminars discussing Article 9 of the UCC. We love this stuff, we enjoy talking about it, and we love working with our customers every day to help their transactions go as smoothly as possible!
Does your search report include collateral descriptions
for each UCC filing?
When my current service company sends me a search report, I have to spend way too much time trying to decipher the information on the report and compare it to the copies of the UCC filings! It would be extremely helpful to have the collateral descriptions from the UCC filings included on the actual search report, but my current service company doesn’t provide it for every filing in every jurisdiction.
Tim Hall
Of course! When you think about it, the collateral description is the most important part of the UCC filing, so it should definitely be included as part of the standard UCC search report. That is why the our search report always includes the collateral description for each filing. While some of our competitors only include it in a limited number of jurisdictions, we include it for every filing on our listing, in every jurisdiction we search, from every state and local filing office.
We believe the best search report is the one that saves our customers time, reduces the need for duplicative charting of results, and puts all of the information you need in one place!
Does the your search report provide additional detail
regarding UCC-3 filings?
It would save me a lot of time if my search report described the action (or actions) intended by the UCC-3 filings. My current service company’s search report lists the UCC-3 filings, but it doesn’t really tell me anything about them. As a result, I have to dig through each UCC-3 filing and try to decipher all the details, and then manually add the information to my closing documents.
Kristen Reese
Our search reports were designed with our customers in mind! We know there are a lot of service companies out there who offer UCC search and filing services. We also know that most of them offer limited, cookie-cutter search reports with a very minimal amount of information. Our unique search reports were designed to provide all of the most valuable information you need when reviewing search results.
One of the key pieces of information our reports contain is an analysis and enhanced description of the action intended by each UCC-3 filing. For example, rather than just listing a filing as an “assignment”, our report will provide additional helpful details such as “Bank A assigned its interest in the equipment to Bank B”.
Another example would be that instead of just listing a UCC-3 as an “amendment” and nothing more, we describe the action taken, such as “the debtor name was amended from ABC, Inc. to XYZ, LLC”. This makes it much easier for you to review the filings quickly and understand where everything on the record currently stands!
For a sample of our search report that illustrates our UCC-3 listing, click here.
How does your pricing work?
My firm routinely requests comprehensive searches, including searching for UCC liens, Federal Tax Liens, State Tax Liens, and Judgment Liens. I’ve noticed that most of the time, our searches come back and no liens were found. My current search company charges me the same service fee whether there were ten records found or zero records found? That doesn’t seem right.
Tim Hall
When was the last time you asked your service provider for an estimate on a search or filing project, only to find that the final invoice was substantially higher than the initial estimate? Our unique pricing structure is the first in the industry to utilize a results-based pricing structure. It is based upon a simple ethical principle: When something takes us less time, we pass the savings on to you!
Our standard service fees are already among the lowest in the industry. In addition, when we conduct a search and no records are found, we reduce our service fee significantly. As a result, the final invoice you receive will often be lower than the initial estimate.
We have also priced our most popular offering, the DD Simplified package, to provide the most comprehensive search results while providing the greatest value to our customers!
When you perform a search and liens are uncovered,
what is the charge for copies of the filings?
Kristen Reese
Are we still living in the 1980’s? Copies are always free! Why on earth would a service company charge you for copies that they didn’t even pay for themselves? The only time we charge for copies is when we are charged for the copies, and if that is the case, we will only charge you what we paid.
Have you ever wondered why many service companies will send you a final invoice that is substantially higher than the estimate they sent before the job began? It is due to the excessive hidden fees and costs they were hiding from you. We’ve heard that some companies will charge $2 (or even more!) per page, even when they downloaded the copies for free! I guess these companies need the money to buy ribbons for their typewriters.
Welcome to 2023…and welcome to Do Diligence, LLC!
My service company says the estimate will match the invoice, except for copy costs. I've had final invoices be hundreds of dollars over the estimate because of the copy fees. If my service company was still sending me copies of UCC filings using a process that included a copying machine, a big cardboard box full of paper copies, and a bunch of postage stamps, I would understand charging for copies! I would think that most filing offices have digital images that can be downloaded for little or no cost?
Do you offer any type of customized search report?
I’m not a huge fan of my current service provider’s search report format, as it creates additional work on my end as I need to chart the search results. When I asked if they could create a customized search report format for me, I was told their search report is what it is, but I do have the “choice” of getting it in Word or Excel…
It sure would be nice if a service company would be willing to create a truly customized search report for my firm, based upon what we need for our closings. Better yet, if service company could just use the same document my firm uses for its closings, and fill out the due diligence search information for me, it would save me tons of time!
Tim Hall
I can’t imagine walking into a Chipotle, and instead of me telling them what I want on my burrito, they tell me what I want! Or walking into a furniture store and seeing only one type of sofa to choose from, and being told that the style and color of that sofa is the only option they have, and I will need to change the carpet and paint in my living room in order to make that sofa work.
In today’s world, technology has become so incredibly user-friendly and accessible that it is very easy to create fully customized search reports. While we put a great deal of thought into the DD Simplified Search Report format, and truly believe that it is the best search report in the industry, we also understand that you may prefer things to be done differently. We would love to sit down with you and create a fully-customized search report that works for you! No worries…we have Microsoft Word, Excel, Google Docs, PDFs, etc. and know how to use them!
Better yet, just give us the form you currently use to chart your results and prepare for your closing, and we will fill it out with the search results we obtained for you, saving you time! Plus, we keep everything confidential, and have NDA agreements and confidentiality agreements that we can provide to you when using your firm’s proprietary documents.
Most importantly, our service fees are the same whether you use our standard search report or a customized search report.
Why is the UCC Search and Filing industry so mysterious about their pricing, while the rest of the world continues to be more transparent and honest?
I shop at Amazon a lot, and I love the way Amazon puts the prices right up front, and provides all of the pricing information I need to make an informed decision. Yet, when I got to most service company web sites, I can’t find any information about their prices? Most of the sites just tell me to “contact us for a quote”.
Kristen Reese
It doesn’t make sense to us either…my best guess is that a lot of service companies try to hide their prices to force you to call them? That way, their aggressive sales staff can try to sell you other stuff you probably don’t need.
If I were to go to Amazon to buy something, and there was no price listed for the item, I would immediately become very suspicious (what are they trying to hide?) and move on to another seller!
That is why we proudly publish our services and service fees on our website, and clearly describe how the costs will be determined. If you need additional information regarding statutory fees, etc. that will vary based upon the particular jurisdiction(s) involved, we are more than happy to send you a more detailed estimate.
If you value honestly and transparency, you are going to love working with us!