dealhead Pricing

dealhead is priced per transaction, with annual licenses available for teams running higher volume or larger-scale deals. We do not publish a rate card, because the right structure depends on your deal profile. The calculator above sizes the value first. Then connect with us for pricing tailored to your workflow.

How does dealhead pricing work?

Two structures, depending on volume. Teams doing a handful of deals a year pay per transaction, so cost tracks activity rather than headcount. Teams running higher volume, or consistently larger deals, move to an annual license. A discount applies when the fee is settled through the closing funds flow rather than invoiced separately.

Everything below explains how we size the value side of that equation: what deal administration currently costs your team, calculated from a published, line-item hour model rather than a marketing estimate.

How much does M&A deal administration actually cost?

More than most teams have ever measured, because it is never a line item. Deal administration (circulating turns, chasing signatures, assembling the closing binder) is billed inside the same hourly stream as legal judgment, so it disappears into the invoice. The calculator above pulls that work back out and prices it, using a per-task hour model published in full below.

The estimate is deliberately narrow. It counts only the coordination tasks that dealhead automates outright, at rates you set yourself. It does not attempt to price diligence, drafting, negotiation strategy, or regulatory work, because those are legal judgment and no software removes them.

What does this calculator measure, and who is it for?

It measures one thing: the attorney hours consumed by the mechanical, repeatable administration of a transaction, converted to dollars at your blended rate. It is built for the person who has to defend transaction spend to someone else.

Which teams get the most out of it?

Three groups, in rough order of how much the number moves. Corporate development teams doing four to ten deals a year, where administrative drag is invisible because each deal feels bespoke. Serial acquirers running a repeatable playbook, where the same coordination tax is paid fifteen or twenty times annually. Private equity platforms executing roll-ups at thirty to fifty deals a year, where the aggregate is large enough to be a budget conversation. General counsel and finance teams underwriting deal costs use it the same way. Law firms use it in reverse, quantifying the administrative load they absorb on fixed-fee or capped engagements.

How is deal value calculated here?

Three independent components are computed and summed, then multiplied by your blended attorney hourly rate. Two components scale with deal complexity; one is a flat per-deal cost. There is no hidden multiplier, no efficiency factor, and no discount rate.

What is the formula?

Stated exactly as the calculator runs it:

The three hour constants (0.8, 2.8, and 6.5) are the Est (Actual) tier subtotals. Each is built from itemized sub-tasks shown in the tables under “How We Calculate This” in the calculator above. Note that the signature and binder components do not scale with document count: signature effort tracks the number of parties, and binder assembly is charged once per deal at close.

How many attorney hours does a typical closing binder consume?

We estimate 6.5 hours at the Est (Actual) tier, and it is the single largest per-deal line in the model. That breaks down as 1.0 hour generating the table of contents, 5.0 hours compiling executed and final documents, and 0.5 hours circulating the finished binder. The compilation figure is the one most often disputed, so it is worth being direct: on a clean, small deal it can be under two hours, and on a messy one with scattered execution versions it can exceed fifteen. The Minimum tier prices this same work at 0.6 hours if you want the defensible floor.

What assumptions does this calculator make?

Several, and some are rough. The hour constants come from dealhead’s own task-level decomposition of transaction workflows, validated against practitioner interviews and observed deal files, not from a published industry survey, because none exists at this granularity. Treat them as informed estimates, not measurements.

What are the three estimation tiers?

Every task is priced at three levels, and the tier you choose changes the answer by roughly a factor of five. Minimum is the unassailable floor: the least time in which the task could conceivably be completed, intended as a guarantee benchmark. Est (Low) is the most efficient realistic attorney working at peak efficiency. Est (Actual) is the time most likely to be billed in practice, and it is what the headline figure uses. If you need a number that survives a skeptical CFO, quote the Minimum.

What the calculator deliberately does not count

It excludes paralegal and support staff time, which is real but billed at lower rates. It excludes the cost of errors, omissions, and post-close rework. It excludes deal delay, the carrying cost of a transaction closing two weeks later than it needed to. It excludes internal business-team hours entirely. And it does not subtract dealhead’s own fee, so every figure on this page is gross legal fee reduction rather than net savings or ROI. A complete economic picture would be larger in the first four respects and smaller in the last.

One more honest caveat: the blended rate is applied uniformly to every task. In reality some of this coordination work is delegated to more junior timekeepers at lower rates. If your firm delegates aggressively, adjust the rate slider downward rather than assuming the model already accounts for it.

What do the terms in this calculator mean?

Any agreement in the deal that goes through at least one round of markup between parties: the purchase agreement, disclosure schedules, ancillaries, employment agreements, escrow agreements. Documents delivered in final form and never negotiated do not count.

One complete round of markup: receiving a draft, generating a redline against the prior version, distributing it, filing it to the document management system, and updating the checklist. A document that goes back and forth five times has five turns.

A distinct party required to execute a document, counted per document. Three entities each signing through one authorized officer is three signatories. The count drives packet assembly, follow-up, and execution-page compilation.

The single effective rate you are billed across the mix of partners, associates, and counsel staffed on a transaction. If you do not know yours, divide total legal fees on a recent deal by total hours billed.

The total administrative cost attributable to a single deal from first markup through binder distribution. It is the per-deal total the calculator reports, before any annualization.

The post-signing work of producing the definitive transaction record: building the table of contents, gathering every executed signature page and final document version, reconciling against the closing checklist, and distributing the compiled binder to all parties.

The hour figure most likely to appear on an invoice for a given task, as distinct from the theoretical minimum. All headline figures on this page use this tier.

What does this look like for a real team?

Three worked examples, computed with the formula above and shown with every input visible. Nothing here is rounded for effect. Each figure is the exact output of the model at the stated inputs.

Frequently asked questions

Have a deal profile that does not fit these examples? Adjust the calculator above and the figures update, or talk to us about what dealhead would cost against your actual volume.