First, what is lease abstracting about? Lease abstracting is not cutting and pasting. You have been engaged for your experience with leases and your powers of observation and evaluation. You have to bring a critical perspective to the job. The documents are obscure and, all too often, the product of a lawyer’s cutting and pasting and a host of people then adding their special two cents worth to the mix. Getting a lease done is simply that kind of ordeal.
Here at DocuMint, we are lawyers, lease administrators and lease analysts and we have negotiated, written, administered and litigated leases for a long time. Yes, we know that lease documents are written as if we were paid by the word. And, now our penance, and your job, is to deconstruct and decipher these things. Be happy. If leases were beautifully, understandably written, we would all be out of work.
Second, the zen part: Lease Abstracting does not lend itself to multi-tasking. It demands focus. Patience is a virtue, as is curiosity. Get out your Sherlock Holmes hat and magnifying glass because lease abstracting is about a detailed search. And, if you have to read the same paragraph two, three or more times, then welcome to the art of lease abstracting.
Third, the working environment part: There is no right or wrong physical approach to abstracting. Some people prefer to work from hardcopy files. They highlight the hardcopy, make their notes on a legal pad and then key in the data to the lease management system. Some work directly from the scanned copy on the computer staight into the lease management system. Most people can’t meditate because they are too busy wondering if they are doing it right. In both meditation and abstracting, whatever is comfortable for you is the right way.
Now, to start, and it all starts with the documents. Gather them. Make sure you have all the Riders, Exhibits, Attachments, Amendments and correspondence relating to the location. Be persistent, insistent, whatever “…sistent” it takes, but, get all the documents that belong in the location set.
- Determine what depth of detail or purposes your employer intends from the abstract. Agree, in writing, what fields/clauses/provisions are to be captured by your abstract. Lease abstracting in a due diligence assignment is not necessarily the same as lease abstracting in a full lease audit assignment. Understand, and agree, on what is expected of your result.
- Read the lease/sublease and its associated documents in their entirety. This is the foundation of all document abstracting and it is where abstractors most often fail. There is no such thing as a “standard” lease. No, you don’t already know where this language is going. Read it all. You don’t have to memorize it. This is not cramming for finals. This is just “getting into” the documents. This step will tell you whether you are missing pages/documents and it will give you the flow of this set. After reading, put the document set in proper order for scanning. This is the order and structure that will be viewed by subsequent viewers of the docs in your e-library. Don’t have an e-library of your lease docs? You will. And you will be glad of it!
- Scan the documents in the lowest DPI (dots per inch) setting available on your scanner. DO NOT scan in high resolution or in color. These are text documents, not the pics of your family vacation. Higher resolution adds nothing except to make the document file needlessly and unmanageably large. Scan to a pdf file. We include complete bookmarking and setting pdf files up for word/phrase searchability in Adobe with our abstracting at no additional cost. The result is a document set that is more accessible for abstractors and end users. Even if you work from hardcopy and legal pads, scan the set. You should need it for the upload process into the lease management software system. If not, then you will be creating a very valuable library and proving that you are worth the money.
- Look over your “fields to be captured” outline. Don’t have one? Here, you can use our base set (click here). Print it out and, if necessary, makes notes, additions, corrections on it, but, always have it as a part of your abstracting plan. Note on the outline where you will find the information for each field in the lease document set. You can start with the first field and find it in the docs, write your abstract, then move on to the next field on your outline, or, start with the lease “Table of Contents” or simply the paragraphs and provisions as they occur in the lease documents and check them off your outline as you go. Again, work from hardcopy to notepad, pdf file to lease management system screen, or any variant you like. Find your own procedural style and don’t look back.
- Pay special attention to anything that has to do with dollars and/or dates. This is why you are doing the lease abstract. This is where the value is.
- After entering the data into the lease management system, review it on screen. Then, run the reports. If something doesn’t “feel” right, track it down, one character at a time if necessary, until it is correct. If documents or provisions are inconsistent or contradictory, don’t panic. This is not uncommon and it is a prime reason for compentent abstracting. Make notes about the nature of the discrepancies and exactly where in the documents they are to be found and incorporate this into the abstract itself (hmmm…can you spell CYA?).
- Make NO CORRECTIONS, ADDITIONS OR CHANGES UNLESS THEY ARE SUPPORTED BY DOCUMENTATION. If you are “instructed” to make a change, and the instructor is authorized, make the change, with the notation of the original language and the instruction to change and identify the person who instructed you. No 3d party, last to know changes, ie: “Jane told Joe to tell me to tell you that…”.
- Print the lease abstract record set. This should include, at the least, the Lease Abstract Summary, Abstract Rent Report, Abstract Critical Dates Report, Abstract Options Report, Abstract Clauses Report and the Abstract Parties Report. Collate the set and put this hardcopy away in your permenant files.
