Addleshaw Goddard's Real Estate team has advised National Grid on the sale of its UK Gas Distribution Business with an enterprise value of approximately £13.8bn.

Acting as lead Real Estate lawyers, AG advised on the property separation aspects of the deal, which includes the transfer of over 10,000 properties, coordinating other panel firms including DLA, Irwin Mitchell and Eversheds.

The large-scale, complex project needed a fresh approach and saw AG working collaboratively with National Grid to create a multi-functional, bespoke, on-line platform which allows 200+ users from 4 panel law firms, National Grid, surveyors, valuers and others, to input data via a workflow system.

The system, which enables the project to run in an efficient and streamlined way, supports the widespread deployment of paralegal resource by all firms involved, and is the largest hosted by HighQ, containing dashboards to monitor functions, file management to collate key documents and automation to produce documents at the push of a button.

AG's innovative use of technology has already been nominated for 3 major industry awards and has saved the client at least £1m of legal fees.

Ian Smith stated: "We needed to think creatively in order to overcome several logistical challenges with this project. Our innovative platform delivers volume at pace in a way unimaginable a few years ago. By employing tools such as workflow and document automation, the system saves all parties a significant amount of time and cost."

The AG team was led by Real Estate partners, Ian Smith and Cathy Fearnhead, and managing associate Kerry Westland who heads up AG's specialist "Tech Team" within the Transaction Services Team.

AG's Real Estate team continues to go from strength-to-strength and has reinforced its leading position in the London, Leeds and Manchester markets by acting on high-profile, complex mandates such as this.