Lucy draws the ownership structure from the deal file, with the evidence attached

Every transaction starts with a drawing. Before the term sheet, before anyone calls the notary, someone at the firm opens PowerPoint and draws the structure: the holding at the top, the operating companies below, percentages on the arrows, the STAK off to the side. The sources are a stack of articles of association, a shareholders register last updated years ago, three deeds of transfer and an Excel a colleague built two owners ago.

The drawing is mostly for the client. A founder taking in a first investor, a family that owns a company through four generations of gifts and buy-outs, a management team weighing a buy-out. They know their business better than anyone at the table. They do not have the week it takes to read the deeds, so the drawing is where lawyer and client meet: the one page on which the deal gets discussed, agreed and, eventually, defended.

At Patroon Legal Design we drew these structures for ten years, for lawyers and for their clients. The hard part was knowing, three weeks later, where that 30% came from. The chart went into a deck, the client forwarded it to the bank, and the sentence in the file that supported the number stayed in the drafter’s head.

Lucy is that experience turned into an agent. It draws the chart and keeps the trail, so the drawing you explain to a client is one you can also account for. It is Mino’s first agent for transaction lawyers, after Thea for litigators.

Draw the chart

You open a matter and add the documents: PDF, Word, email files, Excel and CSV. A spreadsheet is read cell by cell, so a cap table keeps its rows and columns.

A checklist shows what a structure usually rests on. The Chamber of Commerce extract, the shareholders register and the articles of association are the essentials. Deeds of transfer and issuance, the STAK papers and the SPA come in when the deal calls for them. A document that is not coming can be marked as not obtainable, and Lucy draws with the gap noted.

Next to the documents is a field called Instructions for Lucy. Tell Lucy which company is the target, that two names mean the same entity, which numbers supersede which. You can also describe a structure in words and get a chart with no documents at all. Anything drawn from your words is marked “Added by you”, with your own sentence as its quote.

Then you press Draw the chart. Lucy extracts the entities and the shareholdings, checks each one against the source text, and draws the chart like a blueprint: companies, persons, the STAK, percentages and share classes on the lines, officers where the documents name them. Every box and line starts as proposed and stays that way until you have looked at it.

The full ownership structure of a synthetic deal, drawn by Lucy — The whole file on one page. Every solid line rests on a document. The red box on Sluiswachter Groep marks a shareholding two documents disagree on. The STAK, the priority share and the convertible loan are drawn from the papers that mention them.

Every line has a receipt

Select any company or arrow and the grounding panel opens: the document, the verbatim quote, the percentage and share class, and the date the source gives. For a spreadsheet, the sheet and the cell. Where several documents address the same fact, they stack in the same panel.

A shareholding selected on the chart, with its document panel open — Click the 100% line from Hendrik van Ommeren to his holding. The line turns blue and the panel gives the memo, the sentence the number comes from and the date.

Before a claim reaches the chart, Lucy looks for its quote in the source text. If the quote is missing, the claim is dropped. A model that turns a shareholders register into a percentage that appears nowhere in the file was the failure we worried about most, and this step exists to rule it out.

A person selected on the chart, with two documents stacked in the panel — Two receipts for one fact. The certificate register gives the sheet and the cell, the administration conditions give the sentence that states 40%. Both are quoted verbatim.

Where the holders of a company add up to 88%, the missing 12% appears on the chart as a marked gap. Upload the register that fills it, or add the shareholder yourself.

When you are done, the verification pack export gives you the chart, an appendix with every quote behind every line, and a statement of which facts you reviewed, which were confirmed against their documents without you, and which you added yourself. That is what a bank, a counterparty or a colleague picking up the file next year needs from the drawing.

Where the documents disagree, it asks

A deal file contradicts itself more often than anyone admits. The register says 30%. The deed says 25%. The cap table has a third number because it predates the last issuance.

Lucy leaves the choice to you. The matter shows how many facts need your judgement, and a review walks you through them one at a time: the claim, the documents on each side, and your call. Pick the document that fits, reject both with a reason, or skip and come back. When the count reaches zero, every line on the chart is either linked to a document or settled by you.

The review on a discrepancy between an email and the shareholders register — Discrepancy 1 of 2. The email says 25% cumulative preference shares, the register says 22.5%. Each side shows its quote and its date. Pick one, reject both, or skip.

Checked against the trade register

Companies on the chart are looked up in the Dutch trade register through the Chamber of Commerce API. A matched company carries its registration number and the date of the lookup on the chart. The review panel shows what the register knows: statutory name, legal form, RSIN and seat. Where the documents and the register disagree on what an entity is, both appear side by side and you choose.

The companies checklist on a matter, with a trade register search open — Every company in the deal is checked against the Handelsregister. One not found under its name is searched by name or KVK number. The hit shows the statutory name, the number, the seat and the date of retrieval before you link it.

The register confirms identity. It will tell you that Veldkamp Groep B.V. exists and where it sits. Who owns it stays grounded in your documents, and natural persons are never looked up.

Your changes go on the record

Lucy has an edit mode: add an entity, add or remove a shareholding, set a percentage or share class, add an officer, attach a note. Every fact you add asks for its basis in a sentence, which goes into the verification pack verbatim. An extracted fact and your own addition stay visibly different on the chart. A line you rejected stays visible, greyed and crossed out, with your reason.

The chart as an editable list on the matter page — The chart as a list: each company or person with its shareholdings and officers beneath, an Edit control on every row. Anything you change is marked Added by you. The rest keeps its document links.

When a new file comes in

The file rarely arrives complete either. The first batch comes on Monday, the corrected Excel a week later, and the client’s third email has a register that finally matches the deed. Starting over would throw away the afternoon you spent settling conflicts and fixing names.

Lucy handles this with versions. Swap the old register for the corrected one, or add the late deed, tell Lucy in a sentence what should be different, and press Update the chart. Lucy draws version 2 from the new inputs. Your additions, your layout and your decisions on conflicts carry forward. The instructions you wrote are kept with the version as a record. Version 1 stays as it is, available to read. If a decision of yours rested on a document this version was not drawn from, Lucy asks you to decide again.

The update step on a matter: instructions and documents for version 2 — A late file becomes version 2. Write what should be different, add or replace a document, press Update the chart. Your changes, layout and sign-offs carry over. Version 1 stays as it is.

The transaction, step by step

A structure chart shows one moment, and a deal is a series of them. Lucy reads the file for the transaction in it: transfers, issuances, incorporations, mergers, conversions. Each step carries its own evidence and is marked as effective or intended. A pending deal is kept out of the current structure and shown as the steps that would get there.

The transaction panel, with the chart on step 3 of 6 — Step 3 of 6, a share transfer. The chart shows the structure at that moment, with the transferred shareholding in blue. Before and After bracket the six steps Lucy found in the file.

A timeline runs down the side of the chart: before, each step, after. Click a step and the chart moves to that state, percentages restated, companies appearing where they were incorporated. You can add steps of your own, reorder them, or dispute one Lucy found. Steps you add are marked as yours.

Adding a transfer step by hand — A step of your own. Above it, a pending merger Lucy found in the memo. Below, a transfer: name who sells, who buys, the company and the percentage, and the step writes itself as a sentence.

Then you export the step deck, one slide per step, from the structure as it stands to what it becomes. It is the drawing you walk a client through, and the one that goes to the notary before anything is signed.

Work with Lucy from your own AI

Many lawyers already have an AI they talk to all day: Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot. Lucy works from there. Connect Mino once through Mino MCP and your own assistant can reach Lucy under your login: list your matters, read a chart with its evidence, look up a company in the trade register, or start a new version from the documents you name.

That puts the specialised work where you already are. Ask your assistant for a paragraph on the structure for a client email and it reads the chart Lucy drew, quotes included. Ask it to record a correction and it goes through the same path as the app: the fact is marked as yours, the basis sentence is kept, the audit trail stays whole. Where a change would override what the documents say, it tells you so and asks first. Drawing a new version runs the model on your documents, so your assistant asks you before it starts too.

A conversation in Claude with Mino connected — Claude, with Mino connected. It reads the shareholding from the chart Lucy drew, warns that a change would override the register and the memo, asks, and only then records it.

The changed line on the chart, marked Added by you — The same line in Lucy a moment later: 40% class A, marked Added by you, in blue. The document evidence stays on record, still saying class B.

You set the permissions per agent, read, edit or run, and can revoke the connection in one click. If you have added your own AI key to Mino, Lucy draws on that key, under your own contract with the provider. The MCP page has the setup for each client.

Lucy and the rest of the suite

Thea gives you the facts of a dispute, in order. Garry maps what each side argues. Lucy gives you the ownership of a deal and the steps that change it. In each case the agent orders the evidence and the lawyer decides.

Lucy is available as part of a Mino Pro subscription.

Try Lucy →

Maurits Fornier is co-founder of Mino and founder of Patroon Legal Design. He spent five years as a litigator at Freshfields and ten years in legal design and technology. You can follow him on LinkedIn.