M&A knowledge management · Guide

A step-by-step guide to design an M&A simulation

This guide helps M&A knowledge management and professional support lawyers turn deal know-how into a BeSavvy simulation course. You'll learn what a simulation is actually made of, work through the four transaction types an M&A course is usually built around, and see which blocks train which part of an M&A lawyer's judgement.

What a simulation is made of — course, simulator, and the two kinds of block inside it.
4 M&A courses built around whole transactions: private company sales, public takeovers, carve-outs, and minority stakes.
Which blocks train which part of deal judgement, and what know-how to have on hand before you start.

Definitions

Before we get into how a course is built, we need to make sure that we speak the same language. So let's spend some time reading through the definitions and understanding the connections between them.

Ten terms carry the whole guide. The first five are the structure of the platform; the rest are what you fill it with.

Course

The top of the hierarchy — a collection of simulators that follow one deal from start to finish. Each simulator is a chapter with its own simulation story; together they train M&A judgement across the moments where it actually gets tested, rather than teaching the deal cycle once as a diagram.

Simulator

One chapter of the course, and the thing a learner opens and finishes in a sitting. Its simulation story is a sequence of interactive blocks that recreate a small part of real deal work: triage the data room, map findings to protections, mark up the warranty schedule, take the call with the client. Closer to a flight simulator for deal judgement than a know-how note or an SPA walkthrough.

Block

The unit a simulator is assembled from. Every simulator is an ordered list of blocks, and every block is one of exactly two kinds — an exercise block or a story block. A typical simulator runs to between three and twelve of them.

Exercise block

A block where the learner does something and is assessed on it: pick the issues that belong in the report, map a finding to the right protection, draft the indemnity, hold the position on the cap. Exercise blocks are where judgement is practised, and the only blocks that generate feedback and a score.

Story block

A block that carries the narrative and hands the learner what they need in order to act — the partner's scoping instruction, the buyer's investment thesis, the three contracts pulled out of the data room, the mark-up that came back from the other side overnight. Nothing to submit and nothing scored, but without them the exercise blocks are clause drills rather than deal work.

Story

The deal story — the shared facts that stay fixed across every simulator on the course — the target, the buyer, the sector, the price mechanism, the long-stop date, and what diligence has already turned up. One canon keeps the generation agent consistent and stops contradictions between simulators.

Characters

The people who appear in the narrative: the partner who scoped the review, the client's head of corporate development, the associate on the other side who will not move on the disclosure standard, the seller's founder who still runs the business. Defining them once gives every conversation a consistent voice and role across the whole course.

Playbook

A collection of critical pieces of knowledge extracted from the materials you provide — your SPA drafting notes, your negotiated-positions data, your DD report standards, your claims history. It guides the agent when it builds the simulators and when it judges what the learner did. It is not the negotiation playbook your PSL team writes for a specific client.

Goals

Every course and every simulator has a list of goals. These are the outcomes that the learner is measured against and what your reporting rolls up to.

Feedback

What the learner gets back after every exercise block: what they did, what it would have cost the client, and what a stronger version would have looked like. Graded against your playbook and the simulator's goals — not against a generic idea of good drafting.