SAMPLE ASSESSMENT — modeled company, not a client

Mercer Law Partners is a modeled business created to demonstrate this assessment. Both sides of this comparison are synthetic: the owner's answers were authored to demonstrate the questionnaire, and the source documents behind the Validation column were generated to a spec. Both are scored by the same engine, against the same criteria used for real engagements — so the method is real and the company is not. Nothing here describes an actual business, and this is not a case study of client work.

Mercer Law Partners

Legal · Assessment vs Validation · every company here is fictional

Full Assessment report →Full Validation report →See the full side-by-side →All samples →

Assessment · questionnaireNo overall score — self-reported44/44 answered · 0 documents · 11 capped at 6

Validation · documents4.8/10 verified11 documents ingested · 8-domain blend

Where the answers and the notes diverge 2

Every row below is computed from the owner's own submission: the answer they selected, the phrase in their own note that sits against it, and the record that would settle which is right. None of it is written by us, and none of it is an accusation.

owr_04answered 10/10

Owner reportedSomeone is trained and ready to step in

…but their own note said“My partner originates most of the new matters. If he left the referral sources would go with him — nobody else knows those relationships.”matched: nobody else knows

Self-reported key-person answer and the owner's description may not align — confirm cover exists for the role described.

Settled by org_chart, key_employee_retention_agreements, management_bios

lc_04answered 8/10

Owner reportedThe entity owns the core; minor gaps in registration or assignment

…but their own note said“The precedent library and the matter templates are the firm's. Honestly the domain is registered in my name from when I started out.”matched: registered in my name

Self-reported IP-ownership answer and the owner's description may not align — confirm assignments place ownership with the entity.

Settled by ip_assignment_agreements, systems_access_ownership_inventory

The eight domains, both ways

The Assessment column is what the owner reported and how urgently it reads for them. The Validation column is what the documents support. Where Validation is blank, the evidence did not reach the threshold to score it.

Domain	Reported	Owner’s priority	Verified
Diligence Risk	5.4	High	4.9/10
Owner Risk	6.8	Moderate	3.0/10
Customer Quality	6.5	Moderate	6.0/10
Operational Scalability	6.2	Moderate	4.8/10
Financial Readiness	6.2	Moderate	4.8/10
Legal & Regulatory Compliance	7.2	Moderate	5.3/10
Technology & Systems Maturity	6.2	Moderate	5.0/10
Human Capital	5.8	High	4.8/10

What moves you from one to the other

The Assessment names what to work on from what the owner reported. Validation substantiates each of those against the documents — 11 of them here — scopes the remediation to what the records actually show, and computes the valuation gap from real EBITDA. That is how 4.8/10 came to be a number worth quoting rather than an assertion.

Severity below is calculated from what you reported, not from what your scores were held to. A criterion answered strongly is treated as strong here even where the score was capped for want of a document — the cap is a statement about evidence, not about your business.

Validation verifies each of these against your documents, scopes the remediation to what your records actually show, and computes your valuation gap from your real EBITDA — the substantiation and the figures a self-reported assessment cannot produce. Engagement pricing comes out of a scoping conversation, once there is a document set to scope against.