DealLawyers.com Blog

Lewis Brisbois’s Francis Pileggi and Aimee Czachorowski recently authored a Bloomberg Law article highlighting some of the significant practical advantages that Delaware offers its corporations compared with its leading competitors. The article focuses on business filings, and while it notes that Texas has recently announced a “Texas Express” service for expedited filings, this excerpt explains that what The Lone Star State offers still doesn’t compare to Delaware’s expedited services:

While this announcement is an improvement for Texas entities, the Delaware Division of Corporations provides a superior level of speed, responsiveness, efficiency, and cost.

For example, it doesn’t appear that Texas offers the one-hour service that Delaware offers. In Delaware, one can confirm the formation of an entity or receive confirmation of a filing within a matter of hours. The Delaware Division of Corporations will process the request within the requested time (such as one hour) and a filer can request a confirmation email.

Delaware also offers more options for expedited filings, with the most expedited services offered by Delaware being unavailable in Texas. For the two services — same-day and next-day — which are also offered in Texas, Delaware still proves to be less expensive, and easier to actually file.

The Delaware Division of Corporations provides several options to allow entities to request expedited service both for corporate filings or for uniform commercial code filings for a fee in addition to the normal filing fee.

While Delaware offers one-hour service, which can be requested for $1,000, it appears that the same level of expedited service is unavailable in Texas. Delaware also provides two-hour service for an additional fee of $500; Texas doesn’t offer two-hour service. Texas also announced that it will charge an additional fee for same day-service and next-day service, which Delaware already provides.

While these “back office” issues don’t get much attention from the media or others engaged in the DExit debate, for transactional lawyers and the companies they represent, the Delaware Secretary of State’s office to provide expedited services for a wide array of filings is incredibly important, and states that are serious about getting into the game need to be able to offer filing services that are on a par with those offered by Delaware.

– John Jenkins