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2.3. Drafting Your Notice: A Few Traps on the Trail
Your CFIUS notice will create the first impression of your proposed transaction for perhaps a dozen different U.S. Government agencies. Ideally, the notice will be clear, complete, and candid, but attorneys and their clients can sometimes fall into a few traps here:
2.3.1. Legal Lingo
Your notification is a letter to the government. You will advocate for the clearance of your transaction, but you are not briefing a court, nor are you writing a treatise. Avoid legal lingo, long quotations from regulations, or even passive voice where it makes your responses less clear. To the extent that you can present the responses to the more than 50 questions20 in Section 800.402 in a coherent narrative of the proposed transaction, you will reduce the risk that regulators will perceive you as obfuscating or creating confusion.
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