Normally, new reaction design or reactivity improvement involves screening a large number of ligands or performing computational mechanistic studies . While ligand hemilability is often used as a design principle , such a principle mainly relies on a set of heuristic rules such as distinct donor properties of coordinating atoms , flexibility of the linker between coordination atoms , and steric crowding near the transition metal. Determining whether or not a ligand is hemilabile in solution usually requires indirect kinetic measurements of reaction rates , trapping of distinct complexes in crystal structures , or time-consuming computational mechanistic studies . Most commonly, the design of ligands involves the trial-and-error changing and mismatching of the donor properties of coordinating atoms in an attempt to bias ligands towards hemilability. However, symmetric, homo-functional ligands have also been shown to undergo hemilabile coordination changes , while some multifunctional ligands do not tend to change coordination environments . Therefore, being able to tell a priori whether a ligand can act as a hemilabile ligand would greatly accelerate screening efforts.