Manual Contract Management: The Biggest Roadblock to Time and Cost-Savings in Your Legal Department

Within the last decade, the need for significant revision or renegotiation during the execution phase of a contract has increased by nearly 40 percent. Inefficient manual contract management causes unnecessary delays and expenses that are magnified when legal teams are negotiating a high volume of contracts. In response, corporate legal departments are increasingly adopting automated artificial intelligence solutions to overcome these pain points and accelerate their contract approval process.  

Is Your Legal Team Inundated with Requests?

Companies routinely juggle a variety of contract types during normal operations—partnership agreements, non-disclosures, indemnity agreements, property and equipment leases, general employment contracts, intellectual property rights, vendor contracts, and the list goes on. Large companies especially may experience a constant stream of requests that can be difficult to prioritize and manage. With manual contract management, attorney review may require several days to complete—and sometimes weeks. 

Automated Contract Management Alleviates Unnecessary Requests

An automated contract review platform leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to ensure your agreements comply with company standards by implementing an AI Digital Playbook. Once legal staff uploads or emails an agreement to the platform, the AI completes attorney-quality redlining and offers context-based suggestions within just a few minutes. Regardless of the contract type, AI-reviewed and redlined agreements fully adhere to the company’s standard negotiating positions.

How Much Time Are Reviewers Wasting on Calls and Emails?

While contract review may be straightforward work for experienced professionals, it can also be time-consuming. Junior associates may find this work particularly tedious as they acclimate to the company and its negotiating positions. Whenever a change is suggested, another set of eyes must review, understand, and agree to the suggestion—which, in turn, creates more work. Back-and-forth calls and emails inevitably arise before the contract reaches the counterparty and throughout the negotiating process. 

Automated Contract Management Streamlines Review and Negotiation

The AI’s context-based suggestions and contract risk analysis enable legal teams to reduce total time spent reviewing contracts by more than 90 percent. Additionally, contract playbook training costs can be almost entirely eliminated.

Do You Lose Money By Failing to Track Renewal Dates?

Manual contract management processes allow companies to lose track of contract expiration. In the past, legal staff used desk calendars and filing cabinets—even sticky notes—to “track” contract renewal. These days, most legal departments track renewal data with Microsoft Excel or a similar spreadsheet or issue tracking tool. However, these digitized reminders shift the burden onto the legal staff responsible for continually maintaining the list. Not only can this lead to disrupted service, but it also results in missed opportunities for discounts and more favorable terms. As a result, contracts auto-renew without negotiation all too often. The International Association for Contract and Commercial Management found this mistake can cost businesses 9 percent of their total income each year. 

Automated Contract Renewal Alerts Increase Profitability 

An AI-powered contract review and negotiation platform automatically scans contracts for important dates and enable legal departments to increase profitability with automated contract renewal alerts, leaving teams plenty of time to review metrics and contract provisions before expiration.

How AI Revolutionizes Manual Contract Management

Automated contract management provides the solution to time and cost constraints. And while humans may naturally resist change, an automated contract management solution is long overdue. With an AI-powered contact platform, senior attorney oversight may still be necessary for escalations, but routine contract markup can be completed entirely by the AI. 

Although various tools can perform specific aspects of contract management, an AI-powered contract platform can fully review, redline, and negotiate your agreements while strictly adhering to your company’s standards. The Association of Corporate Counsel selected LexCheck as the 2021 “Value Champion,” allowing legal teams to save money and time through innovation. 

Once implemented, LexCheck’s automated contract review platform can reduce total approval time by 80 percent and the agreement escalation rate by 70 percent. The platform scans agreements for compliance with playbook standards and offers suggestions to ensure favorable negotiation positions. By streamlining contract negotiations with the help of AI, legal departments can accelerate the contract approval process while improving overall quality.