Legal teams at high-growth companies need to be dynamic in nature. No longer is their job limited to managing risk but also to driving strategic commercial decisions. From dealing with sales contracts to anticipating potential conflicts, a legal team has to interact with multiple stakeholders within the organization. And what do we look out for - Contract Management Hacks to save our troubles.

Traditionally considered a cost center, legal teams aren’t always equipped with the technology or budget to manage their increased workload. Especially if you are a part of a small legal team in a growing organization, you’ll have to do more with less.

They say creativity is best tested when constrained. This is certainly true for legal teams.

Contract Management Hacks Which You Must Deploy

While researching best practices for such legal teams, there was a strong case to be made for adopting contract management software. Yet, there is a lot you can do with the existing tools you already use and are familiar with. Of course, it won’t be perfect, but it will get the job done - albeit with a couple of tweaks. In this blog, we’ll look at some of those tweaks to better manage contractual obligations.

#1 Self-serve contract creation

There are template contracts and then there are bespoke contracts. To save time, creating custom contract templates seems like the obvious first step. Take it a step further and introduce a contract intake form.

If you’re using GSuite, you can check out the GSuite Marketplace where you’ll find a whole host of tools. One such tool is “Fillable Document” which you can use for your contract intake.  This opens your Google Doc as a live fillable form. It then stores the data into Google Sheets and generates merged documents.

For example, if you have a Master Services Agreement to execute, you can download a template from the internet and then customize it using Fillable. The dynamic fields within the document are marked with $, the values of which you can enter in the Fillable Document. Fillable will then merge the two documents together which you can then download in any format of your choosing. Pretty nifty right?

As versatile as Fillable and other such tools are, they still have a few shortcomings that you should be aware of. For instance, you won’t (be able to create standardized contracts tailor-made to your company’s needs) have the benefit of standardizing your contract management processes based on your company’s needs. The entire standardization process will have to be manually done.

In addition, you will also not be able to collaborate as effectively with your team members on the contracts - adding comments, seeing version history and other aspects are a lot more time-consuming and tedious. You could assign tasks using various project management tools (which we will discuss later) - but you will not be able to collaborate within the document itself.

All in all, this is a temporary solution that will just about get the job done. Once you get the ball rolling and business picks up, you and your team will be better suited to adopt a Contract Management software service.

Moe on How Including a Clause for Renegotiation Can Be Favorable In Future I Source: Twitter

#2 Automating Contract Workflows

A large part of your everyday work will involve tracking the contracting process at different stages of its execution. Project management tools can come in super handy in this scenario. There are a host of tools like Trello, Airtable, Asana, Notion, etc., that can bring some level of organization into managing your contracts.

With these tools, you can create a workflow for a contract as a project and add the steps involved in execution (such as creation, adding details, negotiation, and more) as tasks. You can assign priorities and owners for tasks, customize timelines, and add notifications for important deadlines.

With a task management setup, you can move away from emails or Google Drive to a more centralized view of all your contracts.

As handy as these tools are, it can be challenging to integrate them with other systems. The workflows in place will have to be updated manually. All tracking and assignment of tasks within the contract lifecycle will have to be done manually - which means it’s one extra thing on your plate. Make sure to weigh your potential return on investment before making a decisive move.

#3 Using Excel For Data Extraction

Any lawyer can tell you the pain involved in trying to search for details in a specific contract among the existing pile of contracts. Organizing information better might consume time initially but will save hours of your life later. For this, the solution is the grandparent of all organization tools - Excel.

“Think about how many contracts sit on someone’s laptop or in multiple databases and then think about the value of contract management. The importance of simply being able to locate all of the company’s contracts and relevant amendments in one place without significant effort cannot be minimized.”

~Sterling Miller, CEO and Senior Counsel, Hilgers Graben PLLC 
Ten Things: Minimizing Risk In Commercial Contracts

Contract Metadata is structured information about a contract stored against the contract record. Typical contract metadata includes data points like counter-party name, contract type, expiry/renewal date, jurisdiction, governing law, etc. You could search through an entire contract database with the help of metadata. Contract performance can also be tracked over time via data points.

As a young legal team at a fast-paced startup, it’s very important for you to capture contract data sooner rather than later. You can enter data in the form of rows and columns in Excel and keep a centralized database of your contract metadata.

You can go a step further and create a pivot table that allows you to see comparisons, patterns, and trends in your data. You can also use the Filter function to filter your data based on your specific criteria. Once you play around with it a little, you’ll get the hang of it and how many things you can do with it.

That being said, Excel still has many limitations. For starters, Excel is a generic tool that is designed to store data. It is not something that is built for lawyers or your legal team. So, any customizations or tweaks you make will have to be done manually.

Interaction with the main contract also becomes challenging. Since the contract is stored in another place and data points and reminders are set up via Excel, you must go back and forth between the two. This is extremely time-consuming and error prone.

#4 Setting Up Notifications and Reminders

This is probably the most obvious, least effort, and highest impact improvement - the holy trifecta if you will. Renewals and contract expiration dates are crucial in effective contract management, and setting up reminders on your Google Calendar can save you a lot of trouble.

But if you want to make it do just a bit more, make it a little cooler, you can always turn to tools such as Zapier. If a contract hasn’t been opened yet or hasn’t been signed yet, when it should have, you can use Zapier to set up monthly reminders.

You can set up a Zap that integrates with your Google Sheets for example. You can create all kinds of permutations and combinations and create a trigger event - and Zapier will ensure you’re on top of things.

The trouble with this system is that it’s too basic. You would still need to individually look up renewal and expiry dates and enter them manually into Google Calendar or Zapier. As you can probably imagine, this process is extremely time-consuming and labor-intensive.

On top of that, Zapier is a fairly tech-heavy tool, which means you would probably need some help from your engineering team. There’s a steep learning curve involved, so you will not be able to use it immediately.

So be sure to objectively assess your requirements and see if these tools will help take a load off your existing contract management system.

A combination of such tools, even though it might not replace actual contract management software, will certainly help manage your workload at fast-paced startups. It might not be as sophisticated as legitimate contract management software - but it’ll certainly help you in getting the job done.

An integrated, symbiotic interaction between these tools will create an independent, automated system that can handle the bulk of the tasks of your legal team. These are relatively simple to use and easy to set up.

#5 Use AI to Predict Contract Outcomes 

AI doesn't just provide insights from the past; it also helps you anticipate the future. By analyzing historical contract data, AI can estimate the likelihood of success for new contracts. 

“Artificial Intelligence just may well be the final frontier in terms of how legal services are utilized and provided.  As in-house counsel, don’t run away from it and don’t ignore it.  Rather, embrace it as, ultimately, it will allow you to do thing things lawyers love to do: thinking, analyzing, and counseling, while leaving the “grunt” work to the computer.”‍

~Sterling Miller, CEO and Senior Counsel for Hilgers Graben PLLC
Ten Things: Artificial Intelligence—What Every Legal Department Really Needs to Know

The process begins with you supplying AI with information about past contracts, including their types, specific terms, involved parties, and outcomes - such as on-time completions, delays, or disputes. 

Using machine learning algorithms, AI identifies patterns in this data, revealing which contract elements correlate with positive results and which may lead to unfavorable outcomes. When drafting new contracts, AI leverages these insights to offer data-driven predictions about the chances of achieving your desired business outcomes - timely delivery or favorable payment terms. 

This predictive capability enables you to make more informed decisions during negotiations, increasing success chances.

#6 - Drafting and Proofreading Emails With Artificial Intelligence

As a contract manager, you must draft emails and other documents. By letting AI handle your contract communications, you can streamline tasks like drafting updates, clarifying complex clauses, or negotiating terms. 

AI can create drafts that match your communication style by analyzing your previous emails, saving you time and ensuring clarity. It also reduces errors by suggesting grammatical fixes and catching typos while enhancing the professionalism of your messages. 

Though email may not be considered a formal stage of the contract management process, effective communication is crucial, and AI helps you to communicate more efficiently, maintaining a consistent brand voice and strengthening business relationships.

Simplify Contract Management With SpotDraft

“What’s exciting is that now there's a lot of companies, such as SpotDraft and others, bringing in the next generation of technologies. And the people that are designing them actually know what Legal needs, both internally as well as for outside counsel, and are being very sophisticated with it.”‍

~ Doug Luftman, COO & CLO, ScaleWith
The Key to Success as an In-House Legal Counsel & Leader

Ready to implement contract management tips for business growth but unsure where to begin? With numerous solutions available, evaluating all the relevant factors to determine which contract management hacks best fit the unique needs of your legal department is a must.

SpotDraft is designed for lawyers with the specific needs of corporate legal teams in mind. It streamlines contract management's most time-consuming and resource-intensive aspects, allowing legal departments to work more efficiently.

Schedule a demo today if you're curious about how SpotDraft's AI can enhance your contract management.

Also read: 8 Top Contract Management Software Platforms

The barrier to entry to innovation is at its lowest - it would be a shame not to use it.