How do you as a legal ops professional measure your own success? What standard do your peers hold you to? Processes that are efficiently coupled with the ability to implement meaningful cost reductions is one key metric.
The ability to take complex and time-consuming legal processes — such as contract review — and standardize them is another key indicator of personal effectiveness.
It's up to you to empower your in-house legal team with the best resources to help them improve processes and efficiency throughout their day-to-day. From eliminating the most time-consuming aspects of contract review to streamlining your legal activities and simultaneously boosting your own intra-corporate credibility, contract review software may be the missing piece your organization needs. Contract review software goes a long way towards accomplishing this in two important ways:
Above all else, contract review software helps to improve accuracy throughout the contracting process. You'll reduce negotiation times, confidently review third-party contracts, and certify that your contracts are benchmarked against industry best practices. The end result? Your peers will trust your recommendations, giving you the credibility you deserve.
The right software doesn't just improve your accuracy; it affects your efficiency as well. Using functions such as benchmarking, comparison, and contract certification drastically reduces the time spent by your legal team on needless redlines or arguing friction-filled terms. You'll be able to complete core work functions in a fraction of the time with the combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and human intelligence (HI) designed to cut through all the logistical red tape.
To further see the value of contract review software, let’s get into the three main aspects you can use it for.
As a legal operations professional, just imagine how much more productive your team would be without needing to work in the minutia of manual contract review every single day. The right software makes this pipedream a reality.
Contract review software is any suite of software solutions that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics, mixed with good old-fashioned human intelligence (HI), to help make contracting easier for you and your company. Below, we'll talk in greater detail about the hallmarks of a well-built contract review software.
If you've ever been to an emergency room, or are familiar with healthcare in general, you’ve probably seen ER staff meet periodically to compare incoming cases in order to pinpoint which are the most critical to tend to. It's a process called triage — it streamlines hospital operations, and it saves lives. Your incoming, third-party contracts deserve the same level of diligence and scrutiny that patients in a hospital would get.
A well-built contract review software starts with a catalog of terms that are important for your business. From there, the suite's AI, backed up by a team of boots-on-the-ground professionals, can screen all incoming contracts to ensure that there's congruence between necessary terms and what's actually written on the page. The end result? More time for your legal team to help grow —and protect— your emerging business.
The business world is in a constant state of evolution. Things change rapidly, and so do the industry-wide standards for contract writing. A well-designed contract review software can help you compare both the contracts you create in-house and incoming contracts with the current state of the market.
By letting the AI benchmark each contract for you, you automatically boost your credibility by knowing how your paper compares to market standards and adjusting accordingly.
Contract negotiations can be a real drag on your department's time and resources. Lengthy negotiations can also reduce confidence and productivity across your whole enterprise. That's why your contract review software should feature a contract certification function that helps your sales team reduce negotiations and close business faster with objective proof that your terms are fair.
Credibility is important. Do you want to be seen as an impediment or a business partner? Do you want to do things the hard way, or do you want to be seen as an innovator?
Contract review solutions can help you leverage your knowledge and expertise to create a better legal ops department, thus driving the future profitability and scalability of your company. Get started with a free trial today!