Innovating Legal

Exploring the Use of AI in Law: Opportunities and Challenges

Artificial intelligence (AI) promises to upend the status quo across industries, freeing workers from the shackles of tedious manual labor and opening the door to creative thinking and relationship building. But business leaders often wonder if their competitors are using AI in the same capacity, and if they’ll outcompete them in terms of efficiency and profitability by doing so. The answer isn’t so simple.

Is the Future of Contract Management Already Here?

Contract management technology has been advancing at warp speed. To avoid the same fate that law firms are experiencing with  massive associate turnover, legal departments are turning to high-tech tools to achieve greater operational efficiency while reducing costs and organizational risk. Implementation of the latest contract management software not only boosts employee morale by optimizing their workflows, but also improves customer experiences and allows businesses to scale their growth. Things are moving quickly, so let’s take a step back and look at how we got here.   

How To Implement a Contract Management System for Optimal Efficiency

Legal professionals face increasing pressure as the rapid pace of technological change, the increasing complexity of compliance, and talent shortages ensue. According to the 2022 Wolters Kluwer Future Ready Lawyer Survey, ninety-one percent of corporate legal departments expect to fully leverage technology to tackle these challenges head on. The survey also found that sixty-three percent of technology-leading law firms increased profits over the past year, compared to forty-six percent for lagging firms. 

Benefits of CLM and How Contract Negotiation Automation Can Help

Contract lifecycle management (CLM) is taking the legal industry by storm—projected to grow at a 13.5% compound annual rate from 2022 to 2032. But only fairly recently did it become possible to streamline contracting at every stage of the process, including creation, review, negotiation, approval, execution, and renewal. 

With so much of a legal department’s time spent on mundane due diligence across thousands of contracts every year, CLM software adds high-level oversight to the process. Beyond the obvious benefits of CLM, automation can take legal teams one step further, reducing strenuous workloads, expediting time to close, and reducing company risks in significant ways. 

CLM Tools for Improving Contract Value and Performance

In this era of accelerating technology, if you have a challenge, there’s probably a solution that can solve it. You only need to know where to look. Whether you’re a project manager in a corporate legal department or part of a procurement team, contract lifecycle management (CLM) software can provide a strong start to improving relevant metrics like time-to-execution, cost-per-contract, and even employee turnover rates. 

CLM software sounds like it includes everything you need on paper, but the reality is that more than a third of companies using CLM solutions also leverage artificial intelligence (AI) tools to further optimize contract workflows and maximize results.

Contract Management vs. Contract Administration: What's the Difference?

Within corporate legal departments, procurement teams may hire a single administrator or manager—or an entire team consisting of both—to develop successful contracts. Contract management vs. contract administration are often used interchangeably and play important roles in the process, but they are two very different things. 

Understanding these differences will not only help in-house legal staff appropriately delegate tasks, but also create efficient workflows and implement best practices. With so many legal tools and technologies on the market today, teams need to know where to focus their investments for maximum impact.

What Are the Stages of a Contract's Lifecycle?

With a compound annual growth rate of 13% and the worldwide market set to grow by more than triple from 2020 to 2030, the adoption rate for contract lifecycle management (CLM) software is expanding exponentially. But what are the stages of a contract lifecycle, exactly? Understanding each one can help clarify why such software is necessary in this day and age. While the use of generalized CLM software is on the rise, integrating highly specialized tools at various stages also adds tremendous business value—especially for companies looking to become more competitive and accelerate growth.

How to Redline a Contract: Advance Contract Processes with Automation

Corporate legal departments looking to alleviate contracting bottlenecks and maximize efficiency would do well by starting with the redlining process. There’s no shortage of online resources that provide step-by-step instructions on how to redline a contract with tools like MS Word and Adobe Acrobat, yet doing so with considerable precision, accuracy, and consistency is a science.

Identifying and Managing Contract Risk Through Automation

Risk management is on the tip of every CEO’s tongue this year—and for good reason. A contract risk is anything in a written agreement that could potentially adversely affect the operations, employees, or business relationships of a company. While unforeseeable conditions do arise, as we saw with recent economic crises and the global Covid-19 pandemic, many companies fail to account for how these fluctuations in the economic landscape and their respective industries can impact contract risks.

Legal Operations Technology for In-House Legal Departments

When the Covid-19 pandemic struck, it became abundantly clear that the old way of conducting business wasn’t going to work anymore. In a few short months, seven years’ worth of technology pushed its way to the forefront of our lives. Children were going to school virtually. Groceries ordered online were delivered to our doorsteps. Manufacturers adopted direct-to-consumer business models. Entire offices went remote. 

But the truth is that efficiency-enhancing technology has been long overdue. With corporate legal departments in particular growing more competitive, facing staffing shortages, and dealing with increased demand for data-driven decision making, legal operations technology is the right solution for the right time.