Contract Management Software Simplifies Legal Contract Creation

Law firms have long had access to technologies that allow them to do legal work more efficiently and with heightened accuracy. Yet until recently, in-house legal departments had been left on the sidelines with few technology options designed to make their work easier. But things are changing, the Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) market is booming and digital contracting is the future for in-house legal departments!

Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) software allows businesses to automate contract processes at every key stage. This includes common contracting tasks like contract creation and generation, negotiation, approval, execution, ongoing management, as well as renewal of the agreements. In this blog post, we will focus on the very first step of the process: contract creation (sometimes called contract generation).

Put simply, with a comprehensive CLM solution, anyone within your company (yes, anyone!) can create a contract with just a few clicks (and without creating a mess)! Does this sound too good to be true? It’s not! Let me explain how it works.

It all starts with a smart template. The legal team prepares, approves and publishes a template for a frequently used contract. On the basis of this smart template, basically anyone (with or without legal experience) can generate a “ready to be signed” contract automatically by simply filling out a form. You complete the questionnaire and the CLM does its magic: the form information is automatically populated into the template, at the right place, generating a transaction-ready contract.

You will no longer spend hours manually completing information in templates. It will also reduce human errors and thus greatly increase the quality of your contracts. It’s particularly valuable when you are dealing with an important volume of similar contracts (which is often the case for NDAs, client agreements, or employment agreements).

Who Benefits From Automated Contract Creation and Generation?

Of course, legal teams are the first to benefit from such capabilities. No more copy and pasting information in the same type of contract over and over again. No more reading through the contract in whole to make sure everything is accurate and no undesired changes have been made. Freed from tedious and repetitive work, the legal department will be able to focus on business-critical issues and become more valued partners to the business.

While legal teams will absolutely see a benefit from using a CLM, there are a lot of other stakeholders who will benefit from automated contract generation. The business users, like those on the sales team, the procurement team, or the HR team will all be less dependent on the legal team.
Business users in any department will have the capability to autonomously create the standard contracts they use on a daily basis, freeing your legal team from repetitive contract creation work and speeding up your entire contract process. And of course, to avoid issues, the contract management software balances this autonomy in contract generation with a tight review and approval process so that everyone can rest assured of the quality and compliance of contracts created in autonomy by the business users.

With a true Contract Lifecycle Management solution:

• Legal teams can automate the creation of any type of contracts, there is no limitation. They can actually automate the creation of any type of legal documents that can be templated (e.g. annual shareholder meeting minutes).
• Sales teams can autonomously generate NDAs, quotes, order forms, SOW, etc.
• Procurement teams can autonomously generate purchase orders and other supplier contracts.
• HR teams can autonomously generate offer letters, employment contracts, termination letters, etc.

If you want to allow your legal team, sales team, or HR team to autonomously create accurate and binding contracts with a few clicks, AODocs CLM is the solution for you!

Beyond automated contract generation, a Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) solution can bring a lot more benefits to your business. Check our earlier blog post on “Why Should You Automate Your Contract Management Process” to find out the 10 key benefits of a CLM Solution.

Click here to learn more about AODocs for Contract Lifecycle Management or to schedule a demo.