Posted 12 March 2019
In recent years, automated technologies have become a key driver of efficiency and productivity within law firms and legal teams. One area that’s seen significant development and adoption is legal contract lifecycle management. As clients demand greater transparency, efficiency and value from their legal providers, firms are turning to automated contract lifecycle management solutions to advance their approach to contract management.
As contract lifecycle management gains momentum, it’s helping to shape the new legal landscape. Here, we look at some the key trends driving this move to automated contract management and what it means for your own legal contract processes.
The Need for Optimised Processes
The rise of automated contract lifecycle management isn’t surprising, given that lawyers spend majority of their time drafting and reviewing documents. In fact, one survey suggests that 50% of lawyers can take a week or longer to draft a non-disclosure agreement. In today’s changing market, firms must be able to streamline business processes and drive greater efficiency.
Automating the legal contract management lifecycle not only enables firms to save time and minimise internal efficiencies, but also ensures the more intricate aspects of a matter are handled in a timely and accurate manner. By combining knowledge management principles with automated document assembly technology, firms can reduce errors, costs, time and overall inefficiencies associated with more traditional drafting methods.
Greater Focus on Risk & Compliance
Security and compliance are major concerns for the modern law firm. With increasingly complex regulations and directives, such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Know your Client (KYC) requirements, firms face greater accountability in demonstrating security and compliance. More importantly, the inability to properly secure and protect client data can severely damage the reputation of the even the most well-respected firms.
A well-managed contract process can help insulate firms against professional and compliance risk. Solutions like Sysero make it easy to embed compliance into the entire contract lifecycle process - from client inception through to approval and review. For example, Sysero allows you to create risk-based profiles for each new client, embed compliance into the contract generation process, and employ a quality review workflow to automatically flag templates for review at specified intervals.
Increased Client Collaboration
The legal contract process is often complex, nuanced, and time consuming. That’s why forward-thinking firms are automating the legal contract lifecycle to streamline the contract process, foster better collaboration with clients and speed up negotiations. Using Sysero, lawyers can quickly and easily generate contracts from templates in the firm’s DMS and route to clients for review and e-signing by entering their email addresses.
To sign, recipients simply click on on the colour-coded links within the contract and type and sign their name. There’s no need for them to download software or create an account. Recipients also can opt to sign via mobile device for greater ease of use. Once all parties have signed the contract, a signed PDF is created, e-notorised and the final version emailed to all parties.
For today’s law firms, the ability to streamline the contract lifecycle is crucial for future success. Automated contract lifecycle management is not just a great option, but a necessary solution to effectively manage and speed up the the complex process of executing client transactions at scale.
To learn more about how innovations in automated technology are changing the way that law firms and legal teams approach transaction work, join us for our upcoming webinar, From Library to Contract: Automating the Knowledge Lifecycle. During the webinar, we will look how forward-thinking law firms and legal teams are working together to streamline the entire service delivery process – from accessing and sharing knowledge to automating contract execution.