Contract management represents one of the largest resource drains for organizations of all sizes.

The American Bar Association tells us that “a typical Fortune 1000 company manages between 20,000 and 40,000 active contracts at any given time, at least 10% of which are misplaced, difficult to find … or otherwise unmanaged or forgotten.”

Drilling down into the details of the contract management challenge, the situation appears even worse. A 2022 DocuSign survey of more than 1,300 contracting professionals worldwide revealed that:

• Contract professionals take 45 minutes on average to find a completed contract
• 46% of respondents have been unable to locate a contract
• It takes an average of 84 minutes to find specific information within a contract
• 68% of respondents need to access completed contracts at least weekly

The challenge is acute, even for moderate-sized teams. On average, it takes 30 hours of staff time to generate, negotiate and locate a contract. For a mid-sized organization that manages around 500 contracts a year, that works out to 7 full-time employees worth of annual labor.

Fortunately, a digital, centralized contract repository has proven highly effective at improving efficiency of an organization’s contract operations and reducing the number of hours organizations waste searching for contracts.

What is a digital contract repository and why do you need one?

In the simplest terms, a contract repository is a place where contracts are stored. Today it has evolved to mean a centralized, cloud-based storage system for completed agreements. To be most efficient and productive, a contract repository must be searchable by extracted fields and key terms. It also must be easily updated with contract amendments, renewals and legal/regulatory changes. It is a living, breathing tool rather than a static location.

Often the commercial contracts team in the office of general counsel is encumbered by inefficient document generation, review, management and storage processes. Before a signature, in-house attorneys and contract managers are shackled to manual workflows and disconnected systems for negotiating, reviewing and approving contracts. After completion, there are new problems that arise related to managing renewals, obligations and risks. Part of the difficulty lies in not knowing where contracts are kept and part of the problem is the lack of searchability for key data.

According to Gartner, contract generation, negotiation, review and approval can take up to half of a law department’s time. In addition, siloed functions and departments make it harder for legal departments to manage and locate the thousands of agreements and contracts held throughout the organization. Moreover, the office of general counsel is charged with ensuring that proper security and confidentiality are maintained with permission-based, need-to-know access.

Traditional contract storage systems, such as general-purpose tools like Microsoft Sharepoint or a shared drive, represent an unbalanced and inconsistent approach to risk and obligation management. A centralized digital contract repository introduces advanced collaboration features, which quickly improve transparency, efficiency and information security.

A digital contract repository solves many common legal and business challenges

A modern digital contract repository can address many of these pain points, accelerating the contract lifecycle and reducing the burden on staff by:

• Speeding up contract location: With a single source of truth, finding contracts doesn’t have to take hours.
• Reducing the number of systems used: Eliminate the need for constant “swivel chairing” among multiple systems and applications where contracts may be stored and managed (including Microsoft Word, email, SharePoint, shared drives, CLM and CRM solutions).
• Simplifying handoffs among multiple parties: Simplify legal review, negotiations, approval and signature.
• Monitoring of existing contract provisions: Track obligations and treat contracts as codification of business relationships.
• Identifying current vendor relationships: After signing or during contract creation, easily identify prior contractual relationships with the counterparty or with a competitor.
• Screening for nonstandard terms and clauses: Quickly comply with requests to identify current contracts containing provisions such as nonstandard payment terms, force majeure clauses or nondisclosure language.
• Fostering remote working relationships: Empower employees with centralized, online access to templates, ensuring consistency and providing access to a broader wealth of resources.
• Providing multiple departments with real-time access: Legal departments often don’t have permissions to use Salesforce, which limits their ability to access contracts and other critical documents and With CLM’s built-in Salesforce integration, legal, sales and other key functions gain real-time access to contracts.
• Standardizing common sales agreements and contracts: Reducing variance among common documents (like NDAs) will reduce legal/finance intervention and minimize manual review.

A “crawl-walk-run” approach to implementing CLM

While eSignature has changed the way that many organizations execute a contract, there is often not a clear path to a CLM solution that can tame the growing complexity before and after signature.

Fortunately, organizations can introduce the time-saving efficiency of a modern CLM in a modular, step-by-step deployment with DocuSign CLM that adapts and grows as your needs evolve. For smaller businesses, DocuSign CLM Essentials is a great first step to simplify contracting processes. As you grow, you can access AI-powered contract analytics and enable real time activity tracking with DocuSign Monitor for CLM.

Our experts can help your team map out plans for an audit, implementation, training integrations, change management and continued support throughout adoption.

The CLOC Global Institute (CGI) 2023, held from May 16-18, became a pivotal moment in the corporate legal landscape. With months of meticulous preparation leading up to the event, we were determined to ensure that every attendee derived maximum value from their experience. In this blog post, we reflect on and highlight our participation and the insights gained from the conference.

From the moment the dates for CGI 2023 dates were announced, our team embarked on a six-month journey of detailed planning. As the conference drew closer, excitement grew, and we eagerly embraced every opportunity it presented. We actively participated in the sessions, attended various events, and thoroughly explored all that the conference had to offer.

CGI 2023 reaffirmed for us the dynamic nature of the legal operations function, with the professionals consistently striving to enhance their knowledge and skills. We were delighted to witness the overwhelming response to our panel discussion on “Building a World-Class Legal Ops Function.” The session attracted a full house and then some more, underlining the spirit of knowledge within the legal ops community. To complement the discussion, we launched our playbook, “Operating in Lean Times,” which resonated strongly with attendees seeking innovative strategies to do more with less.

The remarkable engagement we witnessed at our booth and the enthusiastic participation in our curated activities affirmed a crucial trend: companies now recognize the significance of Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) more than ever before. The substantial footfall at our booth and the engaging conversations with attendees showcased a collective awareness of the value that effective CLM brings to businesses. It was truly heartening to witness this growing awareness throughout the conference.

While the conference was undoubtedly a platform for professional growth, we also recognized the importance of fostering connections and creating moments of enjoyment. To strike this balance, we organised a networking evening called “Sundowner with SpotDraft.” This memorable event allowed legal operations professionals to relax and forge meaningful connections in an informal setting.

As we bid farewell to CGI 2023, we carry forward the enthusiasm, lessons, and inspiration, eagerly awaiting future editions of this conference. Our team at SpotDraft is committed to continuing our contributions to the legal operations community, fostering innovation, and sharing valuable insights.

The 2023 CLOC Global Institute provided a great opportunity to connect with legal operations professionals and listen to them talk about what they are looking for in their legal ops solutions. We were also pleased to host a panel session called “Reaching the Summit on Legal Spend” featuring Ryan O’Leary, Research Director, Privacy and Legal Technology at ICD and Stacy Lettie Chief of Staff to the GC and Director of Strategic Planning at Organon, along with Jeff Solomon, our Vice President and Segment Leader for LegalVIEW® BillAnalyzer.

For those who were not able to join us, we’re summarizing a couple of highlights from the session. Among the topics our panelists covered, three of the most compelling for the audience were the discussions on billing guidelines, vendor management, and artificial intelligence.

Billing guideline enforcement

Billing guidelines are an important tool for legal departments seeking to control costs and maximize outside counsel value. When beginning the effort to improve enforcement, legal teams should consider benchmarking their guidelines against industry standards. This can help identify areas where the current guidelines may be lacking. Improving the guidelines themselves will help improved enforcement to deliver even more value.

Legal organizations should also carefully evaluate historical invoices to truly understand what outside counsel firms have been billing for and how well that conforms to the guidelines. This can be a time-consuming project, but it is very important to fully understand the starting point in order to measure the success of the improvement effort later on. The output of this analysis will also be helpful in opening a dialog with law firms about their level of guideline compliance and where they should focus in order to improve it.

Vendor management

An effective program of vendor management leads to positive law firm relationships and well-managed legal spend. Here are two of the keys to successful vendor management, emphasized by our speakers.

Law firm panels: Consolidating the legal department’s work with a select list of firms is essential because it allows the corporate legal team to leverage their spend and improve their buying power. Panel creation is the ideal opportunity to pre-negotiate rates and to ask for the billing discount you want and expect.

Vendor scorecards: Legal operations teams should use a scorecarding tool that facilitates law firm evaluations based on outcomes, as well as more nuanced traits such as billing practices, feedback from business partners, diversity trends, and budget performance. Legal professionals should use these scorecards in annual or biannual meetings with firms and should use them to conduct apples-to-apples comparisons of all the firms they engage.

AI in legal ops

Our speakers encourage the use of artificial intelligence but recommend a well-thought-out approach to the technology. For example, generative AI can be helpful to some legal professionals, but users should never enter sensitive data into large language models (such as ChatGPT) because there is no way to be certain that the service provider will keep it safe.

Also, their recommendation is to look for opportunities for AI to improve existing processes and programs, rather than assuming AI should be leveraged everywhere in the legal department. They suggest developing a gap analysis that can help flag those areas where the organization can get the greatest benefit for the most modest investment.

We are grateful to our guests Stacy Lettie and Ryan O’Leary for helping to make our time at the 2023 CLOC Global Institute such a success. Thanks to everyone who joined us!

About Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions:

Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions is the market-leading global provider of enterprise legal spend and matter management and legal analytics solutions. It provides a comprehensive suite of tools that address the growing needs of corporate legal operations departments to increase operational efficiency and reduce costs. Corporate legal and insurance claims departments trust its innovative technology and end-to-end customer experience to drive world-class business outcomes. The company’s LegalVIEW® Bill Analyzer leverages both artificial intelligence and human expertise to help increase legal billing guideline compliance.

“How do I know I’m getting a good price from my law firms?”

Traditionally, that type of data simply hasn’t been available to in-house teams or firms — a fact that causes widespread discrepancies in cost across the legal industry.

In this article, we’ll show you a process PERSUIT uses to find what we call the “true market price” for a legal matter.

It may seem counterintuitive, but finding a true market price makes the price less important when you select your firm for a matter. By doing so, you can empower your team to better manage risk by choosing the best firm — not just the one with the best rate.

What is a True Market Price?

A “true market price” is the average transaction price that buyers and sellers can commonly be expected to agree upon for a particular good or service. But without transparency and competition within a market — like in legal services — it’s difficult to discover what a true market price actually is.

In legal, that’s starting to change.

In-house teams are under pressure to demonstrate their value to the business more than ever before — and to justify and document their decisions around external spend.

For all these reasons, legal teams are increasingly adopting a new process for engaging outside counsel — one that introduces transparency and competition so a true market price can emerge.

A Four-Step Process to Find the True Market Price for Legal Services

At PERSUIT, we teach in-house teams a process they can use to determine a fair market price for legal services.

Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Segment the matter by milestones and deliverables

Most legal work falls into repeatable patterns. You may not know exactly how a matter will go, but you know the types of activities that often happen.

For example, in litigation, you know there will be depositions, even if you don’t know exactly how many you’ll need. Nearly any matter can be broken down into predictable phases and activities to arrive at the “deliverable” or outcome.

In our litigation example, those milestones and deliverables would include depositions, discovery, pre-trial, trial, appeals, etc. The same concept can be applied to advice or transactional matters as well.

The same holds true even for complex matters such as IP litigation. Certain phases and types of work, like claim construction and the Markman hearing, can be scoped and outlined. It will take some up-front investment, but the process will yield a better environment for competition and transparency with your firms.

Having a library of pre-built templates for many types of matters also helps make the scoping process significantly easier.

Step 2: Invite preferred firms to submit proposals

After you’ve scoped your matter by phase, invite three to four of your preferred firms to submit proposals detailing how they’ll approach the work.

Ask them to submit their price estimate, a summary of how they’ll approach the matter, and any other information you’ll consider when awarding the work (DEI, relevant experience, etc.)

If you’re doing this manually, you can send emails inviting the proposals. Or use a firm relationship platform to simplify the process.

When appropriate, some companies invite bidding firms to ask questions and further scope the matter, helping you ensure a true “apples to apples” comparison when you receive proposals.

Step 3: Use a competitive process

Sometimes, the proposals you receive will have similar price quotes.

In those cases, the competitive RFP process — on its own — has revealed a “true market price.” This gives you confidence that you’re not overpaying for the matter.

There are other cases where you’ll receive proposals with price estimates that are wildly different. In that case, you can’t know if the prices you’re looking at are a true “market price.” It may be that the firms simply don’t know what other firms are charging for similar types of services.

In this scenario, the process we recommend is a “reverse auction” — a competitive process where you set a time window, show the price quotes (or their rankings) you received from firms, then give those firms a chance to revise their price quote.

This is usually done as a live event with a time limit between 30 minutes to an hour.

Here’s an illustration of a real reverse auction taken from the PERSUIT platform.

At the start of the auction, there was a $1.275 million spread between the highest-priced quote and the lowest.

One hour and six minutes later, the price spread had narrowed dramatically, with all four firms having price quotes within $270,000.

In this case, the “true market price” is about $1 million — the price the firms are grouping around at the end of the auction.

Step 4: Choose the firm you think has the best chance of giving you the result you need

At the end of this competitive process, you and your team can evaluate the proposals and make a choice about who to work with for the matter.

It may be counterintuitive, but a competitive process actually makes price less of a factor when choosing a firm.

At the beginning of the auction illustrated above, there was little chance that an in-house team could justify paying an extra $1.275 million to engage with the highest-priced firm competing for the work — unless it was a “bet-the-company” type matter.

By the end of the auction, however, the bid spread had been reduced to only $270,000 between all four firms; even less between the top three.

With the emergence of a true market price for the matter, the decision becomes less about price and more about who is the best team to manage the relative risk and drive the right outcomes.

The Payoff: Make Price Matter Less When Selecting Outside Counsel

Our internal data — which includes over $8 billion in proposals and $1 billion in legal work awarded through the platform — show that time and again the competitive process detailed above takes large price differences out of the equation.

By driving firms closer to a consensus price, or true market value, cost becomes less of a deciding factor than in a traditional RFP process. This price convergence empowers in-house teams to move beyond price in deciding which firm is the best fit based on the things that really matter — experience, strategic insights, diversity and ESG metrics, and more.

You can read more about the benefits of competitive sourcing in our recent report, 5 Myths About Reverse Auctions in Legal. You can also hear about how competitive sourcing strengthens the relationship between in-house teams and their firms in our webinar featuring Gopal Burgher, partner at BurgherGrey, and Kimberly Williams, head of Legal Operations at SMBC.

Ready to uncover the true market price for your matters? Sign up for a demo today.

PERSUIT is used by the world’s leading in-house legal teams to engage outside counsel in a way that’s more fair, more objective, more diverse, more equitable, and more effective for everyone involved. Learn more about PERSUIT.

It’s no secret – the number of tools we use on a daily basis has ballooned over the last decade. In fact, a recent study found that “a surplus of digital workplace tools places a cognitive burden on employees, as it takes time for people to stop and think about where to find each tool.” Sound familiar? 

At Ironclad, our goal is to streamline the contracting process – from end to end – to make contracting faster, more efficient, more impactful, and, simply put, easier. In December of 2022, we launched the Ironclad Ecosystem, a network of strategic partnerships featuring the tools you already know and love, like Salesforce, OneTrust, and Zapier. By connecting contracts to the wider business ecosystem, your contracts sit right alongside your tech stack – allowing you to work in (and get more value from) the tools that you’re already using.  

Introducing Slack to the Ironclad Ecosystem 

Today I’m excited to announce our newest addition to the Ironclad Ecosystem – Slack. This is a prime example of connecting Ironclad to the critical tools you’re in on a daily basis to drive efficiency. 

With the new Slack integration, teams across legal, sales, finance, and more can:  

• Stay up to date on your contracts without leaving Slack: Ironclad’s Slack notifications allow you to review workflow details, read comments and get alerted when you need to approve.  
• Customize alerts to meet your needs: Executives who are doing the signing usually need different notifications than, say, a legal team member who wants to be alerted about every approval. With the Ironclad Slack integration, each user can customize their own notifications preferences, to get as many – or as few – notifications as they need.  
• Launch a contract right from Slack using a Slash common: Users can simply type “/request-ironclad-contract” to request a contract, select the contract type from (inside Slack), and then get automatically redirected to Ironclad to complete the exact form you need to start your contracting workflow.  

To learn more about how you can bring the power of Ironclad to Slack, book a demo with our team.

Make Salesforce a one-stop-contract-shop with powerful new feature updates

Salesforce is arguably the most used tool in sales – which means teams are spending a big portion of their day in it. To help sales teams move faster while staying compliant, we’ve invested heavily in our Salesforce integration over the years to bring the contracting process directly into tools they use regularly. In fact, through Ironclad’s Salesforce integration, we’re seeing contract launches happen four times faster when launched from Salesforce, saving your sales users significant time as they try to drive revenue.

With the latest updates to our Salesforce capabilities, companies can now:

• Upload contracts for contract review (redlines) and fully-signed signature packets
• Access Ironclad’s powerful document viewer, including version comparison, document labels, DOCX and PDF downloads
• Communicate via embedded internal comments
• Share documents to the counterparty directly

… all without having to leave the Salesforce interface. And these updates continue to build on the existing integration capabilities, which allow teams to:

• Launch, review, negotiate, and approve contracts without leaving Salesforce.
• Automatically import Salesforce data into contract workflows to eliminate duplicate data entry.
• Ensure data consistency with Salesforce metadata updates automatically reflected in Ironclad.
• Stay up to date in Salesforce for things like contract approval and signature status to keep all parties updated on where the contract stands.
• Centralize agreements associated with an object to see all relevant contracts for a customer in one place.
• Act on contract data by including contract metadata in Salesforce reports.

An Immersive Week in Las Vegas

We announced all these Ironclad Ecosystem updates during CLOC Global Institute, CLOC’s recent annual conference in Las Vegas, where Ironclad was honored as a Diamond Elite Sponsor and the team hosted several sessions on Ironclad product deep dives, customer spotlights, and the future of generative AI and legal work. (Spoiler alert – CLOC celebrity and Ironclad Chief Community Officer Mary O’Caroll says engaging with AI is no longer a choice!). They also gathered customers and industry experts for networking and drinks at an incredible afterparty at the Cosmopolitan’s hidden gem of a bar, The Barbershop.

Looking Ahead

We are excited to continue building out the Ironclad Ecosystem throughout the year – and have some big plans for additional partner integrations in just the next few months. Click here to learn more about the Ironclad Ecosystem, or request a demo for a live walkthrough at ironcladapp.com!

In a recent CLOC Ask the Experts webinar, legal operations experts from the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, Uber, NCR Corporation, and DocuSign shared why the digital transformation of contracting processes is essential for legal teams today. A modern contracting process can make your legal team more efficient, unlock scalable support for other business teams, and unearth a trove of useful data. By transforming your contracting process, you can drive efficiency and contribute real value to your organization.

Here are the three important reasons why legal departments and legal operations should modernize their approach to contracts.

1. Improve efficiency while reducing risk

With increased pressure on margins and a challenging economic climate, legal is beholden to budgets more than in the past. According to Nancy Kumar, law vice president at NCR Corporation, these new constraints make driving digital transformation and continuous improvement all the more critical. By partnering with sales and members of the legal department, legal ops can improve contracting processes and save their organization significant time and money.

Sandy MacDonnell, senior manager of legal operations at DocuSign, saw this firsthand. By implementing DocuSign esignature at her former workplace, she saved the company an estimated $1 million in the first year alone. “We no longer had stacks of papers sitting around,” MacDonnell says. “Legal was no longer being that cost center.”

Just as electronic signature tools and digitization have improved efficiency for countless legal teams, so too can building integrated contract management processes across the organization. A contract lifecycle management (CLM) tool like DocuSign CLM consolidates all contracts and related data in one place, and automates key generation, approval, and signature tasks, allowing for more connected workflows.

It also makes it easy to track obligations and milestones, which can greatly reduce contract value leakage, says David Silbert, senior director of Agreement Cloud strategy at DocuSign. “Everyone works so hard to get their favorable terms into an agreement, but if you’re not actually tracking what you’re entitled to under that agreement in the real world…you’ve left dollars on the table.”

Improving contract management not only enhances efficiency but also helps legal teams reduce risk. Centralized repositories and systems lead to better security and allow you to easily find critical documents, while best contracting practices prevent recency bias or missing unfavorable terms during negotiations.

2. Allow your legal team to scale

Historically, legal teams have taken a reactive stance to address problems in the contract process instead of a proactive one, entering the picture after a problem has been identified. This hinders an organization’s ability to scale, notes Dan Linna, Jr., senior lecturer, and director of law and technology initiatives at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law and McCormick School of Engineering. 

“Through innovation and transformation, we really have an opportunity to shift to a prevention mindset,” says Linna, Jr. “We need to think about how we can design systems and processes to identify and prevent problems early when the cost of addressing them is lower.”

A potential solution lies in automation and data. By leveraging automation, legal can build processes that provide employees in other departments access to legal guidance, as well as self-service options like pre-approved terms and clauses. These new systems and processes are not only more efficient, freeing up time and supporting growth, but they also mitigate risk. Pre-approved terms and contract workflows, for instance, help catch non-standard terms, reducing risk exposure. Meanwhile, analytics can help identify and predict outcomes, empowering legal teams to avoid undesirable downstream consequences to poorly written contracts or unclear obligations.

3. Unlock more and better data

With a digitized contract management system, legal ops can gather useful information to improve legal processes. Features like centralized storage, automation, and analytics all allow for greater insight and provide legal ops with critical data points, including contract volume, time to signature, and context on where escalations occurred.

Document generation forms, which allow your sales team to stay within Salesforce when generating agreements and other sales documents, are another key tool for gathering data. By looking at document generation templates, legal ops can gather metadata to better support their colleagues, advises Jonathan Johnson-Swagel, senior legal and business operations manager at Uber. 

“When groups think intelligently, carefully, and preventatively to identify that metadata at the outset of designing the CLM product and those document generation forms, they end up with a treasure trove of valuable data,” says Johnson-Swagel. “This data can be visualized and tailored to the audience to help them identify and understand trends, highlight risks, and drive business decisions at the management level.”

Kumar adds that document generation forms also provide insight into how often people in the organization use templates. If usage is low, legal operations teams can make adjustments to better meet their needs. Ultimately, better data allows for better decision-making, from financial decisions to hiring.

For Sibert, having technology that provides structured information at scale removes the guesswork from establishing and achieving goals. Rather than answer complex questions about the use case or the business based on best practices or estimates, he can now answer them based on actual information.

“I used to have to explain to people, yes, there’s this thing called AI and it can apply to contracts,” he says. “Now we’ve moved so far past that. People are all bought in on the idea…But the key is having people and organizations think about what they want to attempt to solve for and how to get there.”

Legal ops as drivers of contract transformation

Legal ops teams are well-positioned to help their organizations design and meet goals around digital transformation of contract processes. For one, because the contracting process touches so many disciplines, legal ops works with multiple departments, making them qualified to lead and facilitate cross-organizational change.

Legal ops teams are also practiced at building relationships across the organization and understanding stakeholder needs—essential skills for launching a digital transformation initiative. Kumar suggests legal ops teams consult stakeholders throughout the process to avoid delivering a solution that doesn’t meet end users’ needs.

“As you look for types of transformational activities or process improvements, look at your end-user…and bring them along in the journey,” Kumar says. “You need to understand what their pain points are and what you’re trying to solve for.”

Another strength of legal ops teams is that they’re well-versed in tech evaluation and process improvement, both of which are important for digitizing contract management. They understand the value of an integrated platform, from centralized systems to integrating with other enterprise solutions.

Contracts impact stakeholders across the organization, from legal to sales to finance. Panel members agreed that it’s important to take initiative and not to wait for a business-critical event like a missing contract to start thinking about this technology.

“Everybody should own [this] and be at the table,” says Johnson-Swagel. “CLM is sort of the watering hole where all of the animals of the savanna come together to drink. It’s a peaceful place where we all make business efficiencies and magic happen together in the kingdom.”

To hear more about how and why legal ops leaders are transforming the contract process at their own organizations, watch the full webinar here.

Hiring and retention issues continue to challenge managers in the legal field. Key personnel have been quitting their jobs voluntarily, and in record numbers since the spring of 2021.

Many employees remain confident about their prospects in the current hiring market, which means that hiring managers must continue to be on the lookout for the possibility of their top performers leaving. So, what can employers do to reduce attrition? Managers must be aware of the latest trends in compensation to better address job candidates’ salary expectations and professional concerns, such as wellness benefits and workplace culture. Free resources like the 2023 Robert Half Salary Guide can be helpful tools that offer the latest employment insights.

Here are some important hiring trends that managers in the legal field need to know.

Legal specialists seeing sizable salary increases

The need for specialized expertise is driving hiring in the legal field but nearly 9 in 10 managers (88%) are challenged to find skilled talent. To navigate the competitive candidate market and open new verticals or specialty areas, law firms are hiring associates from adjacent practice areas and corporate legal departments.

On the flip side, corporate legal departments also are expanding internal teams. Many are hiring corporate counsel, paralegals, contract managers, and other specialists to support rising workloads. Many candidates for these roles are seeing sizable pay increases. In addition, corporate legal departments are providing current staff with raises to compete with law firms that try to recruit their employees.

In-demand practice areas include litigation, healthcare and labor and employment, among others. Top candidates for midlevel corporate counsel, paralegal, contract manager and litigation support/eDiscovery director roles are seeing sizable increases in compensation.

Here are several examples of average starting salaries at the national level from Robert Half’s 2023 Salary Guide, which contains salary ranges for nearly 50 positions in the legal field.

Title	50th percentile	75th percentile
Director, litigation support/eDiscovery (10+ years’ experience)	$150,000	$186,750
Corporate counsel (4-9 years’ experience)	$135,250	$163,000
Contract manager	$88,000	$112,750
Senior/supervising paralegal (7+ years’ experience)	$77,500	$98,000

The salaries are listed by percentile: 50^th percentile for candidates with average experience and most of the necessary skills; and 75^th percentile for candidates with above-average experience and all the needed skills. Bonuses, benefits and other forms of compensation as well as practice area expertise, special skills and certifications are reflected in the salary ranges and should be taken into account separately. 

When weighing a raise, consider both an employee’s value to the firm and the costs of replacing them. To help benchmark compensation packages, the Salary Guide offers average starting salaries for numerous roles in the legal field. Go to the “Find your local salaries” section of the guide and select the city nearest to you to get local salaries, which reflect regional living costs, talent availability and other factors. Some examples of local starting salaries in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., are below:

Title	50th percentile (San Francisco; 35% higher than the national average)	50th percentile (Washington, D.C.; 33% higher than the national average)
Director, litigation support/eDiscovery (10+ years’ experience):	$202,500	$199,500
In-house counsel (4-9 years’ experience)	$182,588	$179,883
Contract manager	$118,800	$117,040
Senior/supervising paralegal (7+ years’ experience)	$104,625	$103,075

Location flexibility can assist recruitment and retention

Over the past couple of years, high attrition rates have left many teams stretched thin, facing inflated workloads. Many employees are experiencing burnout and companies are reporting increased turnover rates.

Employers in the legal field can’t eliminate turnover, nor should they desire to do so because every business benefits from an occasional infusion of new talent. But a consistent exodus of professionals with in-demand skills and experience is unhealthy, particularly when these top performers are difficult to replace in the current, candidate-driven market. Flexible work arrangements that support employees in maintaining their work-life balance can be the cornerstone of a successful hiring and retention strategy. Contract managers, corporate counsel and litigation support/eDiscovery specialists are among the legal roles that are expected to remain remote long-term.

Contract talent is changing the game

Contract employees with strong legal backgrounds, who can jump right in and be added to or removed from teams based on changing needs, are being used by more and more companies and law firms.

This approach not only gives law firms and companies more financial flexibility and the ability to diversify their legal services, it also can boost the morale and motivation of permanent staff, who may take on new projects without being concerned or overwhelmed as their workloads increase. That might be one of the reasons 44% of hiring managers plan to increase their reliance on contract professionals in the upcoming year.

Employees’ expectations have changed

Since the start of the pandemic, employees’ expectations have changed and the demand for flexibility is here to stay. Our research reveals that 46% of legal hiring managers have had a strong candidate turn down a job that doesn’t offer remote work options. Law firms and companies that are offering more flexibility and remote or hybrid roles are attracting higher numbers of skilled applicants, and these businesses are also retaining key employees.

Employees also want a clear career path within their company. Offering training (upskilling and reskilling) can help keep them engaged while addressing skills gaps and strengthening teams.

Perks and benefits in demand

More than 4 in 10 legal hiring managers (44%) surveyed for our research said inflated workloads and burnout are the primary reasons for their retention struggles. And although money still talks, work-life balance is an important part of the conversation.

When given at least some control over their work arrangements, employees frequently increase their productivity and reduce their stress levels. Flexible schedules, remote work options and condensed work weeks are some of the perks and advantages that are most in demand since they directly support work-life balance.

Employees also are looking to enhance their health and wellbeing, and these benefits go beyond just health insurance and subsidized gym memberships. Fitness, stress reduction, nutrition, mental health, increased vacation time, mindfulness and meditation classes, and financial wellness and retirement planning are a few issues and perks that employees are interested in.

Make professional development a priority

If legal professionals feel their careers are stagnating, they will make the rational decision to move elsewhere. To increase employee retention, launch professional development initiatives, make investments in their training, and assist them in identifying a career path.

Offer training in skills that are in demand in the current business environment. Upskilling in litigation software, online document management, and e-filing systems, for instance, will be welcomed by support personnel, while attorneys will value continuing legal education (CLE) that helps to expand their practice area knowledge.

Reward and recognize achievements

Don’t forget about additional compensation or benefits. Signing, year-end and performance-related bonuses can make employees feel appreciated. Expanding the availability of popular perks or adding new offerings also can help to move the needle.

And keep in mind that showing your appreciation for a job well done and explaining to your legal team how their efforts contribute to the overall success of your law firm or company can go a long way toward improving employee job satisfaction. It might also be a thoughtful gesture to give a token of appreciation, such as a gift card to a favorite shop, restaurant or meal delivery service. 

Reassess succession plans

While no law firm or legal department wants to lose senior leaders, a strong succession plan can help to mitigate the damage. Here are some tips to help identify and prepare emerging leaders to succeed:

• Expand your talent pool — Create a group of talented lawyers and managers who could one day take on leadership responsibilities rather than relying on a single leader. A group with leadership and law practice management skills will always be valuable, even if not everyone in it makes it to the top.
• Make advancement easier — Top prospects for leadership roles in the future are eager to advance. With these high achievers, time is of the essence because if they don’t have a clear career development plan, they’ll probably leave. Taking away any barriers that can hinder their development will help facilitate their growth. Where necessary, change their usual schedule to provide them time to manage a firm project or work pro bono for a deserving cause or nonprofit. Their ambition for more senior responsibilities may be piqued by the increased difficulty and change from routine. Inform them frequently of their progress and move them up the in-house ladder as rapidly as you can. If these employees invest their time in training but receive no results, they may become frustrated and take a legal job elsewhere.
• Provide mentoring — While free CLE and attendance at legal conferences are important benefits, nothing compares to the guidance and expertise of a master mentor. When veteran leaders take the time and effort to share their accumulated knowledge with the next generation, the organization moves one step closer to a smooth transition.

Employers in the legal field that offer work that is both remunerative and flexible stand to gain a competitive edge in these uncertain times. Employee attrition is lower when workers feel appreciated, encouraged, adequately compensated, and given opportunities to grow.

For more strategies to recruit, engage and retain legal professionals, listen to our podcast.

Jamy J. Sullivan is executive director of the legal practice at Robert Half, the world’s first and largest specialized talent solutions firm. Robert Half offers contract and permanent placement solutions, and is the parent company of Protiviti®, a global consulting firm. Visit RobertHalf.com.

* Data referenced is based on online surveys developed by Robert Half and conducted by independent research firms. Respondents included executives, senior managers and employees from small (20-249 employees), medium (250-499 employees) and large (500-plus employees) private, publicly listed and public sector organizations across the United States.

As part of your organization’s legal contracting team, contract details are your domain. During the drafting process you might include every possible clause and rider to cover all the eventualities that might be encountered throughout a business relationship. These lengthy blocks of text can be critical to the success of a contract and anticipating potential risk, but they can also be difficult to wade through to locate specific terms and language. And that’s assuming you’ve found the correct version of the contract in the first place. 

Contract search and analysis, powered by AI, reduces the manual tedium—along with the enormous number of hours and expense—required to find and comb through contractual agreements to pull out relevant language on demand.

As a global driver in contracting technology, DocuSign conducted a survey of 1,300 contracting professionals around the world. The results of this survey reveal how legal teams in today’s contracting ecosystem locate agreements, identify terms, and use analysis to enhance business value. The results show: there are compelling benefits to automating contract search and leveraging AI analysis.

Read on for the insightful findings. 

1. 68 percent of contract professionals search for completed contracts at least once a week

Imagine having to do the same search tasks week after week, all year long – sound familiar? That’s the case for more than two-thirds of contract professionals. Now what if the volume of your contracts is so extensive that the search for completed contracts is a time-consuming daily task? That’s the impasse confronting 23 percent of respondents. 

Why is there so much contract searching going on? Respondents indicate they’re: 

• Looking for contracts in anticipation of an upcoming renewal (61%)
• Using completed contracts as a basis for drafting new contracts (55%)
• Identifying deviations from terms and conditions (49%)
• Reviewing contractual obligations (45%) 

Along with looking at overall contracts, respondents also note they’re looking for specific information, such as:

• Payment terms and financial obligations (56%)
• Renewal terms (55%)
• Details of service level agreements (48%)
• Legal and regulatory requirements (29%)

Being able to locate completed contracts quickly enhances business performance. It’s a simple equation: when you spend less time finding and sorting through your contracts, you free up time for fulfilling complex obligations and ensuring compliance. AI analytics and search tools offer the power to search efficiently and effectively for contracts and language within them so that your teams can devote more time to strategic pursuits that protect the company and improve the bottom line.

2. Finding specific language in a contract takes more than two hours, on average

According to our survey, the majority of contract professionals spend between one and six hours tracking obligations in a contract over the course of its lifetime. One in four spend more than a full workday in total. Surely there are more productive ways of spending that time.

Typically, retrieving contracts breaks down into two stages:

• Locating a contract (45 minutes) 
• Finding the relevant section or language (84 minutes)

In total, that’s more than two hours spent just locating contracts and language, not even analyzing or applying the information. And that’s only for a single contract—if you consider on average companies generate over 500 contracts per month, or over 6,000 per year, the time cost is tremendous.

What’s more, despite these lengthy searches, in some cases, teams can’t find the right contract. 46 percent of the organizations we surveyed are sometimes unable to locate contracts, and less than half reported feeling very confident that the document they found was the most up-to-date version.

As a result, even with all the hours spent looking for contracts and pulling out language, it’s not always clear that teams manage to identify the final—and therefore actionable—version. By offering customizable, robust search options, AI-assisted tools help legal teams avoid this trap.

3. 65 percent of teams aren’t using integrated tools to manage agreements

Our survey shows why many companies spend so much time on contract retrieval: they’re still using siloed systems which slow them down. The average team uses three or more separate tools to perform analysis, and a majority aren’t using specialized technology: 65 percent still use spreadsheets and email to manage contracts.

The result is lost time. From an efficiency and accuracy standpoint, it’s better to have everything you need to manage agreements in one place, with integrated systems so you eliminate the need to switch between platforms or cut and paste information. Much of the time spent locating contracts and searching for specific language can be reduced by managing these processes from one system.

The absence of automated search and analysis capabilities has deleterious effects on the overall contracting process. According to our survey, the majority of problems are related to the inability to efficiently analyze contracts, which can result in missed payments, missed deadlines and missed opportunities. A more efficient system, making use of integrated technology and advanced AI, helps companies prevent misses caused by disparate workflows.

4. Around half of respondents expect AI to reduce human error and minimize risk in contract management.

Many companies and their legal teams are beginning to heed the call of new contract technology. They’re becoming aware of what AI-assisted tools can do to help their contract management lifecycle: 54 percent of survey respondents say they’ve heard of smart contracts, 37 percent of intelligent search and 35 percent of language flagging during negotiation. And around a third of respondents recognize the power of AI-powered process shortcuts like:

• Automatic data extraction 
• Clause-level text recommendations
• Predictive post-execution analytics

By harnessing the power of technology, legal teams can be part of their companies’ efforts to drive efficiency. The rewards for automation are substantial. 53 percent of respondents expect AI to support human decision making and reduce error in the contract management process and 48 percent expect AI to minimize risk.

The financial benefits of a digitized contract process

According to a Forrester study, a composite company saw a 356 percent return on investment in contract lifecycle management technology over the course of three years. The study found that, generally, a robust contract analysis process can reduce the costs associated with hiring outside counsel to analyze documents, as well as errors in agreements and the risk of exposure.

DocuSign helps your legal teams search smarter and analyze better

DocuSign is an innovator in AI-powered contract technology. DocuSign CLM leverages AI to uncover insights from existing contracts and the negotiation process. Beyond intelligent contract analysis, we’re continually developing new AI tools to help your team through every step of managing an agreement. 

As we continue to innovate, our priority is always ensuring that our customers have the tools they need to get work done as efficiently and smartly as possible.

To learn more about current trends in contract analytics, check out our ebook on smarter search.

If your company has spent years trying to streamline your contracting process, it’s easy to get excited hearing about the ease of implementation or the ability to achieve ROI quickly via a contract lifecycle management (CLM) tool. But once your organization has selected a CLM tool, you might be thinking: how do we get started? How do we turn these promises into reality during implementation? 

It’s 100% possible for your organization to implement a CLM efficiently, effectively and with demonstrable go-live success. Here are the top 10 tips for an agile implementation of contract lifecycle management from DocuSign and Spaulding Ridge, a DocuSign platinum partner: 

Tips to follow before you kick off a CLM project: 

1. Document your existing process. Whether it’s on the back of a napkin or a color coded swimlane diagram, starting with a visualization of your existing contract process helps your team understand the starting point for developing a process within CLM. Even if this entire process ends up getting scrapped, starting from the same point helps your team get on the same page. 

2. Know your stakeholders. If your process is the “what”, your participants in the contract process are the all-important “who” (legal, for instance). If you hope to design a better process within your CLM system, you’ll need not only their input, but their buy-in.  

3. Designate an executive single point of contact (SPOC) for build decisions. What happens when there’s a disagreement on a path forward between your legal and sales teams? To streamline the process, you’ll need someone to break ties and stalemates to avoid delays. Delegate an involved leader to be the final vote should these situations come up.  

Tips to follow before you begin the CLM build: 

4. Focus on the big steps before diving into details. If your team has been working through a manual process for years (or decades), seeing the advanced capabilities of CLM solutions can be eye opening. But a good process is more important than any bell or whistle a system offers. Define your MVP and make sure you align on the larger process steps before diving into nuanced functionalities.  

5. Get your subject matter experts (SMEs) engaged. During design workshops, it’s extremely important for the core project team to stay involved. The core team should prioritize engaging cross-functional SMEs internally to ensure that the process design is not only streamlined, but all-inclusive of necessary participants. A bonus of this engagement–these SMEs will be more equipped to become future power users and evangelists of the system within their unique department or function. 

6. Formalize your sign-off process. Once you’ve completed your design, put a bow on it via a formalized sign-off. This act may seem symbolic, but it’s a way to ensure your team is fully engaged and bought in. A clearly defined scope of work that is agreed upon across your team, the vendor and the implementation partner is critical to avoid an untimely “re-designs” in the middle of the build, or worse, after the build has been fully completed.  

Tips to follow during CLM implementation: 

7. Get trained: Classroom Style. If your CLM solution has formalized training offerings, the best time to take these courses is during the build. That way, as your team completes the technical components of the build, you’ll have your training at the top of your mind and be well prepared for the subsequent testing and go-live.  

8. Get trained: Hands-On Learning. Whether your team is utilizing a solution implementation consultant or not, hands-on learning during the build is a great call. Ask to take some time during the technical portion of the build to facilitate knowledge transfer. That way, you’ll be able to pair your knowledge of the concepts of the system with the real-world example that your organization will be using for years to come. 

Tip for user acceptance testing: 

9. Try to break everything. If you’ve followed the tips up until now, you’ll have a good understanding of your process, your people, the CLM tool and your specific CLM configuration. This is where it all comes together: bring a cross-functional team together to test all of the functionality of your configured system. If your team wants to do UAT right, don’t just test the standard path – test the nuances, exceptions, and one-offs. The best CLM systems have been fortified by a robust UAT with engaged participants. 

Tip for CLM go-live: 

10. Advocates = Adoption. Congrats – your team has made it to go-live in record time! Now how do you get your team to start using the system right away? If you’ve engaged your cross-functional teams throughout the process, utilize them as departmental trainers and system advocates. Change management is crucial to an efficient start on CLM. The more your team spreads the word and stays involved, the more likely your organization is to adopt usage of your new CLM tool.  

The more you invest upfront in these best practices ahead of time and throughout your CLM implementation, the more long-term success you’ll have. The most successful CLM implementations include an experienced system integrator partner and a dedicated vendor account team including customer success managers who’ve helped hundreds of customers navigate these projects successfully. 

While these 10 tips can be utilized for any contract management solution, selecting the correct tool increases the likelihood that you’ll have an efficient and effective start with contract lifecycle management. Learn more about how DocuSign CLM helps automate manual contract tasks, streamline workflows, and reduce errors and risk in your contract process. 

This blog was contributed by DocuSign and Spaulding Ridge, a DocuSign platinum partner.  

Questions on how the DocuSign CLM function can make your business more efficient and streamline your agreements process? Contact jennifer.schwartz@docusign.com or ahelin@spauldingridge.com. Or visit our sites at https://www.docusign.com/products/clm/toolkit or https://www.spauldingridge.com/docusign 

Like much of the rest of the world, I have been Wordling. Every. Day. Today, they said I was Splendid! Beyond the quick endorphin shot that gave me, I’ve been spending more time lately thinking about the magic formula behind this simple word game. What is it that makes it so engaging, and how can we make the technology we use every day in our professional lives this easy and fun?  

Here are my top takeaways on what makes Wordle such a delightful product experience and what inspiration the LegalTech community can take from those insights. First, the three things that really make Wordle connect with users:   
 

1. Wordle aces Time to Value – it gives users value back within seconds (in this case, value being fun). It doesn’t require a huge learning curve, implementation time or onboarding time. The onboarding instruction guide is 85 words long and took me 40 seconds to read. 

2. Wordle avoids the Build Trap – it only has a few capabilities, and it makes those features work really well. Plus, it only lets you play once a day – meaning you can’t binge it and then get bored. It makes you want to come back again and again. It just works by doing a few things really well.  

3. Wordle is Agile –  Wordle was recently acquired by The New York Times, and some small hiccups ensued. We learned we weren’t all solving the same puzzle with our friends and families and speculation started growing that the acquisition would ruin the thing we all loved.  The brand needed an intentional, well thought-through approach to making the integration successful, protecting the essence of all that is good about Wordle. But the team recovered quickly! Our lesson is to listen, iterate and make improvements fast! 

So how can we take the essence of what Wordle does so well and apply it to the much more complex LegalTech space? We can start by bringing some joy into the equation. 

We all know the last two years have not been kind to corporate legal departments. A perfect storm of record M&A volume, a slew of new regulatory and compliance challenges – including a rapidly growing list of environmental, social, and governance (ESG)-related issues – and a pandemic that disrupted traditional workflows and created widespread staffing shortages, has left many corporate legal departments feeling exhausted. 

I’ve seen the phenomenon first-hand. As chief product officer for LegalTech at Thomson Reuters, I help create technology to help legal teams confront their challenges. As those challenges have grown considerably over the past few years, I’ve felt a very real urgency to address the existential question: Can technology really help improve the experience of our people? 

As I’ve continued to talk with clients – one of whom started a call by apologizing for looking disheveled because he hadn’t slept in 48 hours – We’ve landed on three key criteria to inform LegalTech product development experience from the customer’s perspective.   

1. LegalTech needs to be Smart – The LegalTech industry needs to ensure we are truly saving people time, not asking them to spend more time monitoring and second-guessing the technology. That’s a really big deal when it comes to leveraging AI for things like automated contract review and spend management analytics. It means the technology must understand the language and nuance of each industry to inform the next best actions – and explain those recommendations by showing the logic. It means we need to be able to trust that the AI is fair, representative, and accurate. We need a human-centered approach to AI that instills trust and confidence.  

2. Proprietary platforms need to be Open – The way we work and collaborate has changed in the last few years, with cats and alien eyes joining us on virtual meetings. We must bring technology to where people are already working. For decades, tech companies have built software on their own proprietary platforms hoping to win clients over to their product universe. In fact, it is a far more effective strategy to build an open platform that can work seamlessly through existing platforms, which legal departments are already using to collaborate, both with their in-house colleagues as well as outside counsel.  
    

3. Technology is all about staying Connected – Over 50% of large legal departments use more than nine legal technologies, often disconnected from each other. This leads to a fragmented and inconsistent experience, and the effect is the opposite of what  we all want – needing technology to just work, seamlessly. Law departments have a role to play – asking for industry standards like LEDES and SALI, asking for open APIs, asking for ownership of their data. Raise the issue with software providers, asking for your suite of solutions to cooperate with and complement one another. And tech companies need to listen, learn and innovate. 

Tying this all together, tech providers need to think like partners. For some product development that means rolling, iterative software development schedules make incremental refinements and improvements every day or every week, allowing end-users to learn and absorb new product enhancements gradually as part of their workflow. 

The world has changed. The way people work has changed. In LegalTech, this means we need to be smarter, with human-centered AI capabilities, open, with the ability to meet people where they work, and connected, intersecting the choice of technology with the integration of technology.   

LegalTech can not only be better, but it can also be – dare I say – Splendid! 

Author: Kriti Sharma is Chief Product Officer, LegalTech at Thomson Reuters.