We’re excited to announce a new, adaptive contract playbook model from DocJuris. Our adaptive model makes it easier to apply, manage, and update your playbooks and templates. It also allows you to create and use playbooks for specific use cases rather than include all the specifics in one generalized playbook.
You know that contract playbooks and templates can streamline contract negotiation and review for your organization. But what happens when things change, or you encounter a new context that doesn’t have its own playbook?
With traditional contract playbooks, any change or new addition to your process or organization means either manually updating your playbook or ignoring your playbook entirely, which defeats the purpose of having one in the first place.
Over the years, the DocJuris team has worked with hundreds of companies to iterate on playbooks so they can get through the contract review process efficiently and accurately. Now, with the release of adaptive playbooks, teams can flexibly assess a contract and apply multiple playbook scenarios to contracts in real-time without the upfront headache.
The Importance of Adapting to Context in a Contract Review Scenario
You might be wondering why teams should work with adaptive playbooks instead of creating new ones for each type of contract.
The simple answer is that adaptive contract playbooks and templates are more efficient than starting from scratch. Research shows that implementing new interventions based on previous experience and evidence can be more efficient than developing a new intervention for each additional context.
So, with adaptive playbooks, you can refer to past experiences to inform new decisions. Pick a baseline as your starting point, then add on new interventions based on the specific scenario you are dealing with. Create new playbooks to deal with new scenarios, and use those along with your baseline playbook to make reviewing and negotiating contracts even more effective.
The Current State of Contract Playbooks
If you’ve worked on contract playbooks before, you’re likely familiar with using or hearing the phrase “it depends” when you’re trying to figure out which interventions to apply.
Unfortunately, most AI tools and contract management systems require a complex and broad contract type model that doesn’t precisely fit your business requirements or the situational context of the transaction at hand.
This is why it’s crucial to take a humans-in-the-loop approach to contract management, even as you use technology in your process. Even though artificial intelligence (AI) can do amazing things, it will never replace human thought for dealing with complex scenarios and “what if” situations.
Let’s consider an example of a general services agreement. You can use a playbook or template as a starting point, but negotiating the risks involved in a general services contract will depend on several factors. You’ll need to consider the nature of services, geography, and overall scope, among other things.
For instance, your general services agreement will be different in these scenarios:
- Business coaching services in Africa
- Vendor delivering goods to your head office
- Cleaning services for an office in Latin America
- A consultant working with sensitive PII when developing software integration
A human can instantly recognize that the risks and nuances involved with each of the above scenarios are vastly different; however, an AI tool will lump them all into the same category of “general services.”
As you can imagine, adapting to these scenarios using a single playbook or trained redline model will be challenging to implement and nearly impossible to use.
Now, consider that you have multiple playbooks that share a similar issue, clause, or concept that could be applied to each of these scenarios. This only compounds the problem. You likely would throw the playbook out the window and start from scratch for each of these scenarios.
The question then becomes, how do we create a process to reliably update and maintain playbooks at scale so they can help us effectively and efficiently redline contracts?
Taking A Refreshed Approach to Contract Playbooks
At DocJuris, we understand the challenges facing legal, procurement, and sales teams as they attempt to negotiate contracts using playbooks. That’s why we’ve remodeled our contract playbooks to be dynamic and real-time.
So, what does that mean for you?
The main benefit of adaptive playbooks is that you can now add multiple playbooks to a contract at any point in your workflow. So, as you work on a contract and realize that an existing playbook is relevant, you can add it in.
With this new update, playbooks can be flexibly designed to address a specific set of issues, which you can mix and match during your contract analysis. So, even if you’re analyzing a contract live in the DocJuris cloud editor, your team can mix and match playbooks to fit a particular contract scenario or context.
In addition to using your own playbooks, you can bring in playbooks from the other party, ensuring that you are creating a contract that works for both parties from the outset, rather than finding out later in the process that the other party has a preferred playbook they wanted to use.
In summary, DocJuris’s adaptive contract playbooks and templates allow you to:
- Pivot in real-time
- Apply multiple playbooks to a single contract
- Bring in business teams that operate on their own playbooks
- Create a living/breathing checklist that works for you, not against you
- Iterate on playbooks without having to repeat your update across several templates
DocJuris makes the process of integrating playbooks more dynamic so that you can draw from multiple playbooks at one time. This makes it easier to deal with complicated scenarios and allows you to model playbooks in a way that handles complex issues from the start.
Use Cases for Adaptive Contract Playbooks and Templates
Wondering how adaptive contracts and playbooks could fit into your contract review workflow? We’ve identified several uses cases that could benefit your organization. However, the possibilities are endless with adaptive playbooks, so these examples are just the tip of the iceberg.
Example 1: You have a vendor master service agreement (MSA) template that’s layered with options
When you get redlines back in this scenario, you can use an adaptive contract playbook to flexibly pick scenarios that are relevant to the specific transaction. For example, if the vendor provides offshore consulting, you can apply your playbooks for high-risk consulting and elevated IP considerations.
Example 2: You have multiple business lines and entities sharing an 80% baseline playbook, but warranties and remedies vary by branch
In this instance, you can design a base playbook covering 80% of the information these business lines and entities share, then combine it with business line-focused playbooks that can be loaded on demand. As you negotiate a deal, you can flexibly adapt that negotiation by introducing specific playbooks that are pertinent to the transaction in real-time.
Example 3: You have several dozen contract types that you negotiate, and it would make more sense to create a general playbook covering core boilerplate issues like governing law and limited liability
Having several contract types that you negotiate means you absolutely need to be working with adaptive contract playbooks. Sometimes, you have one-off considerations that need to be addressed in a contract, such as intellectual property, privacy considerations, or data protection addendums. With adaptive playbooks, you can always pick your starting baseline, then add other specific modules on an as-needed basis.
Other Key Updates for Playbooks and Templates
At DocJuris, we’re constantly innovating new ways to improve the contract review and negotiation process. So, in addition to reformulating how playbooks are applied to contracts, we’re also introducing a brand template area where you can easily store templates for contracts, amendments, and exception tables.
By combining these templates with our new adaptive playbook model, our clients enjoy a versatile approach to comparing drafts, applying playbooks, and getting deals out the door quickly and accurately.
Try DocJuris Today!
Are you sick of wasting time starting over every time you encounter a new context in contract negotiation? Stop re-inventing the wheel every time you face a new scenario during contract negotiation. Instead, apply adaptive playbooks and templates with DocJuris.
If you’re not using DocJuris yet and want to learn more about how our software can save your legal team, procurement team, or firm valuable time negotiating, redlining, and amending contracts, schedule a demo today!
