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A Better Way to Get Through Contract Review and Negotiation
Contract review and negotiation are often manual processes requiring multiple people to analyze and review important information carefully. It’s important to ensure that the contract is accurate and meets the requirements of the business.
Unfortunately, the people responsible for reviewing contracts often work in a rush because the contract is running up against a deadline. (Anyone who’s ever dealt with the end-of-the-quarter rush of closing contracts knows what we’re talking about.)
We all know what happens when we try to get work done in a hurry. Mistakes get made! Things get overlooked or ignored, and essential parts of the contract don’t get the attention they deserve. It’s also easy to waste time on unnecessary steps when you’re in a hurry. Just figuring out where to start can eat up much more time than you realize.
Of course, closing contracts before the end of the quarter is necessary for an organization’s revenue recognition and budget. We’re not trying to suggest otherwise.
Instead, what we’re suggesting is that there’s a better way to get through all your contracts at the end of the quarter without risking mistakes due to human error or wasting unnecessary time redoing things that have already been done.
Challenges with End of Quarter Contract Review - Prioritizing and Scheduling
The rush to get a pile of contracts reviewed before quarter-end presents several challenges.
For one thing, legal needs to figure out a prioritization structure for which contracts to review and when. Every contract is different, so every contract needs to fit into the priority schedule based on various elements. For example, some contracts don’t need to be reviewed before the end of the quarter, so they can be put off until later.
To figure out prioritization, lawyers and contract reviewers end up doing a sort of “meta work,” in which they review contracts to determine priority. Unfortunately, during this process, they end up wasting too much time worrying about prioritization and don’t spend enough time on actual contract reviews.
Once they start reviewing a contract, the legal team needs to deliver a quick screening report for the requestor. So, the legal team typically ends up doing two reviews. The first is to quickly assess the contract so they can get a screening report submitted as promptly as possible. The second review involves going in and redlining the contract. Of course, this is after they have already done a cursory review of the contract during the step of prioritization.
At DocJuris, we know there’s a better way to prioritize and review contracts without wasting time. For example, there’s no need to review a contract multiple times before you start redlining. Instead, we implement automation that allows teams to review and redline contracts simultaneously. This speeds up the process of quarter-end contract review without sacrificing accuracy or quality.
The DocJuris Solution to Prioritizing and Reviewing Contracts
We propose that the steps involved in prioritizing and reviewing contracts should be combined. This will streamline the contract review process and help legal get accurate screening reports to their requestors in a timely manner.
The way to do this is with low-code automation from DocJuris. First, connect to a survey form such as Jotform Survey Maker, Microsoft Forms, Google Forms, or Typeform to DocJuris using a connector like Zapier. Then, use an automated playbook from DocJuris and connect it to your request process to generate screening reports automatically.
With this automation in place, DocJuris can recognize a new contract request and then upload and analyze the contract. From there, it can produce a screening report and attach it along with the original contract to a file for review.
With DocJuris, your contract does the bulk of the work for you. By analyzing the contract before the reviewer opens it, DocJuris gives both the business user and the legal team immediate action items they can use to move the ball forward. This eliminates a lot of wasted time and allows your team to get right to the point.
Automation from DocJuris saves your contract reviewers and legal team hundreds of hours. By combining artificial intelligence with human intelligence, DocJuris gives your legal team time back that they can now spend on completing other contracts or working out the finer details of a contract in review.
Are you sick of spending too much time rushing around to review contracts and submit screening reports at the end of every quarter? Contact us to learn more about how DocJuris can benefit your legal team or see how our software integrates with others to automate the contract review process.
