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Navigating the Odyssey of AI-Powered Contract Management: Key Tools and Strategies for Legal Operations and Procurement

By: Omen Safavi, Professional Services Supervising Attorney

“As the sail bellied out with the wind, the ship flew through the deep blue water, and the foam hissed against her bows as she sped onward.”

– Homer, The Odyssey

With the breakneck pace that AI seems to be moving, if everything we’re reading about the technology holds true, the process of evaluating your contracts’ workflows while trying to stay afloat of current trends can certainly feel like an “odyssey.”  Whether an organization is in a growth phase or trying to find better ways to improve on current processes it’s vital to ensure the right people are doing the right things, at the right time. There are a plethora of useful tools available that can enhance the process at every stage. Here’s a quick breakdown of how departments like legal operations and procurement are leveraging AI in contract management today.  

Transparency and Communication

Many different departments in any organization play a role in the contract process. This can include procurement, sales, operations, compliance, and legal among others. To build a consensus enterprise-wide and to ensure the obligations of the contract are being me requires a process that enables enterprise-wide visibility. Having a central system that manages contracts is vital to ensure the right folks have eyes on these important documents when needed.

Mitigating Risk

By having a database that’s accessible to the organization at large, it allows the right folks to have these documents at their fingertips. An important tool that’s also broadly under this category is the ability of the software to send automatic alerts and escalations. This ensures important triggers and deadlines aren’t missed due to any oversight.

Searching and Data Extraction

AI tools available to us currently allow some robust search features to find certain keywords in a contract database. These tools also allow for the extraction of data that’s common to most contracts like the names of the parties, starting and end dates, and payment amounts. This functionality also has the ability to build a database of similar clauses that can be used for comparison and future contract drafting.

Translation

Machine translation has become a common tool that is easily utilized these days. It’s no surprise that it’s being used in the contract management realm as well. Although it does have some inherent limitations we’re still seeing broad usage by international corporations to distill general terms and dates from their contracts. It can also be a useful tool for corporate secretary departments that are tasked with entity management across the world and machine translation performs well with documents like articles of incorporation.

Workflow Automation

Depending on the nature, risk, and cost associated with any given contract it can often go through multiple departments and escalation points. In addition to seeking guidance from legal or risk management other internal stakeholders in the line of business often need to give their input. Having these escalations automated in the system and a well-documented and tracked approval process can often speed up the process and ensure there are appropriate checks and balances in place.

Leveraging AI in contracts management can have significant positive impacts. Whether you’re looking to automate repetitive tasks, extract key data from current contracts, or streamline your approvals process, there are ways to use current technology to benefit your teams.

Contact an expert from our team to learn more.

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Our attorneys are proficient in reviewing and redlining contracts based on established playbooks, which we can develop in collaboration with our clients. This ensures that the contract review process is both efficient and aligned with client-specific standards and expectations.

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Purpose Legal has extensive experience with a variety of specialized contract management tools including, Concord, Contract Sage, Wrangler, CS, Workiva, and more. Our team is skilled in utilizing these tools to offer cloud-based platforms, central repositories for contracts, workflow management for contract review and approval, collaboration tools, dashboards for tracking and reporting, e-signatures, and contract risk management detection.

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We provide contract drafting services based on templates, ensuring consistency and compliance with legal standards and client requirements. Our approach is flexible, allowing for customization based on specific client needs.

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Our team has tested and trained on leading contract management tools like Brevia, Luminance, ContractWorks, etc., which feature Al-enabled capabilities for auto-extracting key contract data points. We understand that while these tools provide a solid foundation, manual review and additional tagging are essential for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

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Purpose Legal offers a highly customizable solution that can include but isn’t limited to the following:

  • Email or FTP for contract review and data extraction, with data organized into client-approved Excel templates.
  • Support for contract review and data extraction via Relativity, with custom data fields and OCR search capabilities.
  • In-house tool utilization for data review or template preparation for data import.

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From pre-M&A due diligence contract review to lease abstraction, playbook creation, and data extraction, Purpose Legal has the expertise to support a wide range of contract management services. Our team is capable of drafting and reviewing a variety of contracts, from NDAs to loan agreements and beyond, with an emphasis on identifying and managing nonstandard clauses.

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Purpose Legal excels in creating best-in-class playbooks that streamline the contracting process, drawing on our deep experience and best practices to produce effective, client-specific playbooks.

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