Spring Cleaning and Contract Management Tips for In-house Counsel
It’s the one time of year that in-house counsel have time to get their affairs in order — so I thought I’d share some contract management tips. That short window between the end of Q4 and when the hustle and bustle of Q1 starts to fill your calendar.
The concept of Spring cleaning is a popular one, but for me, I typically don’t wait until Spring.
In the calm before the next storm, when we return to work from holidays, is the best time to get our affairs in order. Putting away the decorations, cleaning out the fridge. Unpacking suitcases if we’ve travelled.
Especially on the work front, it’s a great time to get more organized. Deleting all those screenshots and extraneous file downloads from our desktops. Working through the backlog of emails that piled up while we were unplugged and spending time with family.
And then of course, there’s our document storage.
Contract Management Tips for In-House Counsel
There are two kinds of people: the ones who maintain an elegant taxonomy and naming convention for files (I confess, this is me) and those who throw caution to the wind and trust in their ability to search and find what they need when they need it.
Ask any 100 lawyers about how they manage their contracts and you might get as many different responses. If there are areas of commonality though,m they would be around the use of the most common tools: Microsoft Word, email, and cloud storage. Some will have more sophisticated CLM (contract lifecycle management) systems and some will still use local storage too (though I can’t imagine why, in this day and age). In spite of those differences though, the organization and storage of past and in-flight contracts is a going concern.
To keep things in order and prevent the need for too much housekeeping at this time of year, my advice is very simple:
Maintain specific folders for each individual client
Consider sub-folders for each individual deal
Establish a naming convention or taxonomy to help you identify the order of contract versions
Have a way of determining the current or most recent version and which party in a negotiation was last to make changes to a contract
Most of that will seem like obvious advice, and if you’re reading this I can safely assume that you are already very adept at this.
Gaining Velocity with Automation and Eliminating Duplicate Manual Effort
The trouble with the contract management tips that I’ve shared above is that they are NOT at all new. Even with sophisticated CLM software, the burden is still on in-house counsel to find, rename and accurately store your version history. And by now, you’re very good at it. These days, some of that heavy lifting can be done by automation, and that’s exactly what our team is focused on helping with.
When it’s time to review the other party’s changes to a recent contract version, we believe you shouldn't have to even spend a moment searching for the correct one, or the one that you want to compare it to. When changes are done, saving your versions should be equally easy. Compiling all of your team’s feedback on an in-flight deal? What if all of those emails could be indexed for you automatically.
The good news is it’s possible and that’s where we are placing our focus.
Contract Management in the New Era
Whichever type of person you are; be you extremely organized or the “spring cleaning” type where you periodically have to tidy up your document storage, we keep you in mind as we build the features of our contract negotiation software. We believe that you should always have what you need when you need it.
You’ve got enough to worry about before the tide of new contracts comes rushing to your inbox. Whether you keep your storage folders (and your sock drawer) perfectly organized or not, you shouldn’t have to scavenge for the latest contract versions or emails from your colleagues about changes.
They should simply be there, deal by deal. It sounds fantastical, but we’ve made it work, and I want you to try it yourself.
If you’re an in-house counsel reading this and you’d rather fold your socks than spend time organizing or searching through your folders of contracts, Schedule a Demo and I’ll show you what we have created.
If you’re like me, you have enough holiday cleanup and 2023 planning without also wasting even a few moments hunting for the current contract versions for your in-flight deals as the volume of them begins to increase again. Let’s chat about how to relive that burden for you and help you move faster when it comes to negotiating contracts.
