Why legal departments should drive contract transformation

Legal leaders know they need a clear vision of the expanding role they want to fill within their company, one that goes beyond just ensuring compliance with the law and mitigating risk. They know they need a pragmatic and attainable roadmap that builds a foundation for this vision and produces tangible results. Finally, these leaders know their teams need to embrace a variety of business, operational and technological perspectives to fulfill their role as a critical business function.

Understandably, establishing a blueprint to accomplish this vision and roadmap can be daunting. It is crucial that legal teams collaborate closely with other functional groups that are consumers of their services, as well as vested stakeholders, such as the company’s IT department, that can help the legal department’s vision become reality and thoughtfully identify where to start.

One pragmatic initiative legal teams can undertake to demonstrate immediate impact is to lead the transformation of their company’s contracts and other agreements. Legal departments have the enterprise-level relationships to serve as a central hub in assessing current contract processes, agreement quality and stakeholders’ desired outcomes. With that information, they can design integrated workflows that will result in more consistent, acceptable contracting terms.