Do Small In-House Legal Teams Use Contract Management?

Contracts are often the backbone of an in-house legal department - whether it is procurement, sales, employment or any other myriad types of contracts, they must be requested, drafted, reviewed, negotiated, executed and managed. At least a portion of this lifecycle sits with the legal department, but increasingly over the past decade the entire contract lifecycle management has become the responsibility of the corporate legal department.

However, contract management tools (depending on your software of choice) can be expensive, and involve months-long implementation projects. This time and money hurdle might suggest that small in-house legal teams have been at risk of being locked out of this productivity tool.

In the recent survey "LegalTech for Teams under Ten", we surveyed smaller in-house legal teams to understand their use of technologies, including contract management. 

After a decade of focused development in this space, the results suggest that almost half (46%) of smaller in-house teams have been able to take advantage of this software, its productivity and risk improvements. 

With a further 18% of smaller in-house teams intending to procure contract management in the near future, nearly two thirds of smaller in-house teams will be using contract management to streamline their processes from contract request through to execution and lifecycle management.

Does in-house legal team size impact use of contract management?

In short - not much.

Whilst there is some size disparity between solo in-house legal team members and teams of 2 to 5 and 6 to 10, particularly in terms of their interest in the procurement a system, there was solid consistency amongst all teams of 2 or more. 

Similarly, amongst those who are already using the software, both teams of 2 to 5 and teams of 6 to 10 show the levels of maturity are split broadly into equal thirds of:

• mature users
• immature users
• currently implementing a solution

Productivity without contract management?

The urgent need for productivity improvements suggest that time savings now need to be delivered to in-house legal teams in the form of hours per day, rather than hours per week. As the largest component of legal industry workload, the opportunity to improve productivity through contract creation, negotiation, execution and lifecycle management should be close to the front of all Legal Department legal technology roadmaps.

That 22% of the market consider this a ‘longer term’ consideration and a further 14% are not interested at all begs the question: where will near term productivity improvements come from for more than a third of Legal Departments?

Contract management that is simple, powerful and affordable

• Simple to implement. Contract management platforms like Xakia are cloud-based, they are built for immediate deployment and use. As a subscription service, there are no costly installation fees or processes, and there are no lengthy contracts or commitments – it’s a month-to-month plan.
  
  Xakia was purpose-built for easy configuration; most legal teams can be up and running in less than an hour. (You don’t even need to call IT.)
  
  
• It’s affordable. Unlike systems designed for mega-teams, contract management providers like Xakia offer pricing that scales down; you pay only for the number of users you need.

If you're interested to improve your contract workflow for improved productivity, streamlined processes and less heartburn, you can learn more here.

Want to know more? Xakia’s latest white paper, Legal Tech for Teams Under Ten, will help you benchmark against your peers, scout trends, and understand how exactly legal tech is deployed in the small team context.