During uncertain economic conditions, building resilience, optimizing efficiency, and increasing productivity become even more of a necessity.

It’s also more important than ever for in-house legal to deliver an ROI, both with any investments in technology and the legal department as a whole. Typically, recessionary times bring more budget constraints, less time as work increases in volume and complexity, and more risk with greater adversity if decisions are wrong. Therefore, meeting operational and financial goals becomes more challenging.

Yet, despite the forecast, Gartner experts predict that expected spend on legal technology will increase threefold by 2025.

For in-house legal, one way to achieve all of the above is to choose a contract management system that connects contracts and matters, in one platform.

While the fundamentals and benefits of a contract management system are often understood, the next step is to understand that having contracts and matters connected on the same platform delivers superior ROI on cost, time, and risk.

Read on to learn three reasons why now really is the time to manage your matters and contracts together, and how the ROI will benefit the legal department and the business as a whole.

1. Contracts and matters together reduce costs

The 2022 In-house Legal Technology Report found that 90 percent of legal teams use three or more software vendors; alarmingly, 33 percent use more than five vendors.

With contract management point solutions being so popular, legal teams are becoming burdened with multiple, disconnected vendors to manage all of their work — as we all know, legal work is not just all about contracts!

Selecting a platform, such as a legal workspace, where contracts and matters exist together negates the need for several point solutions to address matters, contracts, documents and spend separately, as all legal work is managed in one place.

Costs are also reduced as there’s no need to pay for multiple subscriptions from different vendors. You’re able to consolidate subscription fees and renewals with just one provider, instead of paying separate, expensive subscriptions, with the added bonus of reducing time spent on admin.

A report from the Association of Corporate Counsel found that of those looking to invest in legal tech in the next 12 months, more than half were considering investing in contract management and 36 percent in matter management. So the option of a legal tech solution that combines contracts and matters on one platform is a sensible and economical choice.

ROI = less cost

“Matters and Contracts in one workspace is just more cost-effective; it’s less effort and time to implement, and it’s one simple interface where both the legal team and the business work more efficiently…no one wastes time duplicating work, looking for information in multiple places, or consolidating reports…everything is right there.”
Matt Brasch — Associate General Counsel, Buckle

2. Contracts and matters together bring unique time savings

With the extra pressures a recession brings, there’s an even greater need to work more efficiently, produce more work with fewer resources, and save time.
But when contract management and matter management solutions exist as disconnected tools, valuable time is wasted switching between the two solutions to gain oversight of contracts and their related matters.

Research shows that 77 percent of in-house legal teams spend over one hour per day jumping between various systems to obtain a complete view of all legal work, as reported in the 2022 In-house Legal Technology Report.

Further precious time is wasted on manual daily tasks, many related to contracts and matters. In the report, 40 percent of respondents spent three or more hours per day searching through emails or other systems to determine matter history or advice from outside counsel, with a further 40 percent spending the same amount of time on back and forth with the wider business to gather complete information or update them on the status of work.

Just imagine what you could achieve if you gained back those hours each day and saved costs for the business (with the average US salary of a legal counsel being $201,277 and CLO/General Counsel being $503,078 it all adds up)!

In fact, 92 percent of all respondents believed that the time spent on manual daily activities takes time and effort away from working on larger business goals, or affects their ability to deliver services on time.

When contracts and matters are together on the same platform, such as a legal workspace, you get time back otherwise spent switching systems. There’s visibility across all legal work, not just isolated contract-related components of legal work, including the history behind a contract, task creation, activity, and status tracking.

With an in-house matter management system, you enjoy streamlined intake and triage, collaboration within matters, and matter grids to filter and save views. Add this together with a contract management system, with contract lifecycle management (CLM), self-service contract creation, and contract approval workflows, and you have a powerful — and time-saving — combination.

ROI = more time

“Our team has saved two days a week on administrative tasks as a direct result of using LawVu.”
Matt Brasch — Associate General Counsel, Buckle

3. Contracts and matters together improve workflow efficiency

It’s widely accepted that workflow processes are at the heart of every efficient business. Contract management enables the automation of the contract process from drafting to execution, providing an audit report for any approvals given.

But what about a contract’s history? Where’s all the information, contained in emails and documents, that exists before a contract’s creation, and shapes all negotiations before and in the future? If a contract is disputed down the line, where do you find all the details that provide context? This context needs to be captured, along with the workflow that comes out of the contract — and this is where matter management comes in.

Remember, a contract is also often the output from a wider business initiative, or it’s a component that helps the business to achieve an initiative. Matter management allows a user to collate data, information, files, and communications about that business initiative into a single place, and present it in a way that is easily retrievable and reportable.

In addition to managing contracts, matter management also takes care of all of the other legal work that isn’t related to contracts, such as knowledge, spend, priorities, risks, tasks, and actions. Therefore, managing matters and contracts in the one legal workspace provides complete context and workflow benefits.

Workflows are further enhanced with the use of software integrations. Integrations empower the wider business to take responsibility for some of the legal work in their favorite enterprise solutions, for example, the creation of routine contracts in Salesforce, or creating matters straight from Outlook. This frees up time for the legal team to spend on higher-value legal work.

ROI = streamlined workflow and reduced risk

“Having an end-to-end solution was certainly a part of the decision to go with LawVu.”
Rosanna Biggs — General Counsel, Linktree

LawVu’s legal workspace, where Contracts and Matters are better together

LawVu is the only software provider offering both contract and matter management together in the same easy-to-use solution. To learn more about working smarter and to get time back with Contracts and Matters in one connected legal workspace, click here. Or learn more about the fundamentals of connecting matters and contracts together, including use cases and tips and tricks on how to do it inside your legal workspace as part of the Legal Tech Fundamentals Certification. It’s free and can be completed in your own time!