In today’s fast-paced business environment, legal teams are under increasing pressure to manage contracts efficiently and effectively. Traditional methods of contract management often employ a patchwork of spreadsheets, emails, and manual processes to track and manage contracts – and this can lead to missed deadlines, compliance risks, and lack of visibility into the status and progression of contracts.

With so many manual processes to navigate, it’s easy for busy legal professionals to become bogged down by administrative tasks, leaving them little room for strategic work. Moreover, without a centralized system, legal teams can find it difficult to gain a comprehensive overview of their workload and effectively showcase their value to the organization.

At the same time, slow contracting workflows affect the wider business, too. Studies indicate that organizations without effective contract lifecycle management practices can experience delays of up to two weeks on contract turnaround.

Fortunately, legal teams can easily overcome these challenges by investing in a Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) system which streamlines the entire contract process, minimizes risks, and increases productivity. But it’s imperative that they choose the right solution. Internal business users are critical partners in the contracting lifecycle – and only a CLM which they can use quickly, easily, and without the unnecessary involvement of legal will drive meaningful collaboration across the business over the long term.

Given the complexity of contract work, the need for swift approvals, and the importance of business continuity, legal teams will always yield the best possible ROI from a CLM which facilitates true engagement with the wider organization.

Four new features that help legal and the business accelerate contract workflows

Flexible, easy-to-use automated contract approval workflows

The more you can automate, the more time you get back. LawVu’s new automated contract approval workflows remove the manual workflows that are often required to move contracts through critical approval processes – processes which involve both legal and business users. Automation ensures that contracts are progressed more efficiently, leaving legal teams free to focus on higher-value activities.

By utilizing an easy-to-use workflow builder and intuitive interface, legal teams can easily build automated contract approval workflows based on their internal business policies, thereby minimizing compliance risk and human error. Notifications are sent to approvers with the information they need to review and approve, improving collaboration and turnaround times and ultimately resulting in better business outcomes. LawVu’s new automated contract approval workflow features include:

• A simple drag and drop workflow builder that you can use to create unlimited workflows. You’ll be able to easily build, customize, and update workflows without assistance from IT or other external resources.
• Workflows progress a contract through phases, sending the document to individual approvers or teams sequentially based on the relevant data fields you have in LawVu, such as contract value, region, department, and more.
• Notifications (both in-app and via email) for approvers, including all the context needed to review, approve, and decline contracts without clicking between screens or systems
• The ability for reviewers to easily add notes to create more context, as well as to add approvers on an ad-hoc basis.
• The ability to quickly view the status and full history of approvals for each contract
• The ability to approve contracts from anywhere with the LawVu mobile app – improving working relationships and collaboration.

Mobile contract approvals can move work forward from anywhere

As the workforce becomes more mobile, and with flexible working arrangements likely to continue in the future, it is important that the tools we use meet our modern ways of working. LawVu’s mobile app is designed to allow legal teams and their business users to streamline and accelerate the contract approval process from anywhere. Say goodbye to missed approvals and delayed responses, and hello to more freedom, super-fast turnaround times, and a list of projects which are always on track. With LawVu’s mobile app, you can:

• Receive notifications for contracts needing your review;
• Approve or decline contracts from your phone;
• Review and revisit approved or declined contracts and invoices; and
• Easily stay up to date with contract approval progress.

Make data-driven decisions with contract turnaround time reporting

Monitoring contract turnaround times enables legal teams to effectively report on their activities, pinpoint bottlenecks, showcase value, and collaborate with other teams in the business. However, gathering the necessary data can be a challenging and time-consuming task.

LawVu’s new contract turnaround time reporting gives a clear, real-time view of how long contracts spend in each lifecycle stage. This gives legal teams easy access to actionable insights, facilitating data-driven decision making. No more time is wasted generating reports or creating graphs to communicate the value of the legal department to your stakeholders.

Eliminate manual work and action contracts faster with secure, simple AI

As workloads rise and the pressure to do more with less grows, it’s crucial for in-house legal teams to speed up their processes without sacrificing quality. Well-designed and secure AI offers significant opportunities to cut time spent on routine tasks, allowing teams to focus on the strategic work that matters most to the business.

With LawVu’s AI features, you can:

• Spend less time scrolling, reading, and writing with quick contract summaries;
• Reduce admin and automatically extract and populate key dates to efficiently capture and track important dates; and
• Query contracts using natural language to quickly understand key terms and conditions.

LawVu’s AI capabilities are built on Microsoft Azure technology, ensuring the highest privacy and security standards. Your data is never used to train any models and stays within your regions.

The added value of integrated contract and matter management workflows

By automating routine tasks, enhancing collaboration and delivering actionable insights, a modern CLM like LawVu transforms the way that legal teams and the business work together, saving time and achieving better outcomes for everyone involved.

While contracting capabilities are great when it comes to improving productivity, efficiency, and business engagement, they work best when they are part of an easy-to-use legal workspace which allows contracts to be worked on across the business without anyone having to jump between systems. With one unified platform, there’s less time needed to implement and learn, ensuring fast adoption and time to value.

The value of managing contracts and matters in one system is clear. A legal workspace provides a comprehensive view of all legal work, giving your team the context that they need, minimizing the risk of scattered workflows, simplifying the reporting process, and maximizing long-term ROI.

To explore how LawVu contract management in the legal workspace can transform the way that your legal team manages contracts and help you to deliver better business outcomes, get in touch with us for a personalized demo.