In part one of this series, published on Dec. 9, I looked at how recent advances in artificial intelligence and technology in pre-execution contract review has allowed corporate legal departments to dramatically improve efficiencies while boosting their bottom lines.

In this part, I will discuss how the deployment process can be improved and the results that can be achieved through AI-assisted contract review.

Reviewing, editing and executing contracts is all part of the job at most large legal departments. It is also a part of the job that has traditionally required a tremendous amount of effort, time and resources. For every contract, attorneys on each side must review and edit all the relevant clauses and send multiple versions back and forth until each side is satisfied. In many cases, these contracts are semantically similar to those that have been used multiple times in other matters.

This current approach to pre-execution contract review is not only extremely inefficient and prone to error, it is also tedious and redundant—and yes, wasteful. Many areas of legal department operations, including other aspects of the contract lifecycle management (CLM) process, have benefited from advanced technologies that increase efficiencies. However, pre-execution contract review has largely remained the domain of frustrated junior attorneys plowing through pages and pages of documents.

Fortunately, advances in artificial intelligence-based review can save companies hours, days and weeks of time and money dealing with this phase of CLM, with the necessary supporting ROI metrics to prove it. This concept isn't new to many in-house counsel and legal operations professionals. According to CLOC's 2019 State of the Industry Survey, 45% of respondents are exploring the use of AI to reduce legal workload, gain more insight or improve performance, and 12% are currently using AI within their tools and processes. These approaches can also be extended to ease the deployment process of technology that delivers proven ROI through AI-assisted pre-execution contract review and realize the benefits of nimble tools that work where corporate counsel work.

Maturing CLM Models and Processes

Many legal departments have progressed beyond the most basic CLM model of using manual processes. They have advanced to central repositories, then on to automated drafting, followed by performance measurements. Some have even achieved integrated processes, where CLM is closely integrated with other legal department systems and data is exchanged between these systems.

Yet while some legal departments have fully mature CLM processes, most are still in the early stages. According to the 12^th Annual Law Department Operations Survey, CLM processes lag other areas such as electronic billing, outside counsel management and discovery management in terms of maturity and effectiveness. Unlike more commonly used technologies such as e-billing, which are meeting corporate legal departments where they are and are delivering results, the CLM technology many departments are using is still relatively simple. Forty-one percent of respondents to the LDO Survey ranked themselves a "1" or "2" on a maturity scale of 1 to 5 when it comes to CLM. Only 4% ranked their CLM a "5," or fully mature.

Improving the Deployment Process/Delivering ROI

The ability to move further along the maturity model represents a tremendous opportunity for corporate legal departments. A flexible pre-execution contract review workflow will empower your business teams to complete contract review more efficiently with fewer resources—while still providing the legal department with oversight and the opportunity to provide input when needed. One of the most important aspects of any effective change-management process requires implementing technologies that work the way your department and people work. By sourcing malleable tools that sync seamlessly into existing workflows, and tools that provide statistically proven ROI, you can maximize success and minimize many of the negative impacts of introducing new technology and processes.

These new technologies are part of the "third wave" of the internet, as AOL co-founder Steve Case describes it in his book of the same name. During the first wave, companies such as AOL laid the foundation for consumers to connect to the internet by building the necessary infrastructure. This required a huge investment of time and money, but the payoff was huge. In the second wave of the internet, companies developed sophisticated analytical tools that helped organizations get a more precise understanding of operations and workflows to identify operational inefficiencies and opportunities for additional revenue streams. Third-wave technologies are now building upon the investments from previous waves. Waves 1 and 2 brought us infrastructure and insight. Wave 3 requires greater domain expertise and more extensive collaboration, but this next wave is poised to deliver unprecedented value by applying the insights produced in Wave 2 to provide specific business outcomes.

The third wave will also transform many legal tasks, including the way that corporate legal departments manage pre-execution contract markup. Contract AI and analytics must do more than simply provide "insights." It must perform actual work. Tools that can classify text to accelerate the diligence process have been around for a while, but now a new breed of contract review tools can dramatically speed up the process and perform the pre-execution contract review and markup work. These tools recommend company-specific revisions that are based on edits to previously reviewed contracts. They "learn" from and refine your company's legal playbook during each new contract review and grow smarter and increasingly efficient with each additional use and can unlock tremendous corporate value through efficiency gains.

So how can you successfully deploy and get the most out of legal technology tools for your department? Think of three buckets. The first is minimizing the negative effects of change management by seeking out tools that work the way you and your team work. The second represents the ability to report and prove ROI, which can include the time saved in contract negotiations with the new tools. Accuracy and consistency statistics can also be used to quantify ROI. The third bucket involves implementing AI tools that can be customized, are nimble and don't require a big technical lift. Hitting this trifecta will allow for the successful deployment of pre-execution contract review.

Once your department has implemented these tools, additional efficiencies will come over time. The great benefit of technologies like AI-assisted contract markup that leverage machine learning feedback loops is that the system continuously learns over time, which drives even greater results, and an accelerating ROI with more use. Additionally, you will find that once your lawyers have been freed from the drudgery of redlining boilerplate contract language, they can think more strategically and concentrate on contract language that requires a more strategic approach.

In conclusion, leveraging AI and other automation processes in CLM can accelerate the speed at which your company transacts business and remove much of the pain and cost involved in the pre-execution phase. By tackling this inefficiency problem head on, you can reduce the bottom line, accelerate deal closure and ultimately drive organizationwide productivity.

Dan Broderick is co-founder and CEO of BlackBoiler. As a former associate with Am Law 100 firm Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton, Broderick focuses on negotiation, related disputes and developing more efficient processes for contract review.