During a Legalweek(year) panel held in March, PayPal's director of legal operations Emily Teuben told the virtually assembled crowd that many of her department's employees were still treating their contract lifecycle management system like "a giant electronic filing cabinet." The company had purchased its CLM system in the hopes that it would make it easier for employees to find and leverage contracts, but many remain stuck playing "Sherlock Holmes," doggedly tracking down agreements without taking advantage of the modern workflow enhancements the tool had to offer. 

"I agree it's one of the most adopted technologies. But is it one of the most leveraged technologies or leveraged in the right way? Probably not," Teuben said.

That may largely be because of the way that in-house attorneys continue to perceive contracts in the first place. Brett Burney of Burney Consultants reinforced Teuben's claim that attorneys treat CLM solutions like electronic filing cabinets, arguing that many lawyers see those tools as replacements for traditional storage repositories like DropBox or document management systems.