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19 I L T A N E T . O R G I s your legal department struggling to focus on strategic objectives amid ever-increasing contract volumes? Contract standardization and automation can make life easier for your team while also improving outcomes. Follow these tips to streamline the contract process in ways that deliver better business outcomes and also allow your legal team to concentrate on the most critical deals and proactive strategic counseling Contracting Life Cycle Improvement INTAKE AND ASSIGNMENT OF MATTERS Obtain required information at the outset. Getting the right information upfront will speed up the contracting process by reducing follow-up requests for additional input. But it's important to balance the need for thorough information with the need to make intake as easy as possible for the business. Essential information will include the full legal entity name of the counterparty, name and email addresses of contact points and signatories, deadline for completion, geography and other data that aligns with the agreement type. Use smart forms. Smart forms available in CLM solutions or as point solutions (e.g., Google Forms, JotForm, SurveyMonkey) can simplify and streamline the intake process. These include dropdown response choices for your business to select, making it easier for the business to complete the forms, and ensures structured responses that are easier for legal teams to review and use to drive further steps in the workflow. Assign the right resources. Develop an assessment process to classify and prioritize submitted contract support requests, using criteria such as contract complexity, urgency, risk profile, dollar value and geography. This way, you can assign the right resources at each stage, whether those are in-house lawyers, outside counsel, a legal service provider or the business stakeholder. CREATING THE CONTRACT Leverage templates. Templates can accelerate and structure the process of generating the contract from the information collected. They should address common issues for a given agreement type and balance risk between the parties based on common standards. Risk- balanced templates increase the chances of your template getting used rather than counterparty paper. You can either develop your own templates or adapt existing ones from industry groups that reflect best practice. The latter approach can help ensure that provisions are reasonable and easy to negotiate. Automate agreement generation. Templates are the backbone of automated contract assembly, which can be deployed through CLM systems or as a point solution (e.g., Formstack Documents). Using these tools means new agreements that are compliant with you company's standards can be generated directly from intake forms with no human intervention. Refine templates based on experience. It is a best practice to monitor how often your template is used and which provisions are commonly accepted or negotiated. Artificial intelligence tools can be applied to help analyze completed contracts and deliver reports on percentage of use and common deviations. Updating the template to remove items that often encounter pushback reduces the effort required for future negotiations. NEGOTIATING AND REDLINING COUNTERPARTY FORMS OR COMMENTS Build negotiation playbooks that provide comprehensive guidance. Good playbooks anticipate common issues for the agreement type covered, especially 1 2 3

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