Digital White Papers

I L T A W H I T E P A P E R | P R A C T I C E M A N A G E M E N T 4 The inefficiency problem When it comes to traditional manual contract review, the entire process is plagued with inefficiencies, and the cycles of review can take on a life of their own. Before contracts can be executed, they must be thoroughly reviewed and edited by attorneys on both sides. Individual clauses must be considered, discussed and passed back and forth between parties. And these aren't the only barriers to efficiency. Legal departments often don't receive contract information from their business colleagues in a timely manner. When they do, there can be questions about exactly who in the organization is responsible for which contracts. Review can also turn into a fire drill, with sales people trying rush documents through at the end of the quarter to get their commissions. It takes time for reviewers to understand what they are looking at and why; when they are under pressure, they don't always do their best work. Then, after all the time and effort to get an individual contract signed, it is often filed away and never sees the light of day again, even when a very similar matter comes along soon after. So, the process begins all over again. ROI-proven tactics and strategies It doesn't have to be this way. As we've already pointed out, AI-assisted contract review technolo can automate as much as 70% of human review time. It can also fit seamlessly into current workflows. Today's tools use machine learning and natural language processing to recognize semantic patterns in written language and suggest edits, rather than simply flag areas that are not consistent with the legal department's standards. That means markup of new inbound contracts can happen almost instantly, eliminating hours of attorney time. Reviewers need only accept or reject the markup, rather than reading every clause, identifying potential problems and making edits manually. Consider the experience of one Global 1000 corporation. With deployment of AI-assisted review, the average contract review time was reduced from 45 minutes to 14 minutes within just six months. That represents a time savings of 68.9%, which translates into significant savings to the bottom line. While the time and cost-savings are game changing, the bottom line isn't the only benefit of AI-assisted contract review. The quality of output also improves dramatically, since the technolo ensures consistency in contract language across attorneys, deals and matters. And the accuracy of automated review constantly improves as the tools grow smarter and increase efficiency with each additional use. "While the time and cost-savings are game changing, the bottom line isn't the only benefit of AI- assisted contract review."

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