Contract review and management is a tedious but necessary task in the legal industry. With legal technologies improving every day, simplifying managing contracts is essential for optimizing productivity and maximizing time. Automating the process of drafting, signing, storing, and reviewing contracts with software like Loio will make lawyer’s routine work more manageable and much more efficient.
Contract review software also prevents cases of inefficiencies, which is very prevalent in many contracts. With features that grant centralized access to different team members to an agreement, it’s possible to carry out a thorough review. There is so much contract management software, which makes it challenging to make a choice. However, employing few factors can help you make the right decision.
Benefits of Using a Contract Review Software
Before we delve into the different factors you need to consider before choosing a contract management software, it’s essential to consider the benefits of using it:
- Saving your time. Automated contract review saves as much as 30%-60% of the time usually spent on a single review. This benefit gives senior lawyers and other counselors enough time to advise different brands on other aspects of their businesses.
- Improving deal velocity. Different software can help improve deal velocity (the speed needed to negotiate and close a contract). The longer a deal remains in legal negotiations, the less the value of the deal. However, automated contract review helps lawyers pick up areas of concern, review them, and reach a final signing easily.
- Risk Reduction. Risks are a significant part of contracts, and some of them include failure to maintain contract compliance and contract breaches, especially so in industries that are heavily regulated, such as financial services and healthcare. Contract Review Software helps you look out for specific languages while revising the contract. Thus, contract review software helps lawyers find any non-compliant irregularities and reduces risk.
Overall, automated contract reviews are beneficial to both lawyers and other parties directly involved with the contract.
5 Factors To Consider When Choosing A Contract Review Software
If you’re thinking about trying a contract review software and are confused about which to pick out of the numerous options, below are some considerations you should pay attention to;
Ease of Use
The primary aim of opting for an automated contract review is to take away the stress needed to complete a manual review. Hence, the criterion which you need to consider while picking out software is whether it is easy to use or not. This criterion is critical if you are not knowledgeable about IT practices. Pick out a contract review software with an easy-to-use interface that doesn’t necessarily require several hours of training to master. Also, be sure to consider options that make it easy to input documents in batches in various formats such as Microsoft Word, PDF, and Excel. Overall, you need review software that simplifies the entire reviewing process and saves you time.
AI-driven Options
Choosing a contract review software with the option of searching within a contract or various contracts can save you time. AI-driven searching capabilities are some of the most sought-after in different review software. Although different search tools also might be necessary, AI-driven options are particularly useful because of their ability to learn. With every search you make on the platform, artificial intelligence uses it to improve over time to improve efficiency. For instance, if you search for a previous keyword but with the wrong spelling, AI tools will correct and present accurate results. That way, any grammatical errors do not slow down your workflow.
Sharing and Collaborative Tools
Reviewing a contract usually involves multiple parties on a team, and contract review software can make this process easier. Choosing a review software that provides access to multiple collaborators on a single document saves time and improves productivity. Also, it prevents the loss of the past versions of a specific contract, which can disrupt the overall process. It’s essential to choose a review software that accommodates and offers secure communications between all the members of a team. This will help different reviewers work on a specific contract, monitor their progress, as well as the progress of others.
Ability to Customize Data Fields
The ability to customize your data fields based on the needs of your brand should be a factor when picking out the best contract review software. AI-driven software is beneficial in this area as it learns new fields and makes the provisions. A perfect example is if your office prefers contracts that require a non-disclosure agreement. You can teach your software to implement this feature in all of your contracts over time. You can also customize the way agreements are presented by your review software — for instance, the types, language, and terms used in different documents.
Provision of Real-time Alerts
A significant part of contract reviews and risk management is deadlines. According to research, it can take several days for a team to review and monitor deadlines for a considerable amount of contracts. It can interfere with knowing when a contract is due for renewal; however, the right software can organize the data while providing real-time alerts for deadlines.
Contract review software is an essential tool for managing great amounts of contracts efficiently. With incredible benefits like maximizing times, risk reduction, and improving how fast a deal is closed, it is a necessity. Be sure to follow our tips for selecting the best contract review before you invest in a specific option.
