Contract creation involves gathering and putting together all the facts and information required to produce a legally binding business arrangement. It can be a potent tool to help with contract management. In general, contracts indicate the obligations and rights that will eventually be granted to a person, company, or entity once the contract has been signed.
Every company requires a reliable system for creating contracts to boost sales and optimize value. You need a contract to negotiate, seal, or reach an agreement. However, the process of creating contracts has undergone significant changes recently. Pen-and-ink signatures are now replaced with electronic signatures and even easier e-signing software.
What Is Contract Creation?
Contract creation is crucial and effective software for creating and drafting contracts. Receiving a request for a contract, compiling all essential data, drafting the contract, formatting it, and delivering the completed document for inspection, approval, and signatures are all included in this process. Businesses like law firms, insurance companies, banks, mortgage lenders, and others generate numerous contracts. It is advantageous to streamline contract generation.
Your contract automation software walks you through a series of steps to acquire all the data when it's time for a new agreement. You will be asked to enter information such as names, dates, places, and amounts and to choose pre-written clauses that apply to your circumstance. You may combine the software with other applications to automatically import data from your CRM database or other sources. The contract generation program automatically creates the contract template and correctly formats everything once you complete the prompts, often referred to as an "interview."
The Benefits of a Contract Creation Software
Below are some advantages of comprehensive contract creation software.
-
Create Contracts More Quickly
New contract proposals pass through several routes before reaching the attorney's desk. This procedure takes a lot of time and is prone to misinterpretations. This issue can be resolved using contract creation software as a platform for job triage, making it simple for the legal staff to accept and order incoming contract requests. In addition, the platform connects with other business technologies to allow teams to communicate directly and instantly rather than depending on email messages and slack messages to manage contract requirements.
-
Cooperation
At every level of the contract, input from many teams and outside stakeholders is necessary. Contract creation software makes working on contracts with teams and counterparties simpler. It is possible to allow particular individuals to offer their recommendations and revisions directly on the contract using features like scoped comments, writer tools, etc.
-
Access Management
Crucial components of the contract shouldn't be editable or changeable by everyone. It can be challenging to manage who has access to and authorization to make thoughtful modifications to the document using conventional word processors. Departments can delegate responsibilities to staff through a contract creation program, limiting who can view and modify contracts. Additionally, by assigning tasks and responsibilities, the organization may better control its workflows while preserving the decentralized nature of contract development.
-
Quality Assurance
Each team has a different method for creating contracts, making them irreconcilable. Additionally, lawyers must manually consult outside sources to establish conformity in legal wording, adding to the document's time commitment. Last but not least, once the contract is in process, the legal team cannot stop other users from making changes, which increases the burden on them during the revision cycles.
Software for drafting contracts provides a standardized technique that is simple to use and highly scalable. Therefore, lawyers can provide definitions and previous contracts. Moreover, a few better assessment fields in the contract can be kept changeable with version controls, resulting in a narrower margin for error.
-
Efficiency
Contract creation on simple word processors is unmanageable and ineffective. So to help clients with the creation process, legal teams must rely on external resources like email, meetings, reminders, etc. These word processors also don't sync with other business systems like CRMs, ERPs, etc., which causes the organization to do twice as much work.
Modern contract generation software provides a full environment for creating and managing contracts from beginning to finish. The work gets reduced for the internal legal team and other business units with built-in tools like the contract editor, reminders, templates, and more.
What Are the Attributes a Good Contract Creation Software Must Have?
Below are some key features of effective contract creation software.
-
Adaptive Templates
The internal legal department handles all the contracting requirements for the business units. However, what if they could handle simple contract-related activities on their own? The legal team can create contract templates using templates in advance, enabling other business teams to select and modify the template to move forward rapidly. Templates streamline the development of contracts and enable business teams to work independently.
-
Clause Database
The in-house legal ensures that legal definitions are precise and consistent throughout papers and drafting and reviewing contracts. Lawyers can quickly seek up and import clauses using the built-in clause library, which expedites the contracts' preparation procedure.
-
Contract Assembly
For non-legal staff, contracts can be daunting and perplexing. The task must be made extremely simple for them if this issue is to be resolved. It is simple to create contracts by employing an intuitive survey style that makes information gathering from business teams easy. It frees up more time for the legal team to work on more important projects by reducing the time spent on contract specifics.
-
Audit Trail
Contracts include several parties during the entire process. So how can the process be made transparent and accountable? Monitoring who makes modifications to the document, when, and where can be made easier with an audit trail. The internal legal staff will be able to assess adjustments and immediately reduce risk, if any, as a result.
-
Compatibility
Various departments within an organization use several tools to streamline their work. The information exchange between teams will improve, and teams' effectiveness may increase if contract creation software is simple to integrate with other enterprise systems. For instance, the sales staff may swiftly generate contracts by importing client information from the CRM platform.
-
Online Storage
Since various departments work in isolation, contracts are frequently made and stored poorly. The teams find it challenging to locate the legal documents. Teams can have better access to and oversight over their contracts by choosing a cloud storage substitute that consolidates all contract data into a single platform.
Key Terms
- Express Terms: The provisions generally documented in a contract or orally agreed upon before or during the contract is completed.
- End User: The real user of the services or goods purchased by the customer, accountable for expressing the need and often the specification.
- Jurisdiction: People involved in a contract without any Alternative Dispute Resolution provision must bring court proceedings if there is a conflict about the agreement.
Conclusion
Although the law still accepts oral agreements, they have the primary disadvantage of leaving no written record of the agreement's contents. So if you wish to seek legal assistance for your contract creation, our expert attorneys at ContractsCounsel are there to help you. Our professionals have all the required expertise to fulfill your contract creation needs and keep your business compliant.