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Contract management and its four key concerns for legal departments

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According to a study some years ago by the General Counsel Roundtable, contract management poses four key challenges for lawyers in-house:

1) “standardizing and simplifying the drafting of contracts.” This is the domain of templates, retrieval of prior form agreements, and automated creation of contracts (See my post of Feb. 26, 2008: document assembly with 16 references; and Dec. 6, 2007: document management with 15 references.).

2) “setting policies regarding legal department review of contracts.” Law departments that adopt a risk-based model, for example, do not review contracts based on a set dollar amount but instead identify the areas of greatest risks in various contracts and then review the contents in light of the associated risks (See my post of Sept. 17, 2005: Cargill and its $25,000 minimum.),

3) “streamlining contract negotiation” (See my post of Oct. 7, 2009: negotiation and 18 references.).

4) “facilitating the company’s adherence to its contractual obligations.” Part of this challenge is to keep track of the contracts your company has entered into (See my post of Nov. 22, 2008: contract management software with 11 references.).

These four concerns suggest what to think about regarding contracts (See my post of May 5, 2006: contracts with 15 references; and Sept. 2, 2009: contracts with 48 references and 1 metapost.).