They didn’t buy a CLM—they reworked their CRM
How Legal used HubSpot and Google Drive to bring order to contract chaos.
👋 Hey there, I’m Hadassah. Each month, I unpack how in-house legal teams use AI to enable the business, protect against risk, and free up time for the work they enjoy most—what works, what doesn’t, and the quick wins that make all the difference.
Before we dive in, a quick note: this is just one example of a legal team solving an operational bottleneck. There are plenty of ways to approach these kinds of problems, and the right solution will always depend on your specific needs and context. My goal is to give you some food for thought as you define what that solution should be.
Problem
We’re joined by the GC at a fast-growing AI company. Setting foot in the company as the first legal hire, they quickly uncovered a core operational gap: there was no formal contract management system.
Agreements lived in inboxes, draft folders, or nowhere at all. Even Google Drive—meant to house final copies—had become a maze of inconsistently named documents. What started as an inconvenience was, in reality, a growing compliance and legal risk.
The breaking point came when a major agreement was up for renewal and no one could locate the fully executed version. Asking the customer to provide a copy wasn’t just awkward, it exposed how vulnerable the business had become.
Without clarity on contract terms, renewals, notice periods, or past negotiations, the company had no reliable view of its obligations or opportunities.
Operationally, the impact was immediate. Customer Success couldn’t plan renewal conversations. Business Development lacked visibility into account history. Finance couldn’t anticipate revenue implications. And Legal had no practical way to implement or enforce consistent terms.
Strategically, the blind spots ran even deeper. The business couldn’t see where it had agreed to unfavourable clauses or where timely renegotiation might have unlocked meaningful upside.
Solution
With no budget for a dedicated CLM, the team turned to the tools they already had: Google Drive and HubSpot. The question was straightforward: could HubSpot, primarily a CRM, be stretched into a lightweight contract management solution?
The first step was creating a clean foundation. One employee was tasked with tracking down every contract—pulling documents out of inboxes and email threads, and standardising naming conventions so final, executed copies could be stored consistently.
Once the documents were in order, Legal, RevOps, and Customer Success worked together to design a simple but effective contract pipeline inside HubSpot. They were intentional about scope, defining only the fields that actually mattered:
agreement type;
contract stage;
effective and renewal dates;
notice period;
initial term;
subscription tier (given they are a subscription-based SaaS company); and
a handful of business-specific metrics.
Ownership was equally clear. The BD team, supported by admin staff, became responsible for saving final copies to Google Drive and uploading them into HubSpot with the correct data.
It wasn’t a sophisticated CLM, and it didn’t need to be. For the first time, the company had a centralised, structured view of every contract and its key milestones. Stakeholders across the business gained immediate visibility into obligations, renewals, and commercial context, enabling more confident planning and decision-making.
Results
A fully centralised, searchable contract pipeline replaced years of scattered documents and guesswork.
Leadership gained real visibility into renewals, key milestones, and commercial terms—unlocking both operational clarity and more reliable financial planning.
Legal regained control over risk, consistency, and version management across all agreements.
And importantly, the solution delivered immediate value without additional spend. It proved that a simple, well-structured workflow—when built with discipline and cross-functional alignment—can outperform far more sophisticated systems.
Process
The transformation wasn’t driven by technology. It was driven by cross-functional alignment and a clear articulation of risk.
Once Legal framed the issue for the executive team—as both an operational bottleneck and a financial exposure—buy-in came quickly. A growing company simply couldn’t afford to negotiate blind or miss renewal windows because no one could locate a final, executed agreement.
From there, the revamp unfolded in several deliberate layers.
Before HubSpot could be used effectively, Google Drive had to be fixed. Naming conventions were standardised, final contracts were separated from drafts, and missing documents were reconstructed or sourced from customers where necessary. This step alone surfaced years of unmanaged risk.
Next, Legal, RevOps, and Customer Success met repeatedly to define the data model. Not every detail needed to be tracked—only the attributes that supported negotiation strategy, renewal management, and meaningful reporting. RevOps then translated those decisions into structured HubSpot fields and workflows.
There were debates along the way. How specific should each field be? How much nuance was necessary? How should multiple statements of work for the same customer be distinguished? These discussions weren’t friction, they were what ensured the system reflected real business needs.
Adoption worked because ownership was explicit and responsibilities were clear:
BD assistants saved and uploaded final contracts.
BD teams completed the HubSpot fields.
Account Executives and Customer Success owners were assigned in the system to ensure accountability.
Most stakeholders were relieved, not resistant. The new structure gave them access to information they had long struggled to find.
Ultimately, what made the system stick wasn’t the tooling, it was the clarity that came with it. Everyone understood the value, everyone knew their role, and everyone benefited immediately from the increased transparency.
Quick Wins
What made this new workflow stick, was the way the team approached the problem as well as the messy middle—understanding the scope of the company’s tech stack, making an existing system more workable, and assigning clear ownership to key stakeholders. Getting a new workflow off the ground is rarely about one big moment of success. More often, it’s about the small, practical wins that build momentum and keep a project moving forward.
For this legal team, those wins looked like:
Using tools already in place. The team worked with the stack they had access to. Without budget for a dedicated CLM, they proved that a CRM like HubSpot—paired with a well-organised Google Drive—could still deliver clarity, structure, and accountability.
Creating a simple, disciplined naming system. They started by introducing a simple, disciplined naming system. Standardising how MSAs, SOWs, and final executed copies were labeled eliminated hours of guesswork and laid the foundation for reliable search and reporting.
Bringing the right stakeholders into the design. Design didn’t happen in isolation. RevOps, Customer Success, and BD were brought into the process early to help define the fields and workflows, ensuring the system reflected real commercial and operational needs—not theoretical ones.
Assigning clear ownership. BD teams and their assistants knew exactly who was responsible for uploading what, and where. Contract management stopped being an afterthought and became a predictable, repeatable habit.
Now it’s your turn. If your team is dealing with something similar, I hope this story sparks a few practical ideas you can put to work.
And… if you’ve been through something similar—or solved a different operational challenge altogether—I’d love to hear your story and spotlight your win.