Who actually signs off on this?
How one team rebuilt ownership, approvals, and visibility across a fragmented contract landscape.
đ Hey there, Iâm 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 mostâwhat works, what doesnât, 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
When this legal team joined a decades-old organization, they inherited a contract landscape built around an outdated operating model. Finance owned everythingâdrafting, approvals, renewalsâwhich had worked well enough when the business was smaller and more centralised.
As the company grew, that model quickly unraveled. Finance shifted its focus back to budget oversight, business teams began sourcing vendors independently, and Legal was suddenly positioned as the central checkpoint. The problem: there were no systems or processes in place to support that role.
Contracts were scattered across inboxes and shared drives, or missing altogether. Incorrect versions were routinely sent for review, key agreements slipped through the cracks, and renewal deadlines were often missed because documents never made it to Legal in the first place. Auto-renewals happened quietly in the background, leaving the newly formed legal function accountable for contracts it couldnât see, track, or manage.
That lack of visibility had knock-on effects. Without a central system, Legal had no reliable way to understand its workload, monitor turnaround times, or pinpoint bottlenecks. An attempt to build a contract solution internally within the companyâs CRM dragged on for eight months before it became clear that the necessary technical resources simply werenât available.
At the same time, unstructured approval flows created friction across departments, and Legal lacked the data needed to justify headcount or quantify its contribution to the business. The conclusion was unavoidable: the team needed a scalable contract management systemâone that enforced accountability, created a single source of truth, and brought structure to a workflow that had become increasingly fragmented.
Solution
The team set out to design a contract management workflow that brought structure and visibility to the entire contracting process. The priorities were clear: centralise agreements, track renewals, and enforce consistent approval paths across the business. This wasnât just about improving Legalâs day-to-day operations; it was about creating clarity and accountability for every function involved in contracting.
To achieve that, the team implemented an integrated stack built around Lexion, DocuSign, and Salesforce. Tool selection was deliberate. They needed software flexible enough to support different approval routes, lightweight enough for a lean legal team to manage independently, and cost-effective enough to justify the investment without heavy vendor reliance.
After abandoning the internal CLM build, the team evaluated six external vendors. Many platforms fell short of a critical requirement: the ability to support different approval processes for different agreement types. Solutions that required vendor-built workflows were quickly ruled out due to high costs and slow configuration cycles.
Lexion stood out because it allowed Legal to design and modify approval logic themselves. Within three days, the team built nearly a dozen workflows covering functions such as IT and Data Research. The objective was a consistent, auditable process that routed contracts to the right stakeholders, shifted responsibility for reviewing business terms back to the business, and generated the operational data Legal needed.
That data became essentialânot only for identifying bottlenecks, but also for justifying headcount and clearly articulating Legalâs resource needs to leadership.
Results
Approval workflows, once scattered and largely informal, were replaced with tailored decision trees aligned to each departmentâs specific responsibilities. Contracts now follow a predictable path, with clear ownership at every stage of review and approval.
For the first time, bottlenecks became measurable. The team could see where contracts stalled, identify unexpected or disproportionate delays, and address process issues based on data rather than anecdote.
Renewal management also improved significantly. Renewal notices are now routed directly to the responsible department, reducing missed deadlines and limiting unintended auto-renewals that previously occurred without Legalâs awareness.
Most importantly, Legal gained operational visibility. With clear insight into contract volume, turnaround times, bottlenecks, and departmental workload, the team could more accurately justify headcount and clearly articulate resource needs to leadership.
Process
The journey from problem identification to adoption unfolded in distinct phases. The first was an attempt to solve the issue internally. With only junior technical support available, the team spent eight months working within the organisationâs CRM, trying to replicate approval logic and basic repository functionality. Ultimately, it became clear that the internal build wasnât viable.
That experience shaped the next phase: a more disciplined vendor evaluation. The team documented its requirements in detail, using a simple Excel sheet to capture exactly what the organization needed and why. One priority stood above the restâany solution had to allow the legal team to design, manage, and adjust approval workflows independently.
Once the vendor was selected, implementation moved quickly. New contracts began flowing into the system within days. This wasnât because historical data had already been migratedâthat process took a full year of dedicated effortâbut because the approval workflows were ready for immediate use.
To support that migration, the team hired a junior attorney to handle the manual, detail-heavy work. This included pulling contracts from multiple sources, reviewing AI-extracted business terms, and validating their accuracy. By doing so, the senior legal team members could stay focused on higher-value work while the foundations of the contract repository were built.
Driving adoption across the organization required both clear messaging and sustained presence. The CEO set the tone with an explicit mandate: accountability for renewals and contract accuracy sat with the business, not with Legal. That signal helped reinforce compliance as teams transitioned into the new workflows.
In parallel, Legal conducted in-person training sessions for each department. The focus was practical, not theoreticalârenewal reminders, spend visibility, and confirmation that required approvals had been met. Meeting users where they already worked, through intake options via email or Slack, further reduced friction and made adoption feel natural.
Challenges remained. Senior leaders were less inclined to complete form-based submissions, and some departments failed to provide older agreements for upload, leading to occasional auto-renewals. Still, the systemâs early operational value helped build trust. It surfaced measurable insights into where contracts stalled, which departments generated the most work, and what Legalâs true capacity looked like.
Over time, the system evolved beyond a repository. It became a legal operations dashboardâone that reshaped how the legal team understood its work and engaged with the business.
Quick Wins
Operational efficiency in Legal doesnât start or stop with buying a shiny new tech tool. It lives in the messy middle: the early decisions, cross-functional alignment, and habits that shape whether a new workflow really sticks. Getting something new off the ground is rarely about one big moment of success. More often, itâs about the small, practical wins that build momentum and keep a project moving forward.
For this legal team, those wins looked like:
Building approval workflows in-house. The team used Lexion to design nearly a dozen approval routes within days. By owning workflow configuration themselves, they eliminated vendor dependencies, avoided long lead times, and retained the flexibility to adapt processes as business needs evolved.
Hiring junior support for foundational work. A junior hire was brought in to manage the time-intensive tasks of uploading contracts and validating extracted business terms. This delegation allowed senior lawyers to remain focused on strategic and advisory work, while still building a clean, reliable contract repository.
Meeting users in their preferred tools. Rather than forcing behaviour change, the team enabled intake through familiar channels such as email and Slack. Lowering the barrier to entry encouraged adoption and helped ensure requests flowed through the new, structured process.
Reinforcing accountability. Clear and consistent messaging from leadership made expectations explicit: responsibility for renewals and contract accuracy sat with the business. That clarity helped drive compliance and ensured the system was used as intended across departments.
Now itâs 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 youâve been through something similarâor solved a different operational challenge altogetherâIâd love to hear your story and spotlight your win.