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1010 Things Every Business Lawyer Should Know about Contract Management
10260 SW Greenburg Road, 4th floor Portland OR 97223 United States
1 (855) 517-2193 North America +1 (503) 517-4293 Worldwide www.BerkmanSolutions.com [email protected]
10Client needs / Lawyer opportunities
10As a lawyer, you invest time to understand your client’s objectives, risks, and opportunities. What happens to your carefully drafted contract?
10Your contract is filed and forgotten. Your client needs the benefit of your drafting during the entire contract term. Your client’s need is your opportunity.
10There are, of course, organizations with mature contract management functions, but for every other client here are…
1010 Things Every Business Lawyer Should Know about Contract Management
1!
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Expiration date alerts
1Your clients are likely not tracking contract expiration or auto-renewal notice dates or at least not well.
1Tell your clients when each contract will expire 30, 60, and 90 days before it expires automatically
1Tell your clients about notice dates to cancel auto-renewal contracts at least 30 days ahead of the notice date.
2!
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Contract compliance monitoring
2Your clients are likely not monitoring contracts for compliance. Is either party in breach? Are the parties in compliance with regulations?
2Perform routine contract compliance reviews. Test contract provisions and external regulations.
3!
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Assign contract tasks
3Your client might miss important actions in the contract such as audits, reviews, and steps to prevent waivers.
3Provide an inventory of contract tasks (both one-time and recurring) with automatic alerts.
4!
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Financial terms summary
4Your clients have transaction accounting covered, but they do not have a summary of the financial structure.
4Develop a consistent categorization scheme for financial structures. Categorize contracts by financial structure.
4Financial structures might include: time/materials, royalty, incentive, fixed price, and the like depending on industry and practice.
5!
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Identify contract assets
5Your clients might not need much help with the assets the contract covers, but they will benefit from your precision.
5For each contract, identify the subject of the contract with a title, legal description, and numerical identification.
6!
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Provision analysis
6Your clients are not classifying and tracking individual legal provisions, even if there are exceptions to legal policy.
6Organize performance obligations by required, permitted, or prohibited actions. Identify exceptions to legal policy, like choice of law.
7!
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Keep it all together
7Your clients probably do not have a central repository of each contract record that includes all documents and data for contracts.
7Store all documents and data for each contract, including amendments, exhibits, & schedules, over the lifetime in one place.
8!
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Report key contract insights
8Regular reporting is a staple for your clients in other parts of their business, but not for contracts. They routinely need contract reports.
8Share routine reports about your client’s contracts. They want data they can act on.
9!
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Connect with the entire team
9After contract execution, your clients often assign contracts to staff you never met during contract drafting. They don’t have context or the benefit of your insights.
9Communicate with the entire team. You can send alerts, reports, and analysis to the business staff closest to the work.
10!
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Understand the contract portfolio
10Your clients focus on each contract in isolation. They miss the opportunity to understand risks and opportunities in the entire contract portfolio.
10Deliver contract portfolio analysis. With a central repository of all contracts, you can provide actionable insight to clients.
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10260 SW Greenburg Road, 4th floor Portland OR 97223 United States
1 (855) 517-2193 North America +1 (503) 517-4293 Worldwide www.BerkmanSolutions.com [email protected]
1010 Things Every Business Lawyer Should Know about Contract Management
10260 SW Greenburg Road, 4th floor Portland OR 97223 United States
1 (855) 517-2193 North America +1 (503) 517-4293 Worldwide www.BerkmanSolutions.com [email protected]
