Whether drafting a simple NDA or a complex enterprise SaaS agreement–the journey from contract request to execution is often slow, inconsistent, and surprisingly opaque. Particularly, when multiple internal and external stakeholders are involved.
For people who are experienced with the legal as well as the business side , this is a topic worth exploring further. How can legal teams balance the importance of doing business and also executing legal work without sacrificing quality or control, while at the same time speeding up the process?
Every legal operation problem is a design problem at its heart. And yet, legal professionals have been slow to embrace the mindset of customer experience, or, what be called client experience in this context. While the number of lawyers and legal professionals who are open to it is growing, there is still a considerable gap.
That’s where journey management comes in. It gives legal teams a tool to work alongside design and product experts to actually see the process through the client’s eyes. Where are people getting stuck? Where does bureaucracy pose problems? Which steps could be streamlined with minor changes? Which steps along the journey are the most crucial for a specific audience?
Reframing the problem: mapping out the process
Customer journey mapping helps organizations understand, and as a next step, improve the experience a customer has with a product or service. It breaks down every interaction, every waiting time, and missing communication into steps. It highlights emotional drivers, and points to breakdowns in the process.
Now, imagine applying this to contract negotiation.
Emotion charts are helpful when it comes to comprehending and empathizing between various teams and stakeholders.
Instead of seeing the contract as a static document, it helps to see it as a living process involving multiple players — sales, procurement, finance, executives, legal, and the counterparty. Charting out their journey through the contract lifecycle helps to uncover various issues:
Collaborative research is key when elaborating emotion charts of various teams on journey maps. When done right, this leads to conversations about pain points and how to fix them in order to provide a better experience to everyone involved.
Pain points:
Inconsistency:
Sales or procurement teams submit requests in email, Slack, Excel, or Word — the inconsistency of channels led to lost information, including deal terms, deadlines, billing models, or jurisdiction. Legal teams spend hours clarifying requests before beginning the draft.
No clarity on ownership:
Who’s responsible for reviewing data protection clauses? Who has the final say on payment terms? Without clear ownership, tasks fall through the cracks.
Unstructured negotiation:
Negotiations go back and forth via email attachments, often outside any centralized tool. Clauses are renegotiated from scratch even when similar issues have already been resolved in other contracts.
Approval bottlenecks:
Legal finalizes a draft — only to wait 10+ days for approval.
Signature delays:
The counterparty is ready to sign — but internal processes require scanning, stamping, or coordinating between DocuSign and outdated systems having an impact on client experience which can result in a decrease in trust and rising uncertainty.
Once the main points blocking the progress on contract negotiation, it’s important to start thinking about what opportunities arise. Finding out where room for improvement is, so that it can be quickly applied while avoiding an overload of bureaucracy.
Major changes are complex and require considerable time and numerous approvals from various departments. Taking smaller steps can reduce complexity and steps with less effort.
The contract repository for example, often lies in a shared drive, but a dedicated tool would fit the need much better. Changing it would result in a lot of bureaucracy, so changes are avoided. But creating a digital intake form (via Google Forms, Typeform, or embedded in your CLM system) gathering essential information upfront could potentially save a lot of time without compromising established processes in a negative way.
Seeing the big picture
Understanding complex systems—whether it's a global health initiative or a software project—requires stepping back and looking at it holistically. Journey management offers that perspective. It offers an overall view of what people are experiencing, where the process breaks down, and where small changes could make a big difference. Stop asking what’s going wrong, start asking all involved parties about their experience in the process. A tool that’s proven to be useful in this context is the "five whys" technique. It’s deceptively simple but incredibly powerful. You don’t necessarily ask exactly five times, but asking why until finding the foundation of the problem is crucial for understanding the core problem.
Start out with the feeling that a process triggers, i.e. frustration. Contract negotiations feel slow and painful.
Why is it frustrating? The process is inefficient.
Why is it inefficient? The software is not suitable for effective negotiation.
Why is it not suitable? Because it wasn’t designed with negotiation in the first place.
Why is it being used? The alternatives are expensive, or switching seems daunting.
Asking “why” helps you dig past symptoms and find root causes. It also opens the door to fast, practical fixes—like tweaking your tools or rethinking your workflow.
Quick fixes: room for improvement
Once the friction points in your contract process are identified, the next step is simple: start brainstorming. The goal here isn’t to find the perfect solution right away—it’s to open the floodgates of creativity. Get every idea on the table, even the messy or unrealistic ones. Later, you can sort through them and ask: which of these can we actually do right now?
From there, shift into action. Choose one or two quick wins—ideas that are feasible, cost-effective, and easy to test. Then dig into how you might bring them to life.
Solutions: actions that are worth trying
Many teams still use Microsoft Word to negotiate contracts. Version control is inefficient, especially when multiple files get passed around with similar names. Everyone involved is losing time, clarity, and sometimes even the latest terms. Instead of trying to fix Word, ask a different question: is there a better tool for this job?
This train of thought can lead to a better path, without disrupting the whole system.
Change often starts small – with slight improvements that actually work.
Summary
The legal function is often seen as a gatekeeper—necessary, but slow. But it doesn’t have to be that way. By applying journey management techniques and a design mindset, legal teams can transform from bottlenecks into enablers of business progress.
This shift doesn’t require a complete overhaul of systems or a massive investment in new tools. It starts with empathy: understanding what stakeholders experience, where the frustration lies, and why certain processes feel broken. From there, it’s about experimentation—asking better questions, trying new approaches, and making small improvements that add up over time.
The future of legal work is collaborative, agile, and user-centered. And the most important takeaway is: don’t wait for the perfect solution to get started!
