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Beyond CLM: Right-Sizing Technology to Address the Biggest Pain in Legal By DANIEL LEWIS | PRESENTED BY Despite these advancements, many legal teams find that CLM fails to address the most painful aspects of their work. Why? Because CLM technology is far too broad. The claim to solve every challenge in each phase of contracting isn’t realistic. A single system can’t do it all — at least not well. More than three in four (77%) of CLM implementations fail for two main reasons:
F
or years, Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) has promised to streamline legal operations, offering greater visibility and process improvements. Yet, despite its broad capabilities, CLM has failed to deliver in the area that takes the most time and causes the most headaches — contract review. Now, a new era of legal AI is emerging, shifting the focus from managing workflows to tackling the real bottlenecks. AI contract review software addresses the most time-consuming part of contracting, helping legal teams review
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WHY CLM HAS FALLEN SHORT
1. Implementation is complex and lengthy: Many CLMs require months of setup and a team of external consultants and project managers to get started, and 2. Adoption is low: Customers purchase CLM for a specific use case but often only use a fraction of features, leading to wasted spend.
CLM emerged in the early 2000s to help legal teams collaborate across the five traditional stages of contracting — intake, review, negotiation, signature, and storage and management. Early CLM systems were basic repositories with search, reporting, and routing functionality. Over time, CLM expanded to include workflow automation, electronic signatures, compliance tracking, collaboration, and analytics.
Legal leaders must take time to understand and pinpoint their biggest challenges and who they impact most. For some legal teams, contract storage or tracking may be less challenging than slow and manual review, inconsistent contract language, and inefficient negotiations. Tools that attempt to cover the full contract lifecycle may lack the specialized capabilities needed to
agreements faster, more accurately, and with fewer roadblocks.
MAY 2025
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