Four principles behind a workflow that survives
Before the steps, the rules that keep a workflow alive after the first month.
- One owner per contract. Every agreement has a named person who receives its alerts and answers for it. Not a team, not a shared mailbox.
- One place for the signed version. If a contract is not in the repository, it does not exist for the purposes of the workflow.
- Approvals follow rules, not relationships. Who signs off depends on contract type and value, written down once.
- Deadlines come from the contract, not from memory. The notice deadline is computed from the term and the notice period, and alerts go out on a fixed schedule.
If you want the background on the stages first, read our contract lifecycle management process article.
The roles in a CLM workflow without legal ops
- Requester and owner. The person who needs the contract, usually the business owner of the relationship: a department head for vendors, an account executive for customers, a hiring manager for contractors.
- Approver. A department head, finance, and legal counsel for non-standard terms. Counsel may be in-house or an external firm.
- Signatory. The person authorised to sign for the company, often a founder, the CFO or the COO.
- Administrator. One person, often in operations, who maintains folders, permissions, templates and approval rules.
In a company of 40 people these might be five individuals. In a company of 400 the same roles exist, with more people in each.
The workflow, step by step
Step 1. Request. The requester starts a new contract with the counterparty, the contract type, the value and the owner. For standard agreements (NDA, order form, contractor agreement) they pick the template directly.
Step 2. Draft. For standard agreements, a first draft is produced from a form that fills the template variables: names, dates, amounts, term. For third-party paper, the requester uploads the counterparty's document as the first version.
Step 3. Negotiate. Each round of changes is saved as a new version. Before accepting a round, the requester compares it with the previous version. Changes to liability, indemnity, termination or data protection go to counsel.
Step 4. Approve. The draft is routed by rules. A simple rule set that fits many growing companies:
- Standard template, no changes, value under $10,000 per year: the department head approves.
- Value of $10,000 per year or more: the department head, then finance.
- Any change to liability, indemnity or termination: counsel approves as well.
- Value of $100,000 per year or more: the signatory approves before signature.
Every approval, comment and decision is recorded in the audit trail.
Step 5. Sign. The requester sends the approved version for e-signature with a signing order and reminders. The signed PDF and its audit certificate are filed back into the repository automatically.
Step 6. Record. Extraction fills the key fields: parties, effective date, term, auto-renewal, notice period, termination, payment terms, liability cap and governing law. The owner confirms the term, notice period and auto-renewal against the source sentence and adds any obligations with due dates.
Step 7. Track and renew. The owner receives alerts at 90, 60, 30 and 7 days before the notice deadline and records a decision: renew, renegotiate or terminate.
How the steps map to the product
- Steps 1 and 2 use templates with variables and the clause library. See our contract management platform features.
- Step 3 uses version comparison. See contract redlining software.
- Step 4 uses approval workflows, included from the Plus plan, with multi-step, parallel approvals and conditional routing on Pro.
- Step 5 uses built-in electronic signature software.
- Steps 6 and 7 use extraction and alerts. See contract renewal management software.
Three common variations
Vendor contracts. The owner is the person who uses the service; finance joins approval above the threshold. The critical step is 7: many vendor agreements renew automatically, and the notice deadline decides whether you get to negotiate. Our contract tracking software page covers this case.
Sales agreements. Speed matters most. Templates carry the standard terms, discount approvals route to the sales lead and finance, and signature happens the same day. Deal value decides the approval chain.
Contractors and NDAs. Almost entirely standard. A template, one approval by the hiring manager, signature, and filing. The workflow exists mainly so that the signed copy lands in the repository with an owner.
Five mistakes that break a CLM workflow
Most workflows do not fail on day one. They erode over a few months, usually through one of these.
- Contracts signed outside the system. A counterparty sends its own signature link, somebody signs, and the executed copy never reaches the repository. Fix it with a simple rule: any contract signed elsewhere is uploaded by its owner the same week, and the monthly admin check looks for gaps.
- Owners who leave. When a person changes role or leaves the company, their contracts keep running and their alerts go nowhere. Make reassigning contracts part of the offboarding checklist, next to returning the laptop.
- Approval rules nobody updates. Thresholds set when the company was small become a bottleneck when deals grow. Review the rules once a year, or whenever finance changes its sign-off limits.
- Templates copied instead of used. People download a template, edit it on their desktop and upload the result, and the clause library is bypassed. Keep templates easy to start from the system, and ask counsel to review anything that arrives as a finished document.
- Alerts treated as noise. If owners receive alerts for contracts they do not manage, they stop reading all of them. Keep ownership accurate, and alerts stay meaningful.
What a healthy workflow looks like after three months
- Every active contract has an owner, extracted dates and a folder.
- New contracts start from templates or are uploaded as third-party paper on day one.
- Approvals take hours, not weeks, because the rules are clear.
- No renewal has happened without a recorded decision.
- The quarterly review takes an hour because the list is already on the dashboard.
If three of these five are true, the workflow is working. If fewer are, go back to the principles at the top of this article and find which one slipped.
The weekly and quarterly routine
A workflow needs a short routine, or it drifts.
- Weekly, 15 minutes, owner of each department: check the dashboard for contracts awaiting approval or signature, and for notice deadlines in the next 30 days.
- Monthly, 30 minutes, administrator: look for contracts without an owner, drafts that stalled, and signed contracts missing extracted dates.
- Quarterly, one hour, finance and department heads: review everything expiring this quarter and next, with its value. Decide what to renew, renegotiate or end.
The dashboard shows upcoming renewals, value, owner and contracts expiring this quarter on one screen, so the quarterly review starts from a list rather than a search. On Pro, reporting adds value by counterparty and department and a renewal forecast export for finance.
Rolling out the workflow in two weeks
- Days 1 and 2. Upload existing signed contracts, let extraction fill the fields and assign owners. Check the dates on the largest contracts first.
- Days 3 to 5. Create templates for your three most common agreements and set up the clause library with your approved wording.
- Week 2. Write the approval rules, set up folders and permissions, and run the first few new contracts through the full workflow.
- End of week 2. Hold a short session with the requesters: where to start a contract, what they will be asked for, and what alerts they will receive.
As an illustration of sizing: a team with 8 people who create or approve contracts fits within the 10 seats on Plus, which includes approval workflows, obligation tracking, unlimited templates with clause library and 150 envelopes per month. The pricing page lists every plan, and how it works shows the same steps inside the product.