This week I was very fortunate to have attended the first of a three part workshop on Digital Transformation for Chief Legal Officers held by the Instituto de Innovación Legal in Madrid. A special thanks to María Jesús González-Espejo and Laura Fauqueur for the invitation!

It was fascinating to listen to the other participants share their experiences about the pressures their teams face in the Spanish marketplace. Most were chief legal officers and general counsels from Spanish companies or offices, and while the team I manage and the business we support are global, the challenges are the same: how to deal with containing costs, regulatory uncertainty, adapting to change, evolving skills, risks to our companies’ reputations, and how to reinvent ourselves and the value that lawyers add to our in-house clients.

We also had two practical examples of the use of artificial intelligence for the automation of contract generation and claims management and discussed what legal officers should look at when selecting a contract management tool. One of the best lessons that came out of this what that automation cannot be done in a vacuum. In other words, it is not something that belongs just to the Legal Department. You need the support and buy-in of your internal clients, aka the Business.

From our experience, automation makes a lot of sense for the Business. It not only helps in terms of simplifying the customer experience and speeding up the contracting process — bringing in revenues quicker and decreasing administrative costs — but in theory should also improve post-contract account management. Standardization should significantly make the lives of your billing departments better, making it much easier for them to prepare invoices and collect fees. Account managers — especially for those with large portfolios — will also find it easier to engage with their customers over the life of a contract. Implementation and delivery teams should enjoy the benefits of standardization and simplification, being able to quickly identify customer requirements and better allocate resources over multiple projects. For these reasons, the work flows and automation should be developed in a way that has the end-user experience at the heart of the design and benefits all of your internal stakeholders. But start small. Don’t be overambitious.

At first many lawyers — obsessed with making sure that all t’s are crossed, i’s are dotted and no loophole is left un-closed – distrust automation or at least fear that it will render our work irrelevant. But with the simplification of menial tasks, we lawyers can focus on what really adds value and where the exciting work begins: helping our clients succeed. Once we reach that realization — as we have in my team — we not only welcome that task, we encourage it.

But there is a but: it takes two to tango. I can only simplify, standardize and automate what my business colleagues are willing to do themselves on their end. Simplification takes more discipline from our sales colleagues who ultimately will have the harder task of selling a one size fits all model — as opposed to something tailor-made — to the customer than it does from us. How many times have you heard: “Just give me a one-pager”? The Business demands a simple, short contract, but when it comes to negotiating the commercial terms, they want all the flexibility in the world, and that flexibility means tailor-made, non-standard contracts. So the next time someone comes to you demanding simplification, force them to begin with the commercial terms and go from there.

It takes two to tango. We’re ready to dance. Are you?