Procurement Doesn’t Need Legal for Contract Reviews

Hey Procurement Pros, are you struggling with the speed of your Contract Reviews as Legal is holding you up? If so, you might find some insights here that are going to help you out. You need to simplify the entire process, empower your staff and get a position agreed upon within the Business as to what the Contracts you sign up to entail.

You might find this statement odd but you don't need a lawyer to review your contracts in procurement. I should know - this is a key focus of my current Procurement role. Lawyers, or in the UK rather, I should say Solicitor for a Lawyer could refer to either a solicitor or a Barrister, can certainly review your contracts.

You may have either in-house, so a Solicitor or a team of them working within your Organisation has an employee or you may have some external support via a retainer with an external supplier to your Organisation. But you don't need someone who is a Qualified Legal Professional to review your contracts. You know what you need...? You need a Contract Pro. This Contract Pro is more than likely going to be a Commercial Manager or a Contract Manager of some sort. They've probably got a Law Degree or have significant training through the World Commerce & Contracting body and a lot of on-the-job experience to go with this all.

I see a lot of chatter about the hold-up that happens in the Procurement Process because Legal get involved, has a bunch of questions, has a fun time redlining contracts, and pushing back on a lot of positions to get to a more risk-averse position. The issue is that your legal teams are usually detached from the Procurement Process and have a lot of other work that needs their attention.

So what can your Contract Pros do? They can be empowered to make the calls when it comes to contracts using Contract Playbooks that your Company has built and approved in all relevant areas. This is key, you need something that sets out what your Company needs in its agreements and pre-approved fallback positions. Couple this with a well-drafted clause bank and you're getting them. Layer a strong Contract Review Process with a Contract Lifecycle Tool that lets you review the contracts within it, engage & collaborate with your suppliers and colleagues, and has workflows for approvals, signatures, and even automation. And Breathe.

This is why you don't need Legal as the main point of review. You do need them for escalations but by the time it gets to them, you're are going to have negotiated these contracts with the Suppliers, covered off everything that you need to, and worked to the playbook that is in place. Your Legal Team is going to have an easy yes/no response by this point.

Contract Pros are more involved with the Procurement Team, they sit in the team or alongside them and they are involved in the RFX stages and have all the detail from the ground up. They know what is proportionate and can gather the stakeholders in the business together to progress key elements and approvals. They bring teams together whilst working alongside Procurement Pros to get the job done.