Canada: Top 5 Takeaways For Contract Management And More

On October 3, 2022, McCarthy Tétrault hosted a seminar on Optimizing In-House Practice with People, Process and Technology with National Innovation Leader Matthew Peters, Partner and President MT>3 Susan Wortzman, Partner Jade Buchanan, and Lawyer-Revisor François Ouellette. The discussion focused on ways to leverage technology and machine learning, solutions for contract lifecycle management, using AI-optimized legal translation, and the benefits of right sourcing.

Here are some key takeaways:

1. 1. For managing your most demanding areas of high-volume, repeated legal work, there are three critical elements that must work in combination for maximum effect. You need the right:
   1. People – with proper training in technology and deep expertise deploying it
   2. Process – to manage the team and deploy the technology
   3. Technology – machine learning has matured and is more readily adopted to enable timely responses to regulators in the course of investigations, data breaches, and litigation production requests
2. Take advantage of contract automation — Use automated templates for routine, higher volume contracts to meaningfully reduce both time and money. It Increases business friendliness by reducing commercial frictions and increases speed to sale.
3. Consider shifting primary negotiations externally for repeat work to reduce cost, create elastic capacity, and increase turnaround times. Right-source using the people-process-technology rubric:
   1. Start small, focus first on leveraging existing people and processes to streamline legal work
   2. Shift focus to technology once you've refined the above and better understand how technology can aid your goals
4. Utilize technology-driven contract lifecycle management — Technology can provide actionable business intel around renewals, expirations, and contract value, helping your legal team to be more efficient and proactive, while also minimizing risk and identifying opportunities.
5. 5. Transform your approach to legal translation – AI-enabled translation raises the bar in terms of quality, speed and cost-effectiveness.

This program qualifies for up to 1 hour of CPD credit under the mandatory education regimes in British Columbia and Ontario.

Barreau du Québec Continuing Education: This program contains up to 1 hour of content. For more information regarding the declaration and recognition of educational activities, please contact the Barreau du Québec.