Bloomberg Law Expands Practical Guidance Resources
ARLINGTON, VA — Bloomberg Law today announced the multiple new Practical Guidance resources representing significant increases in resources on litigation, transactional law, and emerging topics.
Bloomberg Law’s Practical Guidance provides a wide range of documents across many practice areas to help legal professionals be more efficient and productive. With ready-made templates, samples, annotated forms, checklists, and guides, Practical Guidance helps early career associates learn on the job and senior practitioners quickly refresh on any topic.
Over the past several months, Bloomberg Law has expanded its litigation Practical Guidance collection with new resources covering Initiating and Responding to Litigation in New York, Class Actions & Multi-District Litigation, and Chapter 11 Bankruptcy expansion.
Bloomberg Law’s transactional law Practical Guidance collection also saw considerable growth, with new resources on Supply Chain, Tech Licenses & Agreements, and AI in Corporate Transactions.
Additionally, Bloomberg Law’s Practical Guidance collection on emerging topics has seen a significant expansion, with new resources on the demise of the Chevron doctrine, the Corporate Transparency Act, DEI in Employment, and Overtime Exemptions & Eligibility.
“Bloomberg Law’s Practical Guidance is designed to be an all-encompassing resource for legal professionals, providing immediate access to a diverse range of topics, all crafted by legal experts,” said Alex Butler, head of content and analysis, Bloomberg Industry Group. “The growth of our collection across litigation, transactional law, and emerging topics reflects our ongoing commitment to deliver the most current and effective resources, ensuring our customers can handle their legal matters with precision and efficiency.”
“Bloomberg Law’s Practical Guidance helps us complete work with efficiency, accuracy, and confidence. It significantly reduces the amount of time it takes us to complete legal work in-house and thus reduces our annual spend on outside counsel,” said a deputy general counsel at a multi-billion-dollar financial services company. “It provides us with an idea of what is ‘standard’ or typical and it gives us a better starting point to work on contracts, agreements, and clauses.”
To learn more about Bloomberg Law’s latest Practical Guidance resources, request a demo at https://aboutblaw.com/bguz.
About Bloomberg Law
Bloomberg Law combines the latest in legal technology with workflow tools, comprehensive primary and secondary sources, trusted news, expert analysis, and business intelligence. For more than a decade, Bloomberg Law has been a trailblazer in its application of AI and machine learning. Bloomberg Law’s deep expertise and commitment to innovation provide a competitive edge to help improve attorney productivity and efficiency. For more information, visit Bloomberg Law.
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50-State Summary: Drug and Alcohol Testing Laws
Employers are directly impacted by the drug and alcohol laws in the states where they operate, and the unique legal status of cannabis makes this evolving labor and employment landscape even more complex.
Our 50-State Summary: Drug and Alcohol Testing Laws provides the latest regulations across jurisdictions to help you advise your clients or organization on how to manage risk and create compliant workplace policies around testing protocols and employee protections.
Get essential details for every state including:
- Testing and confidentiality requirements
- Employer policy and reporting requirements
- Disciplinary procedures
- Employer liability
Download your complimentary copy today.
ROI of Project Management Tools for Attorneys
For all of the legal tech on the market, lawyers are still relying almost entirely on email to manage their collaborative workflows.
This survey of over 2,500 attorneys delves into exactly how email is being used, examines alternate methods used in other sectors, and explores the benefits of solutions tailored to legal workflows.
Sample survey results include:
- 84% of respondents rely on email for task management
- Lawyers spend over 2/3 of their working day in email
- 67% of respondents receive requests from partners to pull information from emails
- Organizations reported a 50% increase in productivity when using project management tools
Download your complimentary copy to see detailed results.
Are you ready to say goodbye to inbox clutter and workflow chaos?
See how Dashboard Legal by Bloomberg Law helps you manage every detail and document in one place. So, you can relax knowing you haven’t missed a thing.
Project Management Toolkit for Busy Lawyers
From implementing new technology to organizational practices, law firms and legal departments are often tasked with managing projects with lots of moving pieces. Now it’s easier than ever to establish simple processes to ensure you never miss a detail.
Our Project Management Toolkit for Busy Lawyers shows you how to manage projects. It guides you through the four phases of project management – planning, execution, monitoring, closure – and provides practical samples to help you get started and prepare for whatever comes your way next.
Toolkit includes:
- Project execution overview
- Sample project plan worksheet
- Sample project schedule worksheet
- Sample RACI chart worksheet
- Sample risk and issue management plan
Download your complimentary toolkit today.
Bloomberg Law Unveils 2025 Report Highlighting Key Trends in Legal Industry
ARLINGTON, VA — Bloomberg Law announced today the availability of a new report, Bloomberg Law 2025: Predictions That Cut Through the Commotion. This is the latest installment of Bloomberg Law’s annual outlook series, which this year features more than 20 articles that look ahead to what 2025 has in store for legal professionals and the legal industry.
The Bloomberg Law 2025 analysis focuses on five categories:
- Litigation: Review major changes in case law in 2024 and what they portend for 2025. Topics include Chevron deference, fair use, antitrust, and litigation financing.
- Transactions & Contracts: Explore the forces shaping key markets of interest in both commercial and corporate transactions. These include M&A innovations, supply chain management challenges, and contract technology.
- Regulatory & Compliance: Examine important areas of corporate risk, from ESG to privacy and from fair practices to DEI, to understand what legal compliance in these areas will look like in 2025.
- Artificial Intelligence: Learn about the most compelling issues driven by the dramatic rise of generative AI in 2024 and project how those issues will impact legal organizations and professionals in 2025.
- Practice of Law: Explore the individual and interpersonal issues that legal practitioners will contend with as they navigate the year ahead, including DEI, technology, remote work, and attorney well-being.
“With landmark Supreme Court rulings, changes in government leadership, significant constitutional challenges, and rapid technological advancements reshaping the legal landscape, attorneys face a dynamic year ahead,” said Kristyn Hyland, director of content & analysis at Bloomberg Law. “These five categories capture the pivotal issues Bloomberg Law’s expert analysts will be closely monitoring in the coming year, and the analyses provide key perspectives and data practitioners need to navigate these shifts and act decisively in an evolving field.”
The Bloomberg Law 2025 series is available at https://aboutblaw.com/bgfF.
About Bloomberg Law
Bloomberg Law combines the latest in legal technology with workflow tools, comprehensive primary and secondary sources, trusted news, expert analysis, and business intelligence. For more than a decade, Bloomberg Law has been a trailblazer in its application of AI and machine learning. Bloomberg Law’s deep expertise and commitment to innovation provide a competitive edge to help improve attorney productivity and efficiency. For more information, visit Bloomberg Law.
Media Contact
If you are a member of the media, send us an email and we will be in touch with you shortly.
How to Know if You Need a Contract Management System
Contract management is the discipline used to create and oversee a contract throughout its lifecycle. This lifecycle can involve multiple stages of getting the contract from initial consideration to termination and requires an organized, systematic approach. There are plenty of contract automation tools that companies can use to improve their contract management processes, including contract management software (CMS).
Before you dive into the process of evaluating and implementing a CMS at your organization, you should first assess your need and readiness to invest in a technology solution.
[Watch our webinar series A Buyer’s Guide to Successful Contract Management Automation to dive into the foundational steps of preparing for contract management software and lay the groundwork for success.]
What’s the purpose of a contract management software?
CMS solutions are designed to automate and streamline the contract management process. These powerful tools offer a unified platform for legal and business teams to create, negotiate, sign, renew, and report on business contracts by automating the manual work traditionally involved in a contract workflow.
When done right, contract management software can:
- Improve contract performance
- Fulfill obligations
- Mitigate risks
- Reduce costs
- Increase productivity
- Help ensure compliance
When contracts are poorly managed, the results can have significant impacts on your business. Beyond loss of revenue and operational inefficiencies, poor contract management puts your organization at risk of several other potential consequences, such as regulatory penalties, security breaches, and reputational damages.
What’s the difference between a CRM and contract management software?
Customer/client relationship management platforms (CRMs) are designed to help businesses manage their interactions and relationships with customers. They typically include features and functionalities to help organize customer data, streamline communication, and optimize customer engagement.
While some CRMs offer functionality to generate and sign agreements with clients, legal departments shouldn’t rely on CRMs for contract management. Contract management software (CMS) is specifically designed for managing contracts, including:
- Drafting tools
- Approval workflows
- Version control
- Compliance management
- Analytics
Checklist: Do you need contract management software?
- Do you expect contract volumes to increase significantly?
- Are you about to undergo a merger/acquisition process?
- Do you manage more than 50 active contracts?
- Is it difficult to locate your organization’s executed contracts or key provisions?
- Are you wasting precious time on routine drafting, review, and negotiation processes?
- Do you struggle to maintain version control while drafting and negotiating?
- Are you spending too much time on repetitive admin/contract management tasks?
- Is it difficult to keep track of key dates and contract obligations?
- Do other departments frequently request ad hoc contract reports?
- Do you need to start measuring and improving turnaround time on contracts?
- Do you lose data and context when someone leaves your team?
If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then it may be time to start thinking about investing in a contract automation tool to streamline some or all aspects of your contract management lifecycle.
Is your legal department ready to implement contract management software?
You’ve established that you have a need for contract management software, but is your team actually ready to implement one? Choosing the right technology is a crucial step in optimizing your contract workflows, yet it’s only one piece of the puzzle.
While the benefits of contract management software are clear, legal teams must first understand, improve, and ultimately simplify their existing contract lifecycle management framework before procuring technology.
“Automation without getting ready is a recipe for disaster. A lot of it is not so much dissatisfaction with the technology, but it’s the realization that the technology isn’t doing what the buyers hoped it would do…and that maybe they jumped a little too soon to technology because things weren’t quite settled and ready for automation.”
Lucy Bassli, founder, InnoLaw Group, LLC
Understand your current contract management process
To ensure the successful selection, adoption, and implementation of contract management software you must have a solid foundation to build on. Taking the time to assess the current state of the people, processes, and policies involved in contracting is essential for legal teams to ensure they select the right technology that aligns with their specific requirements, optimizes their operations, and provides a good return on investment.
If you don’t have a contract lifecycle management framework or the existing one fails to meet your needs, that’s okay, you’re not alone – 48% of organizations report having foundational improvements to make before implementing contract management software, according to InnoLaw CLM Launchpad data.
[Download our Contract Management Playbook for a step-by-step process checklist for establishing and maintaining a contract management framework.]
Identify opportunities to optimize your contract workflow
If you already have well-defined and documented processes, run a quick audit to identify any potential gaps or areas for improvement.
At a minimum, you should be able to answer these questions before making the jump to technology automation:
- Does legal know when contract review is required?
- Are contract management roles clear between legal and business?
- Where are your executed contracts stored? Can you easily find and access them?
- What contract templates does your department use?
- Do you use e-signatures?
[Download our Contract Management Playbook for a contract management process audit questionnaire to help you identify any gaps or potential areas of improvement.]
How much does a CMS cost?
The two primary categories of CMS – focused and enterprise – can vary widely in cost. There is the baseline annual cost of the software, often priced by the seat, and additional implementation or support costs might also factor in.
Focused solutions are often a minor investment typically starting around $20,000 per year. Enterprise solutions can be a significant investment of $100,000 or more per year.
However, there are other costs to consider when evaluating contract management solutions. First is the cost of inaction. Poor contract management affects the organization’s bottom line because of operational inefficacies, redundancies, and the impact of compliance failures.
According to World Commerce & Contracting, contract management shortcomings can lead to average revenue loss of 9.2% annually. This figure soars to 15% for larger enterprises. An EY study showed that more than half of business development leaders (57%) say their organizations have seen slower revenue as a result of contracting inefficiencies and 50% have missed out on business.
Then there are the hidden costs associated with lengthy, complicated implementations. Focused CMS solutions tend to be faster to implement and learn, reducing the disruption to the team and increasing the likelihood of adoption.
The implementation of enterprise CMS solutions can stretch from six months to more than a year and often affects a number of departments throughout the company, requiring significant change management and oversight.
Bloomberg Law is your guide to contract simplicity
Once you’ve determined your need and readiness for contract management software, you’ll take the next step and begin evaluating the available options. While there are many contract automation tools on the market, you’re likely seeking a solution that not only simplifies and streamlines the contract management lifecycle but also aligns seamlessly with your organization’s existing workflows – enhancing efficiency without imposing undue financial burdens.
Ready for contract management software but don’t know where to start? Register for our four-part webinar series: A Buyer’s Guide to Successful Contract Management Automation. Each webinar covers a key stage of the buyer’s journey – from planning to implementation – with expert tips, actionable insights, and practical guidance to help you become a smarter buyer.
Choosing the right contract management software is crucial. Bloomberg Law Contract Solutions can help you solve the most pressing challenges in your contract workflow with an easy, out-of-the-box solution built specifically for in-house attorneys to more efficiently store, manage, draft, negotiate, and analyze contracts. Request a demo to see how Contract Solutions can help you manage your contract workflow with confidence.
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2025 Legal Trends
Legal industry predictions for the year ahead
Prepare for the biggest challenges facing lawyers with data-driven expert perspectives and actionable insights from the Bloomberg Law 2025 series.
The state of the legal services industry
News about the law and how it’s practiced has been dominating public discussion more now than perhaps at any other time in recent memory. From landmark Supreme Court decisions to unprecedented political shifts, and from thorny constitutional challenges to massive technological advances, legal professionals are left wondering about how these developments may shape the future of their legal practice.
In our latest annual look-ahead report, Bloomberg Law’s expert analysts have identified key industry developments to highlight market trends that lawyers should be watching closely in the year ahead.
Legal trends 2025
This year’s report examines the biggest challenges and questions in some of the fastest-growing areas of law, and the legal fields that will be most in demand in 2025.
In an evolving regulatory landscape, understanding these key industry trends can help legal professionals anticipate challenges and capitalize on growth areas in 2025 and beyond.
1. Litigation
Explore major changes to case law in 2024 and what they might mean for 2025, including:
- Why the death of Chevron deference won’t mean the death of corporate liability
- How challenges to corporate DEI programs may fare in 2025
- How Meta releasing an open source LLM might tip the scales in fair use lawsuits
2. Transactions and contracts
Discover the forces shaping key markets of interest in commercial and corporate transactions:
- Does the recent popularity of going-private transactions represent a new dealmaking trend?
- Why supply chains will face new risks at home and abroad, and how businesses will respond
- How SEC actions against large banks and OpenAI will change how NDAs are drafted
3. Artificial intelligence (AI)
The dramatic rise of generative AI technology will continue to change the legal profession in 2025 and has sparked compelling legal questions, including:
- Will AI oversight efforts follow the model of EU-inspired state privacy laws or the framework of voluntary nationwide cybersecurity standards?
- Will basic contract-drafting skills matter for early-career transactional attorneys when AI takes over?
4. Regulatory and compliance
Dive into what legal compliance might look like in important areas of corporate risk, such as:
- Why corporate climate goals will be subjected to new investor scrutiny
- Why last year’s unprecedented flurry of state privacy laws is only the beginning
5. Practice of law
Understand the issues law firms and in-house legal departments will contend with and what they mean for the future of legal careers, including:
- How law firms are deflecting anti-DEI lawsuits without changing their programs – and how corporations can do the same
- Where high-tech project management software is gaining traction in an industry where email still rules
- The right ratio of in-office and remote work for peak billable-hour efficiency
- What survey responses reveal about the future of well-being programs for lawyers
These insights are only the beginning. Download our full report for a comprehensive analysis of 2025 legal industry trends and stay ahead of the evolving legal landscape.
What will the legal industry look like in 2025?
The legal industry is bracing for a dynamic year of transformation in 2025, driven by shifts in regulatory standards, the rapid integration of AI, and legal practitioners’ evolving expectations of where, when, and how they work.
57
%
of lawyers expect associates to have AI experience. Most attorneys expect new legal professionals to have at least a basic familiarity with AI upon hiring.
82
%
billable-hour efficiency rate for hybrid work policies suggests that attorney efficiency peaks when return-to-office arrangements allow for remote work one to two days per week.
Growth sectors for the legal industry
The legal industry is set for growth in 2025, with a heightened demand for legal expertise across specialized fields – especially regulatory compliance, privacy, and litigation. In the face of the growing complexity of global commercial activity alongside technological advancements, the demand for legal services is likely to rise in sectors affected by evolving compliance needs, including:
- Commercial transactions
- Supply chain risk management
- Mergers and acquisitions (M&A)
- Drug pricing litigation
- SEC rulemaking
How technology is changing the legal field
The integration of AI into larger industry and commercial sectors is raising complicated legal and compliance questions. Like with the recent development of privacy and cybersecurity laws, stakeholders are debating whether AI compliance standards should follow state-driven laws or a voluntary national framework. In 2025, regulators will likely begin to address how industries use the new technology, including with oversight strategies such as the SEC’s regulation of “AI washing” in financial disclosures.
2025 is also likely to see a widespread adoption of state AI regulations narrowly targeted to curb election-related misinformation, deepfakes, and sexually explicit content. Legal professionals should expect First Amendment challenges to arise.
AI’s environmental impact is also gaining attention. In response to the new scrutiny, tech companies will be reevaluating their “green” claims in 2025.
The future of AI in legal services
Legal technology, particularly AI, is fundamentally reshaping legal practices. Even though the adoption of such tools has been gradual and cautious due to privacy and cybersecurity questions, in-house legal departments are leading the industry in implementing legal tech tools to transform how they work. For example, project management tools are more common in corporate settings than in law firms.
AI tools are increasingly being used to drive efficiencies in areas such as contract drafting, legal research, and due diligence. With AI taking over more repetitive tasks, lawyers will be able to focus on complex, strategic work, but law firms and in-house legal teams will need to develop strong oversight processes to mitigate legal and ethical risks.
To effectively leverage these tools and audit their outputs, legal professionals will still need to have a foundational understanding of contract law and legal writing skills. However, 74% of attorneys believe transactional lawyers with fewer than five years of experience lack proficiency in drafting concise, legally sound contracts. Law schools are responding by expanding AI course offerings to prepare future lawyers for AI-integrated practice.
Most attorneys expect associates to have AI knowledge
“What level of practical experience with AI would you expect new associates or new legal professionals at your firm or organization to have upon hiring?”
Law firm trends and challenges in 2025
Law firms will grapple with several challenges in 2025, including finding ways to optimize operational efficiency while balancing employee well-being:
- Adapting to hybrid work models: Firms may struggle to balance work-from-home policies that optimize billable hours with traditional office culture.
- Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) program sustainability: While firms remain committed to these programs, they’ll need to adapt to persisting anti-DEI legal pressures.
- Technology implementation: The transition to project management tools and knowledge management systems remains slow, despite a recognized need among in-house teams.
- Lawyer well-being: As mental health and well-being become focal issues, firms will expand wellness programs and dedicate staff to address these concerns.
In-house counsel trends and challenges in 2025
In-house counsel will play a crucial risk management role for their organizations, especially regarding evolving regulatory compliance challenges:
- Supply chain resilience: Expanding and diversifying their network of suppliers while also renegotiating supply contracts for more flexibility are key tactics that corporate counsels are taking to mitigate disruption in response to global trade and regulatory risks.
- Technology adoption: Implementing project management tools and compliance monitoring systems to improve efficiency and responsiveness.
- Flexible contract arrangements: Ensuring adaptability in supplier and vendor contracts to respond swiftly to changing business environments.
- Enhanced compliance oversight: Managing compliance in emerging areas, such as climate reporting and AI regulation, to align with corporate governance goals.
Download the full legal trends report
Access your copy of the Bloomberg Law 2025 series for an in-depth look at the issues our legal analysts are tracking into 2025. This comprehensive report covers five key areas:
- Litigation
- Transactions and contracts
- Artificial intelligence
- Regulatory and compliance
- The practice of law
Already a Bloomberg Law subscriber? Login to access the analyses.
Meet the authors
The Bloomberg Law 2025 series features more than two dozen articles written by Bloomberg Law legal analysts who have dived deep into key developments and data to look ahead to what 2025 has in store for legal professionals and the legal industry.
Golriz Chrostowski
Principal Legal Analyst
Robert Dillard
Principal Legal Analyst
Abigail Gampher Takacs
Legal Analyst
Michael Maugans
Senior Legal Analyst
Mary Ashley Salvino
Senior Content Specialist
Laura Travis
Content Specialist
Louann Troutman
Senior Legal Analyst
Erin L. Webb
Principal Legal Analyst
Bloomberg Law 2025: Predictions That Cut Through the Commotion
Discover the top issues shaping the legal landscape in 2025 with data-rich, actionable perspectives to help you prepare.
Each year, our legal analysts break down the developments they are following into the year ahead. Our comprehensive report, Predictions That Cut Through the Commotion, includes more than 30 analysis articles across five key areas of law. You’ll get forward-looking insights into a broad spectrum of topics, like Loper Bright’s effect on business, challenges to commercial transactions, the environmental toll caused by AI, state privacy law trends, and the impacts of lawyer RTO.
Dive into the trends in these five areas of law:
- Litigation
- Transactions and contracts
- Regulatory and compliance
- Artificial intelligence
- Practice of law
Download your complimentary copy today.
Which Project Management Software Is Ideal for Legal Professionals?
Every day, lawyers wade through a deluge of emails, with important client requests often buried in back-and-forth exchanges or updates from colleagues. Tired of information silos, many attorneys turn to project management (PM) software, such as Asana or Microsoft Teams, hoping to streamline task tracking and internal communications.
While these general-purpose PM tools are designed to serve a broad range of industries, they aren’t suited for the unique needs of legal teams – including strict security standards, intricate timelines, and nuanced communication among teams or departments. Dashboard Legal bridges this gap by offering a platform that is made for lawyers by lawyers.
Email vs. Dashboard Legal
Outlook or Gmail have been the go-to tools for firms. But because important details often get buried in long threads, attorneys might end up duplicating efforts on a project, miss deadlines, or have incomplete information, which can lead to errors and inefficiencies.
Dashboard Legal addresses these inefficiencies. By creating teamwide or departmentwide dashboards, users have a secure, centralized space to see all updates, assignments, and documents. If a client wants to know the status of a project, all attorneys need to do is check the dashboard, ensure it is up to date, and then export the document.
Without Dashboard Legal, lawyers would need to leaf through lengthy email chains or rely on ad hoc checklists in Microsoft Word that may be outdated. Instead, by using Dashboard Legal, attorneys can get their clients the information they need in a matter of minutes, leading to higher client satisfaction from faster response times and substantially lower bills.
PM software vs. Dashboard Legal
When legal professionals realize that inboxes aren’t the best system for organization and collaboration, they often explore general-purpose PM software as an alternative. But because legal work requires precision, security, and well-structured flows of information, many PM tools fall short in providing lawyers exactly what they need.
The following sections outline critical components to project management to better understand why a specialized tool, such as Dashboard Legal, can empower legal teams in ways that other software cannot.
Structure and functionality
General-purpose PM software, while versatile, often introduces complexities for highly specialized fields, such as law. Designed for broad usage and mass adoption, tools such as Asana and Monday have a wide variety of features, buttons, and widgets that aren’t relevant for lawyers. These superfluous functions can create clutter and disjointed workflows for attorneys and paralegals, who instead need access to legal-specific tools that will help them get the job done with ease and efficiency.
Purpose-built with client matter taxonomy at its center, Dashboard Legal consolidates relevant emails, documents, chats, and checklists – all in a single view. Materials are organized by client boards and matter boards, so lawyers know where conversations are supposed to happen, and the work stays streamlined. Additionally, partners have a resource management view to better understand who is doing what.
Integrations with other systems
Legal teams rely heavily on secure document management systems (DMS) to handle large volumes of sensitive documents, with the ability to track document changes, provide feedback, and set permissions for different users.
While Dashboard Legal seamlessly integrates with such DMS as iManage and NetDocuments, general-purpose PM tools do not have this capability, which forces legal departments to manage their documents in a parallel system. Needing to manage two systems at once can lead to duplicative work, disrupted workflows, and overall inefficiencies.
Onboarding processes
Many general-purpose PM tools lack robust onboarding programs, leaving users to decipher unfamiliar features and widgets on their own. Attorneys and paralegals have to then spend valuable time configuring the platform and adapting it to their unique legal needs – a process that leads to frustration and disjointed implementation.
Dashboard Legal, on the other hand, has a structured, battle-tested implementation program, specifically designed to get lawyers up to speed quickly. With dedicated onboarding resources and guided tutorials, Dashboard Legal’s support staff work with lawyers every step of the way and ensure that lawyers are able to integrate the platform into their workflows from day one.
Taking the next step in selecting PM software
When choosing the right PM software for your legal department or firm, there are a lot of variables to take into consideration. A streamlined structure, strong security, and tailored support are critical factors that will set you up for success.
See how the global law firm Gunderson Dettmer improved their task management and client response time with Dashboard Legal. To learn more, request a demo.
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Can AI Write Legal Contracts?
Legal contracts are essential for businesses because they document expectations and specific conditions for a business arrangement. However, managing the contract lifecycle can become overly time-consuming because of slow drafting and negotiation processes, inefficient storage and retrieval systems, limited oversight mechanisms, and communication challenges.
For these reasons, artificial intelligence (AI) – the overarching description for technologies that use computers and software to create intelligent, humanlike behavior – is finding its place in the legal profession. In fact, more legal teams are turning to AI for legal professionals, and specifically contract management technology solutions, to improve contract performance, fulfill professional obligations, and mitigate risks. But with recent advancements in AI tools for legal writing, many legal professionals may be left wondering how exactly AI is incorporated into these solutions and whether legal AI tools can be trusted to write and review legal contracts.
In this article, we explore how generative AI – which draws on enormous data sources to instantaneously create seemingly new, task-appropriate content such as essays, blog posts, and videos – can help legal professionals write legal contracts. Read on to learn about the intersection of AI and legal contracts, including the benefits and risks of using AI for contract-related tasks, and how AI-powered contract management systems such as Bloomberg Law Contract Solutions can help legal teams store, manage, draft, negotiate, and analyze contracts more efficiently.
What are contract automation tools?
Contract management is the discipline used to create and oversee a contract throughout its lifecycle, and contract management tools help legal professionals organize this process. And while a contract management tool can include AI-powered features, the entire tool isn’t AI-based. Rather, contract management tools can incorporate AI to provide automation.
The contract lifecycle involves multiple stages, from initial consideration to termination. If legal teams don’t have a well-documented process for managing a contract through each of these stages, they might spend too much time on manual and inefficient contract-related tasks.
For instance, when writing and generating contracts, legal teams often lack a centralized contract repository and can encounter version control issues when several team members work on the same document. This can make it difficult to track obligations and deadlines during the contract review and negotiation process. Plus, these teams may not have the reporting and analytics technology to provide insights on activities such as turnaround times.
Enter contract management software (CMS) solutions, which are designed to automate and streamline the contract management process. These contract automation tools offer a unified platform for legal and business teams to draft, negotiate, sign, renew, and report on business contracts by automating the manual work that’s traditionally involved in a contract workflow (such as using spreadsheets and shared drives to track and store contracts). These tools can also help store, search, and manage drafts and final agreements.
Today, many CMS solutions incorporate AI-powered features. For example, Bloomberg Law Contract Solutions leverages proprietary semantic search and natural language processing technology to deliver advanced search and contract analysis features. These legal AI tools save lawyers valuable time by removing the guesswork from contract review.
[Ready for contract management software but don’t know where to start? Our four-part webinar series A Buyer’s Guide to Successful Contract Management Automation simplifies every step of the purchasing journey – from planning to implementation – to help you become a smarter buyer.]
Can AI draft contracts?
Yes. Large language models (LLMs) – a subset of generative AI that can recognize, predict, translate, summarize, and generate language, including software code – can write legal documents, including contracts. LLMs use deep learning algorithms to generate humanlike text in response to user prompts. These models “predict” the correct response based on a large set of documents from which the model learns about human language.
“[LLMs] can give you a starting point for a legal document, but a lawyer needs to take it across the finish line.”
Patrick Lavan, marketing manager, Bloomberg Law
Utilizing a powerful LLM can empower lawyers to automate essential but tedious contract drafting functions, allowing attorneys to spend their valuable time strategizing and negotiating rather than drafting. However, although AI contract drafting tools can help lawyers more efficiently begin the first draft of a legal document, they are not full-service AI contract generators. This means the resulting product should be used only as a starting point.
“Right now, there isn’t AI technology that’s good enough to blindly write a contract without an attorney reviewing it at all. It would be a massive risk for a lawyer to do this because the technology just isn’t there yet,” said Patrick Lavan, a Bloomberg Law marketing manager. “LLMs are great at summarization, but they don’t have the situational awareness and context an attorney does. These tools have only the information you provide. So, they can give you a starting point for a legal document, but a lawyer needs to take it across the finish line.”
Keeping this in mind, legal professionals should use these tools as an AI contract drafting template rather than a start-to-finish document production tool.
Can AI review a contract?
Yes, lawyers can use AI for legal document review, including reviewing legal contracts. AI contract review tools can be especially useful for helping lawyers spot errors and inconsistencies in contract drafts as well as determining the best language to include in a contract.
“There needs to be a lot of validation and iteration before the technology can give you the best answer it can.”
Andrew Gilman, senior product manager, Bloomberg Law
However, it’s important to note that AI contract analysis tools should supplement rather than replace a human lawyer’s review of a contract. And when using AI for legal document review, lawyers still need to provide prompts that instruct the AI technology on what it’s reviewing for.
“Your final product is only as effective as the prompts that are used to do this analysis,” said Andrew Gilman, senior product manager for Bloomberg Law. “With that said, as vendors’ base models improve, the analysis will get better and better. This is why it’s important to trust your vendor. There needs to be a lot of validation and iteration before the technology can give you the best answer it can.”
Legal professionals trust AI contract review software from Bloomberg Law because the software is backed by service and security honed over decades of meeting the complex needs of legal, tax, and financial professionals.
For example, machine learning models such as Bloomberg Law’s Draft Analyzer can identify how draft language may deviate from the market standard and help attorneys focus on language their counterparty usually agrees to. First, a machine learning model detects clauses and builds a clause outline. Then, semantic analysis allows the tool to compare the draft language to, for example, tens of thousands of publicly filed M&A agreements and identifies text with a similar meaning that’s most relevant to your agreement or transaction.
[Watch our on-demand webinar Transforming M&A: AI Innovations for Legal Professionals to discover how AI is revolutionizing M&A practices.]
Can AI analyze and help execute final contracts?
Lawyers can use AI contract analysis tools to review final contracts for issues, errors, and inconsistencies. They also can use AI technology to help execute a final contract by streamlining the validation and security portion of the electronic signature process. But, as noted, lawyers can’t expect to completely hand over the analysis and execution of contracts to AI.
“AI can help analyze and execute final contracts, but it won’t do the full job,” said Lavan. “The technology is not at a point where it can handle these tasks unassisted. You still ultimately need a legal professional to review the final contract and ensure it’s absolutely correct.”
Although you can find legal AI contract templates on the internet, utilizing a CMS solution is more reliable because it can store internal contract templates such as standard master service agreements (MSAs).
Bloomberg Law’s Contract Solutions employs AI technology trained on large numbers of contracts to analyze and compare draft clauses against your organization’s past agreements and the EDGAR database. The tool uses AI to quickly and easily analyze every contract to identify and highlight defined terms and will flag any potential issues and errors to ensure there aren’t any mistakes that could cause ambiguity or confusion.
Trusted contract intelligence from Bloomberg Law
While human assistance is still required throughout each stage of the contract management process, AI tools for legal writing can help streamline and simplify the operation. By embracing AI tools for legal professionals, organizations can achieve better oversight, improve productivity, and fully realize the potential of their contracts.
If you’re ready for contract management software but don’t know where to start, our four-part webinar series A Buyer’s Guide to Successful Contract Management Automation simplifies every step of the purchasing journey – from planning to implementation – to help you become a smarter buyer and ensure success.
Bloomberg Law’s Contract Solutions leverages contract intelligence and contract analytics to solve the most pressing challenges legal teams face during the contract workflow. Request a demo to learn more about how Bloomberg Law’s AI-driven legal tools can help your legal team save time and reduce risk.