How Medi-Share Improves Consistency and Efficiency in Contract Drafting
Challenge: Managing consistency across a large volume of contracts
As the department’s only in-house attorney, corporate counsel Suzanne Ferguson found herself struggling to maintain consistent language across the increasing volume of contracts. She spent countless hours comparing new agreements with previous ones, searching for clauses that work, and in many cases drafting agreements from scratch.
“Even when you’re incredibly familiar with your client’s business, when you review so many documents coming from so many different directions, you look at a lot of language,” Ferguson said. “[You have to] remember what is your client’s position on all of these various terms and what is their preferred language, and be able to also synthesize it and make it analogous to their business model. It’s challenging to keep everything organized.”
Ferguson also found that dealing with definitions in contracts was an area taking up too much of her time – a problem she’s sure other attorneys can relate to. The location of definitions can vary by contract, resulting in a time-consuming hunt. Ensuring all your defined terms have definitions can also be tedious and prone to human error.
“There is no efficient way to plan for that task,” Ferguson said. “Every contract is different. It requires a laser focus, reading word for word.”
Solution: Accelerate document review and drafting without leaving Microsoft Word
Like many in her position, Ferguson first looked for help solving her contracts challenges in a contract management lifecycle (CLM) platform. However, she found that those tools don’t do her any favors when it comes to streamlining her workflows.
[Download our Buyer’s Guide to Contract Management Software for actionable insights to simplify your search for the right contract management software.]
“My experience is that even if it’s an excellent tool and I’m using the redlining and drafting function inside the tool, when I send [a contract] out to my counterpart, they’re not going to use the tool and they’re going to send it back to me as a Word document,” Ferguson explained. “And now I have to marry that up to what I was doing inside the tool.”
What immediately sold Ferguson on Bloomberg Law Contract Solutions was its integration with Microsoft Word. The tool provides a fast and easy starting point for drafting and revising contracts, offering the ability to find and open contracts in your library, insert preferred language and clauses, and access expert-drafted sample agreements and clauses – all without leaving Microsoft Word.
“For the entirety of my legal career, I’ve been working in Microsoft Word, but I’ve been having to leave Microsoft Word to find solutions to my contract drafting. The Contract Solutions tool gives me everything that I need inside the tool where I do my drafting,” Ferguson said. “With the Word add-in, I don’t have to switch between platforms while drafting and reviewing contracts. After 22 years, someone has finally built the product I’ve always wanted.”
With the Word add-in, I don’t have to switch between platforms while drafting and reviewing contracts. After 22 years, someone has finally built the product I’ve always wanted.
Suzanne Ferguson, Corporate Counsel, Medi-Share
Results: Time savings with expedited contract drafting and review
Not only was the implementation of Bloomberg Law Contract Solutions easy – “it just loaded up on my computer as though it had always been there,” Ferguson said – but she also started realizing the benefits right away.
In particular, it fast-tracked the search for clauses that best support her organization’s position. Now all she needs to do to find examples of similar clauses is select the text in the Word document, and the software will identify every similar clause, either from the millions of publicly available contracts attached as exhibits to SEC filings or from her company’s own clause database.
“If you go out to the web and look for sample clauses, you’re looking at clauses that have nothing to do with the contract that you’re reviewing,” Ferguson said. “But in the Contract Solutions tool, you can sort by industry, you can sort by law firm, you can sort by all of these data points to find something that’s really appropriate for what you’re working on – and find it quickly.”
And what about Ferguson’s constant struggle with searching for definitions? Bloomberg Law Contract Solutions will analyze every contract to identify the defined terms, highlight them, and find the definition for each. It also displays potential issues and errors to ensure no mistakes were made which could cause ambiguity or confusion. All of this happens without leaving Microsoft Word.
Ferguson estimates that using Contract Solutions for this task saves her an hour of time on each contract, giving her back four to eight hours a week to focus on higher-value tasks.
Watch: Medi-Share Corporate Counsel Suzanne Ferguson shares how she saves time reviewing contracts with Contract Solutions. [0:31]
More value: Cost savings and increased confidence in the due diligence process with Bloomberg Law
There were also inefficiencies to solve before contracts reached Ferguson’s desk for review. In her role overseeing the procurement team, she identified the need for a more robust due diligence function.
The team had a resource for legal news, but were frustrated by continually hitting paywalls and upcharges to gain access to certain information.
Ferguson needed a cost-effective way to equip these teams to take on more of the research and due diligence work, so she chose Bloomberg Law’s flagship legal research platform.
With robust primary sources, including court opinions and dockets, and up-to-the-minute news and analysis, Bloomberg Law helps Medi-Share stay on top of litigation and other news that’s critical to assessing their risk profile and strategy. They particularly appreciate the unmetered access and all-inclusive platform, meaning they’ll never hit another paywall when catching up on the news.
Empowering the procurement team with due diligence research has saved Ferguson significant time.
“I have to review a lot fewer things than I used to,” Ferguson said. “I used to feel like I had to have my hands on everything. Now I feel like this is something that they can do on their own, and as much as they have confidence in their work, I also have confidence in their work.”
She estimates that she previously received eight to 10 due diligence worksheets to review every month – work she completed in the evenings after caring for her child.
“It’s saved three hours a month out of my schedule already,” Ferguson said.
[Request a demo to see how Contract Solutions can simplify and streamline your contract workflows with AI-powered tools built into Microsoft Word.]