Every month, another legal department announces their shiny new CLM implementation. The press releases are identical: "transforming our contracting process," "driving unprecedented efficiency," "revolutionizing legal operations." Six months later, the same teams are quietly admitting their expensive new system hasn't solved their fundamental problems; it's just made them more visible.

The dirty secret of legal technology? Most CLM failures aren't technology failures, they're process failures. While legal departments obsess over feature comparisons and vendor demos, (sometimes doing close to a dozen demos!) they're ignoring the core foundation that determines whether any system will actually work.

Lucy Bassli, author of "CLM Simplified" and upcoming “Contracting Simplified,” former Assistant General Counsel of Contracting and Legal Operations at Microsoft and Founder & Principal, InnoLaw Group, has watched this pattern repeat countless times. Akshay Verma, who built world-class legal operations teams at major tech companies and now serves as COO at SpotDraft, sees the same challenges from both sides–as someone who's scaled legal operations and now helps other companies do the same.

Their message is clear: the companies achieving true contracting efficiency aren't the ones with the flashiest technology. They're the ones that master smart risk-taking and effective process design first.

Lucy: Having lived this myself in-house at Microsoft and now spending years watching other legal departments jump headfirst into CLM technology hoping for a silver bullet solution, I can tell you this with certainty: The technology will simply automate whatever current process it is taught, good or bad. If you don't have your optimal processes mapped out and your people aligned, even the most sophisticated CLM platform will just highlight your problems and increase frustration after spending significant money.

Akshay: This is exactly what I witnessed firsthand while scaling legal operations at both Meta and Coinbase. The companies that achieved true contracting efficiency weren't the ones with the flashiest tech stacks, they were the ones that asked the hard questions upfront: What differentiates a world-class contracting process from a run-of-the-mill one? The answer isn't found in vendor demos; it's found in strategic process design.
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The Process-First Philosophy

Lucy: Let me be blunt: you have to know what's inside the four corners of a contract to know how it should flow across a company. Too many legal teams get seduced by automation promises without understanding the basics. Who touches your contracts? When do they touch them? What decisions are they making? Until you can map out your current state with brutal honesty, you're not ready for technology.

I've seen it all, legal departments buying expensive CLM systems only to realize they're still the "black hole" the business complains about. The problem wasn't the technology; it was that they never addressed the fundamental workflow issues that made them slow in the first place.

Akshay: The role of legal operations has grown far beyond cost control. Today, it is about building efficiency, enabling automation, and ultimately running legal like a business. But here’s the nuance most teams miss: treating law like a business does not start with buying tools. It starts with applying business discipline to how you design your processes. Scale doesn't happen by accident—it requires intentional process design that anticipates growth, eliminates bottlenecks, and creates predictable outcomes.The technology came later, as an accelerator of processes we'd already optimized. Like Yvon Chouinard says, “If you focus on the process of climbing, you'll end up on the summit.” 

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‍The Strategic Foundation: People and Process

Lucy:  Legal teams need to be a business partner first – enabling fast deal closure. That starts with honest self-assessment. Are you over-functioning? Are you stepping in to "fix" contracts that the business should handle? Most legal teams are, and it's killing their efficiency.

The solution isn't to work harder; it's to work strategically. Create clear guidelines for what requires legal review and more importantly, what doesn’t. Set boundaries and stick to them by enabling the business to be more independent, using the right tools within parameters. 

Akshay: Absolutely. What I learned while scaling operations is that sustainable efficiency requires getting legal operations intentionally closer to the business. We can't be one step removed from the business roadmaps and pain points we're supposed to serve. Strategic process design means understanding not just how contracts flow, but why they matter to business outcomes.

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The Technology Amplifier

‍Lucy: Now, once you've got your processes clearly documented and agreed upon, then technology becomes incredibly powerful. Don't jump into buying the technology until you can answer basic questions about how contracting happens today. How contracts flow across the enterprise and who is involved, for what purpose. Technology should automate excellence, not dysfunction.

When you've mapped your workflows, identified your stakeholders, and created clear handoffs between legal and business teams, that's when CLM systems become force multipliers. They can enforce your playbooks, capture your data, and scale your optimized processes across the organization onward, consistently. As I say often, Contracting is an ongoing operation which needs a manager, a sherpa, a nurturer. 

Akshay: The companies getting this right understand that technology is an amplifier of strategy, not a substitute for it. I always tell teams to pause and think: Why are we doing this? What's the plan? What happens when things go south? These questions force you to design resilient processes before you automate them.

The future of legal operations will be shaped by AI and advanced automation, but the winners will be those who built solid strategic foundations first. You can't AI your way out of poorly designed processes. You'll just create AI-powered chaos.

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‍The Competitive Advantage

Lucy: What most people miss? Contracts are, at their core, a business document. They are the lifeline of business. When you approach contracting purposefully with intention: with clear processes, aligned stakeholders, and technology that serves your business goals rather than dictating it; you transform legal from a cost center into a competitive advantage.

Akshay: Exactly. Strategic process design isn't just about efficiency; it's about creating sustainable differentiation. While your competitors are still wrestling with their CLM implementations, you're delivering predictable turnaround times, higher-quality outcomes, and better business partnership.

The legal departments that will thrive in the next decade are those that master this sequence: strategic process design first, people alignment second, technology enablement third. Skip any step, and you'll find yourself with expensive tools that don't solve your real problems. This is what we see across our customer base at SpotDraft, the teams that invest time in process design upfront become our most successful power users.

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The Path Forward

The contracting efficiency challenge isn't solved by technology, it is solved by leaders willing to do the strategic process design work that technology can then accelerate. Start with your processes, align your people, and let technology amplify your success. That's how you build the contracting function your business actually needs.