On average, it takes up to two hours to review a contract. Throw in drafting, approvals, and running around to find the right person to sign it and the time required skyrockets. As a result, preparing even a simple contract like an MSA or NDA can become a nightmare that lasts days, if not weeks. On top of all that, your customer’s stuck waiting or going to somebody else who deals with bureaucracy faster.
By leveraging technology and involving lawyers only when absolutely necessary, this process can be sped upwards of 80% faster. But how do you get through reviews, approvals, and compliance? Here’s where QuickDocs steps in.
What is QuickDocs?
QuickDocs is a self-service solution that allows the delegation of simple legal matters to non-legal units. Business teams gain more control over client onboarding while lawyers can focus on high-value work. With self-service, your legal department won’t have to be constantly involved in drafting, reviewing, or negotiations. At the same time, your processes stay under control.
QuickDocs works like this: Lawyers create a pre-approved template that’s stored in one place and updated when needed. Managers send the template to the customer. All the customer has to do is to fill in the necessary data, click submit, and sign the contract. Since all your templates are pre-approved (and frequently pre-signed on your side), the customer receives an approved contract via email seconds later.
When something needs to be changed in the template, it can be done in a few clicks. This helps business teams remain sure they’re using the latest version. With QuickDocs, compliance is maintained by the template, not the contract itself.
QuickDocs vs Regular Contracts: What’s the Difference?
On the one hand, we could say there’s no difference between a regular contract and a QuickDocs contract. In a side-by-side comparison, it’d be almost impossible to spot the difference. But on the other hand, there is a difference.
QuickDocs contracts are self-serviced, which means that non-legal units are able to request, draft, and sign contracts or agreements on their own.
QuickDocs has these advantages over typical agreements:
- Simple contracting – No requests, no extended legal reviews, and no convoluted approval cycles that steal time from both sales and legal professionals.
- Straightforward and unequivocal – Thanks to standardized language, you won’t have to worry that something was written wrong or ambiguously. Standardized language helps avoid the risk of different interpretations.
- Fast and easy – Just a few clicks and a contract is ready to be sent to the counterparty. If you embed a link on your website, your customers can initiate sales cycles on their end.
It’s important to mention that sometimes there’s a bit of confusion between document automation and self-service. They’re similar in that both reduce mistakes and allow lawyers to be more productive. But unlike automated contracts, QuickDocs contracts require zero involvement from legal, allowing Legal to focus on other tasks and further increase their productivity.
Characteristics of QuickDocs Contracts
QuickDocs contracts are designed to be prepared quickly. That’s why simple agreements like NDAs, DPAs, and similar ones are the perfect fit. Although typical contracts are widely used, they require a lot of time to prepare when done manually.
It’s high-volume, but low-value work. Worse yet is that it distracts lawyers from more complex endeavors. Ultimately, no one really wins: Lawyers are overloaded, business managers are in the dark, and clients are forced to wait. And the longer they wait, the higher the chance they’ll go somewhere else.
Here are some of the characteristics that help QuickDocs stand out from the crowd:
Public-facing templates
This feature means that clients can have quick and easy access to the document. For example, a sales manager can create a contract and send the link to the customer. Customers can then open and sign the agreement without creating a QuickDocs account. Templates can also be embedded directly on a company website, allowing clients to initiate the sales cycle. Here’s an example on how QuickDocs handles DPAs for Slack.
Standardized language
Various definitions or terms may be phrased differently by different people. However, clauses should be unambiguous and unified across all agreements. If they’re not, it may lead to misunderstandings, issues, and disputes over what exactly was meant, giving Legal a massive headache to resolve. That’s why QuickDocs contract information is unchangeable, except for data that always varies (i.e. names, dates, etc). Another benefit of standardized language is that it becomes easier to navigate text after contracts are signed.
Pre-approved templates
One of the main characteristics of QuickDocs contracts is that compliance is ensured by the template, and not the contract. Legal creates the template so that business units can use it once they need to create NDAs, sales agreements, or other standard documents. Consequently, contracts don’t need any additional legal review, and lawyers step in only to analyze the contract after it’s executed.
Conditional logic
Simply put, conditional logic means there are conditions that guide a document along a set process based on the input. For example, when a sales manager chooses their name, all their information is inserted automatically into the contract.
This set of features allows high-volume, low-value paperwork to be delegated to other departments without any risks. It helps establish easier and faster processes, and even though lawyers aren’t involved beyond creating templates, they never lose track or control of documents as they go straight to their database anyway.
How It Affects the Workflow
Self-service contracts are designed to streamline the contract workflow and optimize it for any person whose activity involves paperwork. Here’s how it can impact the contract workflow:
Accelerated contracting
Thanks to excluding legal reviews and approvals, it can dramatically decrease the time business units usually spend on legal matters. They can create contracts independently without overloading lawyers even further.
Eliminated bottlenecks
Approvals and reviews can take hours or even days. Unfortunately, this means Legal is a real bottleneck that’s causing delays. Standard language and pre-approved templates ensure compliance, which helps reduce Legal’s role and eliminates Legal as a bottleneck.
Swifter sales cycles
Paperwork consumes 18% of sales cycles. While salespeople deal with contracts and wait for legal approval, their customers also wait, opening up the possibility that the client will switch to another provider. When a client doesn’t have to wait for documents, not only can sales close more deals faster, but it will drastically improve customer experiences.
Cost efficiency
Although simple contracts don’t earn money, they still cost something. Moreover, they’re high-volume documents, and if lawyers have to review each one, it can get quite expensive (up to $450 for a single NDA).
Nevertheless, this work doesn’t really require significant involvement from legal professionals. When contracts are created by business units, deals are sealed quicker, and lawyers focus on high-value work. The end result is that the price tag of some agreements is cheaper.
Working with documents always used to be the lawyer’s area of responsibility. Yet, in many cases, automation allows lawyers to minimize their involvement in the process. This may improve efficiency, save costs, and increase revenue.
Wrapping Up
QuickDocs contracts won’t steal a lawyer’s job. But QuickDocs does make a lawyer’s workload much easier and more manageable by dealing with hundreds of routine, everyday documents in seemingly no time. It can help speed up the process of delivering simple contracts, improve customer onboarding experiences, and manage legal resources efficiently while giving more freedom to legal teams. If you want your contract drafting to go from 30 to 0 minutes, book a demo with our team to learn more.