Crush Contracts' Game-Changing Approach to Contract Management with Roma Khan

Made with speech-to-text software, so a few words may be off.

0:00You're listening to the Contract Heroes Podcast, your one-stop shop for all things contract management. And now here are your hosts, Marc and Pepe. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Contract Heroes. Today joining us is the CEO of Crush Contracts, Roma Khan. During our conversation today, we're gonna be reviewing some of Roma's application functionality, such as Zoi, Global NDA, and ICE. And we'll also be discussing some best practices based on Roma's experience as a general counsel in a previous life. So without further ado, let's jump into the episode. Well, Roma, thanks so much for joining us. Uh, before we flip things over to Pepe, to give us an understanding of what we're gonna be discussing today, I was hoping you can give us a little bit more information on your background and how you came to be known as The Contracts Queen. So nice to be on this, you guys. I appreciate and I'm honored. I have a very simple story. I went to law school to be a prosecutor. It's post 9/11.

1:01I wanted to learn the law to protect myself and my family, and also put bad guys in jail. I graduated in 2009, and the economy was not what I expected, and I ended up taking a job as a contracts manager at a Fortune 500 company, Fortune 20 company. And I thought, well, you know, I'm not a sellout. I'm just gonna do this for a little bit and, you know, get health insurance and, um, and go from there. But as soon as I took the job, I loved it. I just was naturally good at business. I had a sort of a business background, but I didn't realize how much I liked it, and it was a high-tech company, and I'm, I'm a tech nerd. So I got in and I never looked back. From there, I eventually moved down in-house and eventually became a GC, and in that process, people would appreciate the work I've done, ca- started calling me The Contracts Queen. Eventually I started my own contracts tech company, contract solutions company. So overall I just tied in together and here I am, The Contracts Queen. I'm not the only contracts queen, but I am The Contracts Queen.

1:59That's awesome, Roma. And like I told you, I love your name. Like, Roma Khan is so powerful, so it's gonna be like a good headline for our episode when we publish it. I love it. And, uh- Thank you. Thank you... well, there's a lot of things that we wanna cover right now, and especially with all your background. Of course we wanna touch about the Global NDA, but one of the things that we want to talk about it, it's of course what were like the main issues you were, you faced during your time as a general counsel and some of the recommendation and of course adoption with CLM tools, because we are going to back to the basics with the- Yeah... Contract Heroes Podcast. So we love contracts here, contract nerds and contract geeks, because Contract Nerds, it's already a trademark. Yeah, it is. And she- Sorry about that, Neeta... yeah, awesome. Yeah, she does a good job of that. Sh- shout out. Yeah. Shout out to Neeta. Neeta, Neeta, yeah.

2:51And, uh, let's kick off with the Global NDA, and tell us a little bit about it and how you started with that pro- with that, uh, project. Sure. You know, actually I'm gonna summarize it very, uh, in a simple way. In my journey in becoming The Contracts Queen, I recognized that there was a need for contracts, hosted contract management solutions in corporate America. And so I started at the company, um, in 2017, and in that journey I recognized that there were several different areas where contracts needed help. So we came up with different products and services to solve contracts problems. Global NDA is one of the most recent products we launched in April. It's out of my personal pet peeve of the amount of useless mutual NDAs that are constantly being sent back and forth, that most of the times they're not being read. Because they're mutual, they don't get signed, they don't get stored. It's, it's stupid. It's nonsense. You have to create workflows in CLM just to sign an NDA, just to start a conversation. So I had enough of that and I built a global registry called Global NDA, where we, uh, sat down with several other attorneys and created a universally acceptable mutual NDA.

3:55And it's online now and people can just opt in and start talking to the active members. So instead of signing a mutual NDA 100 times a year, you just opt in once and then you start talking to the people in the registry. As, uh, Lucy Bassli calls it, it's like a pledge to do the right thing. It's like a network of NDAs. So we just join and we start talking and we stop executing, you know, redundant, useless NDAs. So that's Global NDA. That's awesome because I gotta tell you, like even any vertical you can imagine, like- Yeah... NDAs of course is the highest volume one. And it doesn't make any sense. Like when I talk to some general counsel, so legal teams, and then they are like, "Yeah, our procurement team always gotta send us the NDA so we can review it and approve it, and then we do some negotiation process." I was like- Yeah... "Why?" Like it's not even... They don't even have a contract. It's just like maybe they're gonna start a bidding process for a, you know, any kind of project.

4:54Just- You know what's a shameful part about an NDA is? It's a contract that says we promise not to steal information that is clearly marked confidential. If it's clearly marked confidential, then that's it. Why do you need a contract to then say we still won't? Like it's like the law exists not to steal, but we're still gonna sign a contract to say we're not gonna steal, but it's already there. My goal with Global NDA, yeah, we do charge a little bit right now because we need to sustain ourselves, but our hope is that there's global adoption and there is a GDPR style global NDA act where it's just general universal knowledge. These mutual NDA terms just become global regulation. So nobody has to sign them anymore. We just abide by them. And we're talking about, you know, simple mutual NDAs. The, the ones that you constantly see. I'm not talking about, you know, complex ones, the employment ones or the M&A ones. I, I'm just trying to reduce the, the redundant useless NDA. So that's Global NDA. But we also have other services as well as ICE, which is a contract management solution services, and Zoi, which is contracts management for SMBs. Again, my overall goal is to make law accessible and reduce contracts.

6:00So I may just continue to build more products and just put the solutions out there and whoever can use it, use it, you know. And that was gonna be my next question, right, is, is about Crush Contracts and, and some of the other, uh-... cool tools that, that you're building over there. So, I mean, I know that we touched on a little bit, you know, how you, how you got into this and how you started the, the organization- Yeah... but let's jump into, you know, talk about ICE and Zoe a little bit. How did you... Were those just other pain points that you saw out there while, while you were on the other side of the fence as a GC and, and decided- Correct... to continue to, to build out different types of tools? Yes, correct. I mean, I learned long time ago, don't come up with solutions and think that they're the best. L- you know, solve problems that exist, and solve problems that are active problems. So as I was in my journey of, you know, "Hey, I should build a software to solve this contracts problem," I recognized that more than the larger corporations, it's the midsize companies and the small businesses that needed instant contract help. So we built Zoe for SMBs, you know, small startups, and S- uh, midsize companies, just to sign contracts, store them, in a very simple way. It's not complicated. It's very simple. Get in, sign your contract.

7:06I created an algorithm to do, do a risk score. It's called Z-Score. So if you're a small business and you just needed to quickly understand is this risky, you can run it through the Z-Score and get your answer and move on. Now, if anything's more complex, then go to a lawyer. I'm a very pro-lawyer contracts tech CEO. But ICE was another solution we came up with 2017. I recognized that a lot of companies, a lot of GCs needed a little bit of help from time to time, but their only solution was to either do the work themselves and work 80 hours a week, or go out there and hire someone, either on a temp basis, and then still get them for 40 hours, badging, tagging, all the other extra costs that come with it, or just hire somebody full-time. And the solution was simple. I said, "You know, what if we just did remote services, not staffing, and it's fixed price. You just buy the number of hours, and whenever you need the help, just, you know, call us and we'll help you."

7:56And it was interesting at that time how everyone liked it except for the remote part, and it took me a whole year to try to convince people, like, remote is just remote. I mean, this is 2017. Why should anybody have to come in the office to do, you know, lawyers' work? And it was... it's just funny how, like, times have changed, and now everybody understands the remote work part. So, you know, I will say it's been good for business because people get it now, and they understand our services better. So yeah, everything that we build and will build is to solve a pain point on an existing problem or potentially a, an upcoming problem that the legal departments will see. Right. That, that was actually going to be, again- ... our next questions. Like, when, when, when you were working as a, as a general counselor right now, you told me some of the, some of the main issues about their contract management or the contract life cycle management, right? Because- That, yeah... it's a methodology. Sometimes people think it's just technology, but it's actually a methodology, right? So what do you think were, were like those main issues?

8:57What were like the blockers during that year that you tried to convince maybe any, any other commercial teams that this- Yeah... this was going to be useful, and how did you solve it? So, uh, before I started my company, I wanted to understand the full landscape of contracts and contract management, both from big companies and small companies. So I consulted quite a bit in different companies and learned what the type of, you know, industry and, and the size of the legal department and how they managed contracts. And some were very open to suggestions. Some didn't care. But consistently, I would go in, help with the contracts, organize their contracts repositories, and look at the system. I found, one, many of them had contract management software, but weren't using it. Two, there wasn't a consistent storage location for all the contracts, so if people were working and then leaving, a lot of contracts stayed on the hard drives of the laptops or in emails. That was very hard to get to those contracts. And three, and the most important, was there was a major lack of information between interdepartments.

9:58So legal and sales or legal or business teams did not understand what each other did and what the demands were, therefore there was a lack of trust. The first thing I would do at any time I s- consulted or when I was GC was to set up a meeting with the department heads and openly tell them, "I'm here to serve you. Tell me what your roles are, tell me what your expectations are, and tell me why do you need a contract sometimes done very quickly." Because sometimes their bonuses depend on it. Sometimes somebody's, you know, mortgage depends on it. So when they're anxious to get a contract signed, I want to understand why. And then on the other hand, I explain to them, "Now, here's why I would be objecting to certain things," right? And my overall process and ideology on contracts come from the core belief that contracts are not legal documents. They're business documents. They have to be lawful and legally in, legally binding, but that's with anything. You can start any business, and it has to be for a lawful purpose, right? It has to be for, you know, legally binding.

10:54So when you start understanding it as a business document, then the process then has to adapt to the business and the business individuals. So that's when we started working backwards and improving the process, improving the storage situation, and then creating playbooks that were easy to understand. So a lot of times legal departments will create instruction manuals that look like novels. They look like law school briefs. They have too many bullet points, and it's like, "Everything I can add to it, I will add." I work the other way around. I look at it as the mo- most, you know, simplest user in the company, and if they have to execute this contract, I want them to understand the process, I want them to understand the risk, and I want them to negotiate most of this on their own, so they come to legal for the last thing, to just final approval. And so that worked quite a bit, you know, education, empowerment, and then centralizing access to knowledge. Right. That's something that Lucy Bassli, again, likes to call it the legal review policy. Like- Mm-hmm...

11:54not everything has to go to legal, you know? Yeah. It's like you gotta know. But of course, there are some risks that you gotta take in. Of course, as lawyers, we are risk adverse. We don't like it. We know that most of the time... Well, not, not most of the time, because they're, they're, they're business guys- Yeah... right? And es- and especially like when, when you work with procurement, they don't wanna go in over their, their budget, because those are their, their bonuses, and there's a lot of, you know, incentives that, that work there. But it's very important to understand what are... Like you said, they are not legal documents, they're business documents. They want to close it because they want to get their raw materials in the- Right... into the factory or, or whatever. Yeah. Or if there's a sales team, they wanna close the deal, and if they can close it, the turnof- turnover time is reduced by 50%, then, well, you get 50% faster the income cash. So that's, that's the whole thing that- Right. Yeah... you gotta understand. And, and you know, we have to look at, when we look at the contract, the, the contract is the agreement, right?

12:57You've got an offer, acceptance, and consideration for it. Legal review is the shortest period of that contract's life cycle. There's this tendency to now think that contracts are legal documents, and the entire contract starts and ends in the legal department. It does not. It makes its way through legal to make sure that it is legally binding, and if something goes wrong, that they have rights in it, right? But other than that, it passes through legal and it moves on to execution, right? So then you have to fulfill that contract, and it's in everybody else's hands. Lawyers play a very small part in executing a contract. Most of the time, lawyers don't even become involved, uh, if it, a company's smaller, if it's an old school company and the CEO is pretty well-educated in the subject matter, they'll negotiate their own contracts. So understanding the business is at the core, understanding the purpose of the contract is at the core. When I first started, you know, I came from a world where even if you were a business lawyer, you really didn't know the business, you just acted like a lawyer. You're only stuck to the legal part of the contract.

13:55The world has evolved quite a bit. What I'm very impressed is with the, you know, with the new attitude in lawyers, with the new generation of lawyers, they are not as risk adverse, and they are thinking like business people because they're, you know, a GC, a solo lawyer department, you have to do everything. And you're sitting with the business owners and talking to them on how to increase revenue. You've now become part of the discussion, so you play a bigger part in that contract besides just looking at a clause and saying, "Is it legally binding or not?" So you're right, you know, a contract has different implications. If it's a vendor contract versus it's a sales contract, it's a supply chain contract, there are all these elements attached to it. So what happens is, I think when I would come in and I would look at somebody's contract, old storage, it's just one folder that says contracts, and then one says leases, and then it's, it's like a hodgepodge of folders with, you know, different labeling. And then sometimes a contract will be shared by HR, it will also be shared by finance, and if they don't have a procurement department, then everybody's hands are in that folder. So it's like a mess.

14:57And then people will rename files based on their need because they needed to find a contract, and then when legal goes in to look for a contract, then they can't find it. So there's all these, like, inconsistencies in, in naming the contract, where you're storing it, how does the, who has access to it. And these are things that most companies don't think about when they start off, right? They're just busy creating a company, growing the company, and they're focused on sales, and they don't think about all of this, you know, on the back end. And then eventually the company gets big enough, and they have so many contracts that this becomes a problem. And now everybody's implementing technology. So even though there is a basic under- core understanding of CLMs, right, like they store your contracts, but every CLM has its own way of structuring the contract hierarchy. So if you have no system at all, and everything is just kind of going whatever you want, then it will be very difficult to transform your contracts folder.

15:53It will be d- very difficult to train the people in the company to use that new technology. And it will be very difficult to then predict what type of contracts and, you know, volume and help you'll need with your contracts in the future. So organizing contracts is a big part of, you know, solving the contract process and being part of that business chain. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and, I mean, I think, you know, we talk about this a lot, but I mean, that's definitely phase one, right, is getting a handle on, on the contracts that you, your legacy contracts. And that doesn't mean, you know, all of your legacy contracts. You know, it, it's great to start with just the active ones, right? That's, that's where you, you really wanna focus. I think there's insights and, and stuff that might no longer be in rotation, but that's a great place to start. And I, you know, I think our next question was gonna be around the workflow around these documents, right? And, and we've already said, you've already said that legal only plays a part in these workflow processes.

16:44So I think my question is, you know, for an organization that's going out there and maybe reevaluating their processes or bringing in a piece of technology that they think is going to help them do these processes better, how should they go about making sure that the workflows that they have in place are, are the, the best way to do things in, in doing that internal audit of their processes? Frankly, at this point, hire an expert. Hire some- hire you, hire me. You know, like find people who do this on a daily basis and will do it in a qu- in a shorter amount of time. That's the best way of going about it. If you have high volume contracts and your in-house counsel is already working 50 hours a week, it's better to spend a little bit of money to bring an expert in who has seen so many of these, can immediately look at your workflow, and give you, audit your workflow, and give you feedback. If you don't have the budget for it and you can't, then plan out two hours every week or an hour a week to sit down and only focus on this specific project. And I'd start with, you know, creating flow charts.

17:47And if you don't know how to use an app, then sit down with a piece of paper and create your workflow first, and see if it makes sense. Is it logical, right? Then, you know, look at the end goal and see why do you have too many. You know, my goal is to do things in as, as fewer steps as possible. If you have too many layers, too many steps, too many approvals, too many hands in the pot, then that's when you start to recognize the problem. So visualize your workflow first, and then look at where the issues are. But more importantly, hire experts. You know, it's, it, we're not that ex- expensive. We save time, and more importantly, you know, as, uh, as you're getting ready to implement this new technology, you actually save a lot of time in the implementation part when you've already brought in someone to take a look at what you have. And most of these experts already know what the other CLM is like, so they can also save you time in connecting the dots at that time And h-how do you, you know, we're talking about this kind of this pre-implementation work and CLM readiness, whatever you wanna call it. How do you get buy-in from other members of the team that might say, "Oh, no, we've got this. We, we know how to do this internally," right? "We don't, we don't need help with mapping out our own processes.

18:53We, we work these processes every day." So, you know, if there's somebody on the team that is trying to run this project, they know they need help, but they can't get other buy-in from either, you know, stakeholders or, or some of their colleagues, how would you suggest they go about that? Well, you know, there's a few ways about it, right? See, I look at productivity, and I look at the money that's spent on the resource. So if you are a salary person, and you are paid a certain amount of money to do certain tasks, then is it worth it for the company to pay this much per hour for you to run this project? You know, I, I'm big on using what you have. If you have people in the company who are good project managers, for sure, you know, utilize them, and then bring people from other departments to help you with this project. So oftentimes, uh, you know, again, a good example would be independent contractor agreements, right? Somebody... If a company uses freelancers, the contract will go through legal, but HR has a hand in it because they're trying to figure out, is this person covered under workman's comp or not?

19:51So if you're trying to get a contract management tool and create a workflow just for independent contractors, bring somebody from HR, specifically the person who is responsible to then pulling up the contract and getting the workman's comp information in to see, does this flow work, right? So the way I've always done things in my company and, uh, and have empowered my department is, for any reason I'm not available, can someone else do the job? So training them to an extent, um, in doing what the, what you're supposed to do or what the functionality is helps. So yeah, bring those other individuals in, too. Sit down and look at all the time you've spent creating reports and, you know, and decks for other departments or for board presentations. So oftentimes, again, finance will come in and say, "Hey, I wanna know all the renewals, and I wanna know how many, you know, did we... or we weren't able to cancel because we didn't hit the time notice period." And so look at all the projects that you've done for finance, right, and then the amount of time you spent.

20:50And again, if finance could just do this themselves and do it very quickly, then why shouldn't they have access to this tool, right? So if you have help as a lawyer or as a contracts person, any department with their work on contracts, then bring those individuals in and show them the value of getting this preparedness and using the tool. Right. And let's say we got all the processes, right? We got the CLM readiness. You got all the processes. You brought all the, all the stakeholders. You do the implementation according to their needs. But now the next challenge is the adoption and the- Yeah... change management, which- Yeah... I think it's something that you gotta tackle from the beginning, from the point when you start bringing the stakeholders into the discussion. Any tip or re- or recommendation that you can give companies? I have a... This is where I have a lot of feedback on. So, you know- All right...

21:47one of the, like, the points that I noticed, right, when I used to help companies, and I still consult, is that the adoption and the abandonment of that technology because you... it just wasn't good enough, it wasn't easy enough, it wasn't explained well enough, and, and, and people just don't use it as much as they should have. The company's paying for a software for a solution, spend all this time implementing it, and it still doesn't get used. People are still emailing contracts or sending it through Slack instead of using the CLM. So it is a very big problem in the industry. A big bo- reason for that is the vendors overselling the product or not understanding the user's needs. So they have sold something that may be really great, but it doesn't fit the, the user's problems and their needs. So that's one big starting point. Two, as... I recommend that legal teams, and if, you know, not hiring an expert, to then sit down and sh- become, um, not an expert, but become very good at using the tool and then training the teams internally on this.

22:49And allow an open-door policy with the internal stakeholders and internal users to come to you if they have any questions. Oftentimes, you know, if somebody's in marketing, their job isn't to learn the CLM. Their job is to get marketing done. And if they have a vendor contract, they just wanna send it to you. There... What I found was most internal business people are very eager to help the contracts process. They come to the training calls. They listen to all the instructions. They forget the process often, but that's more of a generic opposite, uh, process that they forget, but they are very eager to support this tool. If the tool doesn't work all the time, if it has bugs, if it's not conducive to the company's process, then the... you know, it just doesn't get used as much. What I recommend, again, is creating these very user-friendly, uh, simple playbooks, instructions, like note cards, where you have one, two, three, and I like to limit everything to three steps. So, you know, how to submit a contract, one, two, three. How to approve a contract, one, two, three. Steps like that, and create them and put them somewhere where anyone can access them.

23:51So if somebody is, you know, submitting a contract and they forgot how to do it, they can just go to this guideline, use the one, two, three steps, and submit it. And two, designate a person in your legal department to answer questions on that technology. So you're general counsel. You may have another deputy counsel and a paralegal. Maybe assign the paralegal the responsibility to always answer the questions. Turn on a ticketing system. If somebody has a problem with the CLM, don't send it to the vendor. Try to resolve it internally because you understand the business better. And, you know, host the initial trainings, and then a month later say, "We're gonna do another round of training, you know, for anybody who wants to join and ask questions and share your problems with the software. Then we can take it back to the vendor." So have an internal project manager basically to run, maintain, and keep an eye on the, on the product. And then most of the CLMs have da- usage data on the back end. Ask the vendor to provide it if you can't access this directly, and see Which department is using it the most, which user is using it the most, and those who are not using it, then reach out to them and ask why they're not using it.

24:54What, what's their big, big issue with it? You make it sound so easy. It takes time, yeah. It's a- No... it, yeah, it's, I, I would say that even with the easiest of CLMs, it's a three to six-month implementation and another six months of getting familiarized and getting onboarded. So it's a 12-month commitment, just like with anything, right? Uh, with any big software. So going in with eyes wide open, knowing that it's gonna take a little bit of time. And being, if, if you're the, the department that wanted the software, whether it's accounting or legal, then you have to commit to it, and you have to be open to answering questions. And you cannot get frustrated when people come to you and say, "I'm trying to submit this contract and I'm, I'm running into issues." Yeah. You brought this tool upon them, so you have to then walk them through every single time. Yeah. Yeah, and I, I think the other thing that we're seeing more of now too is as this, the space matures and organizations maybe are going through their second iteration of a contract management application, that they're understanding that, hey, maybe we do need to outsource this admin functionality to- Yeah...

25:54to, to another organization. So I think that's becoming more prevalent. I think that's helping with user adoption and overall just satisfaction with whatever application the team does decide to move forward with. Right. I mean, we live in a, in a, in a world where, see, almost everything is app dependent, right? You can't get away with not doing things in an analog manual way for too long. So the users also understand whether I like it or not, I'm gonna have to use it at some point, so I might as well get on board. But just then make it easier for them to stay on board, right? Like, they can do, "I'm doing it, but I don't like it," it shouldn't be the answer. It's like, "I'm doing it and I don't mind it," is, is actually okay. You know, we're not looking for A plus. We're not even looking for B plus. As long as, you know, we get a B review and access to things, that should be good. Yeah. No, I, I think we, we totally agree, definitely. We're definitely on the same page, uh, Roma. Yes, we are. Yeah. This, this, this has been a fantastic conversation.

26:46Really, really appreciate you giving some, some actionable tips, I think, that, you know, people can actually use right away and, and have some takeaways to, to implement to, to help with wherever they are in their processes. Whether they're using, you know, manual methods, looking for a CLM tool, already using a CLM tool. So we really appreciate you joining us, and if folks wanna learn more about you or Crush Contracts, where's the, uh, the best place to, to connect? You can find me on LinkedIn. Just look up Contracts Queen. And you can go to crushcontracts.com. It's one word. Awesome. Well, thanks so much, Roma, and thanks everybody for listening to another episode of Contract Heroes. Thank you, guys. It was a pleasure talking to you. Same. Bye. Bye. This episode of the Contract Heroes is sponsored by Koho Consulting. Koho helps organizations of all shapes and sizes find, implement, and manage their chosen CLM tool. Whether your project is buy or sell side led, Koho can help you navigate the waters of the CLM space to make sure that you're getting a product that's going to fit like a glove for years to come.

27:50If you'd like to learn more about Koho, visit their website at C-O-H-O consulting.com.