Reducing deal times by 50-80% through contract design.

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

0:00Welcome to another episode of Contract Heroes, the show where our guests, and sometimes us, provide best practice recommendations on all things related to contract management. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, everyone. My name is Marc Doucette. I have my co-host, as always, Pepe with me. And welcome to the first episode of Contract Heroes, where we're not the heroes, uh, our guests are. Uh, today we have an exciting one for you. Uh, Dennis Potacum is with us. And, uh, w- what we're gonna be talking about today is, uh, contract redesign, how Dennis has, uh, faced some of these challenges over the past year, how COVID has affected, uh, contract redesign and contract management in general, and, uh, some of the, uh, tactics on how Dennis recommends we move forward from here, um, around, uh, as always, contract management, contract redesign, and, uh, how legal departments can get a better understanding, uh, of what to expect over the next coming months. Uh, so without further ado, I'd like to introduce Dennis. He's going to give you a quick background on some of his experience, and from there we'll be jumping into some of the talking points.

1:19Uh, so Dennis, great to have you here. Thanks for being with us. Uh, would love to, uh, just get a better understanding of, of your background and, uh, we'll go from there. Sure. Hi. Hi, Marc, and hi, Pepe, and greetings, uh, to, to the audience. Um, so I'm Dennis. Uh, I'm a legal consultant, an independent legal consultant. I'm also, uh, the head of innovation at Lex Solutions, which is a London, uh, consultancy, legal consultancy. Um, and finally, I'm also the founder and CEO of Mojoto, which is a contract design and automation startup. Um, now what I'm really in the business of doing in all of these, uh, roles is making complex legal stuff simpler. And in particular, I'm all about making contracts work better. Uh, and, and the way I do this is through contract design.

2:11Um, and I'll tell you, well, you know, we'll, I'll tell you a bit more about what it means, uh, during this conversation, but essentially it's about transforming contracts from, you know, like archaic, dysfunctional legal things that nobody understands that create huge bottlenecks a- and to turn them into something different. So to turn them into useful business tools for, for building relationships. Um, and I help companies with that journey in all those, uh, three, uh, roles that I've described. Fantastic. Thanks, Dennis. And Pepe, do you want to give, uh, the folks just an, an overview of a couple of the topics that we'll be discussing today? Of course. Yeah. So we would like to talk a little bit on what have changed since we talk in our last time, which was one year ago. One year ago, when we talk with Dennis, we have no idea that all this COVID mess was going to happen. And I would like to know, and just like a quick, uh, quick thing, I would say that there's a lot of work here because I think that's like the most common thing that almost all the legal document, it's complex.

3:22It's complex. They have like, uh, huge paragraphs. But, uh, I would like to ask you, Dennis, like, what do you think have changed since the last time we, we spoke? And, and, and how have you seen the market have, have turned now, uh, with all these new, uh, measures imposed by the government with all this COVID thing? Yeah. I mean, look, when, when we last spoke, I'm, I think nowhere in our craziest imagination would we sort of thought that we are, you know, what was happened in the last year and where we are right now. It's, uh, it's just nuts, isn't it? Um- We had no idea. But it's also amazing how, how quickly you sort of start getting used to it and how it's, uh, it's, it's kind of normalized. I, I, I find that so fascinating. Uh, but look, I think, you know, after we've spoken last spring when, um, uh, this, this, you know, COVID crisis kicked off, um, yeah, everything just from a kind of business perspective and sort of companies looking at efficiency and contracts and all that, everything just froze.

4:29Um, and everyone in, went into survival mode. At least that, that's what I saw. Uh, and companies scrambled to manage the crisis, manage their supply chains, and really to learn how to work remotely. Um, and at the same time, I, businesses have woken up to the need to digitize, right? Um, at least, you know, even more so than before because it's such an essential part of making things work when everyone's working remotely, right? I mean, you know, you can't get physical signatures. You need e-signatures now, right? Right. Suddenly everyone scrambled and said, "Right. Um, after years of messing around and thinking about it and never doing anything, heck, we're gonna get e-signature." Um, so that's just a, you know, a simple example of, of, of what, what's kind of happened. Um, and, um, you know, that's, that's really created, you know, renewed interest in contract automation. Um, and, you know, contract automation in particular is repeatedly indicated as, uh, as a top process improvement priority for legal teams.

5:31At least that, that's what I've s- what I've seen, um, in, in practice and what I hear and, and, and read about. Would love to know if you if, if, if, if you've seen the same thing. Um, and you know, and contract design is something a little bit different and it sort of started to emerge from the, the, the niche, and let's talk about it. I want to define it, but I guess, you know, have you seen the same thing, uh, as I described on the contract? You know, people are froze, but now there's this kind of extra renewed interest. Yeah. Yeah, Dennis. I think that Pepe and I are, are definitely in the same boat with you there. You know, we had a, a number of opportunities that, that we were working at the beginning of the year and, and once COVID hit, you know, everything was put on, on hold. Um, we're, we're definitely seeing a spike now. Those companies are coming back to work with us. They're, they're interested. They want to learn more, and they're, and they're ready to move forward.

6:25Uh, with everybody working remote now, it's, it's difficult to get, um, organizations to flow properly in the contracting process. No longer can you just walk down the hallway and, and tap somebody on the shoulder to get them to sign a document. Uh, you know, you really need to, to have the ability to, uh, send those documents in a workflow, um, not let it get buried in an inbox and, and make sure that, uh, everybody in that process knows where the contracts are, uh, at each stage so that they can stay on top of things. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, yeah, it's always important for, for me to get a sort of, uh... You know, to keep getting these r- uh, you know, reality checks because what I see with my clients, is that the same or different to what others see with other clients, uh, in other industries? But, yeah, I think you've confirmed that that's, that that's the picture. Um, but the... You know, so, so there is that interest, um, in, in automation. And I think especially the larger, richer companies are, are really sort of moving fast in it. I think perhaps some of the less rich companies, and those who perhaps are more affected are, are, are still kind of frozen or moving very slowly. But the, but the thing, as I say, that's, that's really interesting is around kind of the, what I call the other part of contract improvement, right? The non-tech part.

7:38Um, and I call that the design part. All right. So, and, and, and here I'm just gonna sort of w- do a bit of a segue and, and try to sort of define what, what we mean by contract design. Right? I've mentioned it, and, uh, I, a- and I think it sort of has this, as I say, it's, it's the, it's the other, it's the other side of the coin of automation. Is the way I look at it. Yeah. Exactly. Um, but basically, uh, so, so the way I look at it is that contract design is all about applying design thinking to contracts. So what is design thinking? Uh, well, design thinking is a user-centric process which basically attempts to understand users and designs solutions e- expressly around user needs. That's probably at a high level way of, uh, of looking at it. And, and applied to contracts, this means making contracts easier to use, easier to understand, especially for non-lawyers. And that can mean a whole bunch of things.

8:39I mean, it could mean pictures, so introducing icons or diagrams or other visuals to make, uh, make things clearer, um, and simpler and easier to understand in- instead of like a wall of text. But of course, contract design goes far beyond that, um, because there are many other techniques that can be used to improve the usability of contracts for end users. So for example, plain language, um, lean drafting to reduce word count, uh, structuring contracts in a way that sort of focuses more on business users rather than legal users, so rather than lawyers. Um, and even looking at how contracts are communicated and the whole process around them and how they're negotiated. So contract design is not just about how a contract looks, right? It's, it's, it's wider than that. And, and, and, and contract design is all about, um, making it clearer and simpler for the business. And if it's clearer and simpler, then it's also quicker and more efficient, costs less and builds more trust.

9:38So I believe that the design is a, is a, is a, is a very m- important part together with tech about, you know, to, to get these efficiencies, um, and speed in the contracting process. Exactly. And I would like to jump in here and to explain why this is so important in order to implement a contract automation project. Because if you don't have a w- uh, a proper contract design with all your contract templates, because we have to think about it, that most of the companies have standard terms of conditions for a different kind of, uh, commercial relationships they have with third parties, is that if you have a super complex contract, it will be also super complex to automate that. You have to make it simpler, not just because you want to understand it better.

10:30It will also will give you the opportunity to have shorter negotiations because it will be easier to understand when are the clauses applicable to each of the conditions. But also when you have the information, let's call it metadata, for each of the contract in a simpler way, it will be much easier in order to implement, uh, automatic document creation with this information. And, and, and once you have this first draft, because this is not the final version of the contract, it is just the first draft that then you will have to negotiate with your, with your counterparty, I think it will be so much easier to understand what are, like, the main commercial terms. And then you can go, uh, ahead and, and, and, and start to negotiate the terms a- and conditions included inside each one of those clauses. So, uh, this was another of the questions, but I think it, this is, like, super important because I think, and I would like to know your opinion, Dennis, but I think contract design, it's much, uh, have, has more benefits if you do it before a contract automation implementation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Look, absolutely. And, and let me talk a bit, uh, to that.

11:48Um, but to sort of, to frame that discussion and to kind of really emphasize what you just said, Pepe, which I think is, is, is bang on. I- if you think about this c- kind of like a m- there's a magic triangle here, right? Um, and within that magic triangle, there's, there's efficiency, right? So how do you, how, how, how, how much do you spend on contracts, and how quickly do you get them done, right? That's, that's efficiency. Um, and then the other part of it is, is kind of visibility of data and risk, right? So do I understand what I've committed to? Can I find my contracts? Can I, you know, d- can I, can I, can I understand my risk, right? That, that's not... I mean, it's related to efficiency, but it's a whole different, um, thing. Uh, and then there's the third area, which, which I would label as relationships or trust, right? So how does your contract and contract process build relationships and build trust with the other side?

12:44So, you know, the kind of the, the efficient, you know, all those things need to come together if you want to make the most of your contracts, right? Um, and, and, and the, the, the beauty of it actually is, is that, um, it's not all down, down to tech. The- but the tech is, like, a massive enabler of all those three things, but it's not the only thing that you can and should do. So, yeah, to... on, on this question of, you know, should you do, you know, should you do this design before, and, you know, can you do it together with your tech project, and how does this sort of relate? Um, let me answer it this way. Um, you know, we all know that m- m- many digitization projects, and that includes contract automation, you know, fail to achieve their objectives or their full objectives, right? I mean, it's, it's, it's just that, you know, this is digitization projects. They're complex. They're difficult. Organizations are difficult, right? Um, and, um, I think also s- s- sometimes a, a, a project like that can, can solve a lot of things like efficiency, but it creates its own sort of complexities as well, so you need some additional resources to manage and everything like that.

13:54And that's the kind of the symptom, um, of digitization projects. Um, but I think the, the, the underlying cause of that symptom is kind of twofold. Um, one is not prioritizing simplicity, right? Um, and second is not doing the upfront work with content and templates. So I, I don't know how many projects you've seen, Pepe and Marc, where simplicity is expressly written up, uh, as a core objectives. I've hardly ever seen it. Yeah, because I mean, sometimes they think... I mean, most lawyers think that they have to build super complex clauses so they can protect the interest of their company or- Yeah... of their clients. So that's why... Well, I, I think that's the way of thinking, right, uh, of, of, of most lawyers because they think that's the best way to protect their interests. But- Mm. Mm...

14:52uh, but on the other side, if you do super complex contracts, it will just make things way more difficult to understand and to agree on. Yeah, I mean, ex- you, y- you know, it's a balancing exercise. And whatever... You know, you gotta get that balance right so that once you put it into the tech, right, um, you've got the right balance between risk and efficiency and speed and, and trust and understandability and user centricity and all those kind of things. Um, so, um, and so, so I think that, you know, um, contract design should be an integral part of any contract improvement or contract automation, um, uh, project. Ideally, like, my personal belief is that at least some of it should be done before, right? Yes. Because it can be done together, but that will need a lot of focus and discipline, right? You- Of course... you're just adding an extra layer, and you, and, and you gotta really kind of coordinate those two layers very precisely. So absolutely it can be done, but it's, it has certain additional, additional challenges.

15:59Um, I think leaving it till after i- is, is a risk, right? Because, you know, you might say, "Well, I'll do the automation, and then I'll look at my templates." But that's the wrong way around because if you're putting in your complex, you know, uh, templates that you haven't really looked at and improved into the automation, you're spending more time and effort in the automation project, um, to automate those contracts. You, you... a- and you're potentially putting in complexities and spending time and money that you don't actually need, right? Of course. And then also if you then try to kind of reverse some of that because you now see, okay, I can rationalize those, uh, my templates into, like, a smaller number or shorten them, you're then potentially reversing, having to reverse some of the automation logic you've put in and some of the processes, and that, again, is additional effort and cost. Exactly. So, you know- We-... there's room for improvement.

16:47There's always gonna be room for kind of, uh, improving, uh, your templates, um, and simplifying them and doing all that stuff afterwards, but you've got to do that kind of initial piece, um, uh, first. That, that's my, that's my belief and experience. Exactly. Right. So Dennis, just one more question here. Can you give us just, like, a small walkthrough on how you, uh, start a contract redesign project? Like, how... Just, just so our audience can know how, how does it work. Like, they contact you. "All right, Dennis." And so this is a company located in Tampa Bay. It's a cousin of Marc. And then these guys want to do a contract redesign because they're taking so much negotiating their, their, the, uh, their terms and condition with their, uh, in their, in their sales team. Mm. What's, like, the first steps, and can you give us just a small brief on how will be like, uh, the, the process for- Yeah, sure... these kind of projects? Sure.

17:47A- and, you know, I think I'll, I'll, I'll describe how I do it. I think, um, m- many professionals in my space who, who, who do this will do something very similar. Okay. Um, of course everyone will have different, different approaches and particular, uh, uh, methods. But, I mean, my, my particular... You know, f- first, if you think about this as a design thinking process, as I mentioned before, you've gotta understand, um, uh, users, right? But to understand the users and what they want, you've gotta understand objectives. Right? But to understand your objectives, you gotta do something before you can start talking about objectives, and that is to understand the big why. In other words, to understand the purpose. What is the purpose of what you're doing, right? And it's only when you understand the purpose, um, a- a- and you know, and, and, and the purpose might be different. You know, the purpose might be, well, I want to, um, um, make, you know, get my lawyers to do less, uh, day-to-day boring stuff, um, and, you know, do more strategic, right? Or the purpose might be purely efficiency.

18:48I, I want to do it faster and spend, uh, less money, right? Or the purpose might be, well, I want to empower the business to do more themselves, right? Because then they'll feel better, they'll engage better with contracts and that, and they can sort of negotiate it better with the other side, right? So, um, there's, there's a whole bunch of different big whys, and they could be a combination, but you've really gotta understand that. And it, and, and I mean, I really bang on about it and try to emphasize it so much because in my experience, although companies, um, and legal teams will always goo- go through some sort of objective setting exercise, in my experience they don't do it very well. Um, because they start with objectives, um, and objectives often look like, like requirements, right? So, so they think they're think- they think they're looking at objectives, but actually what they're really doing is requirements. And, and Dennis, why, why do you think that is?

19:44Why, why do you think that that's how most, you know, legal departments operate? I, I, I think, I, I think it's just a tendency. Um- They- And I think the other- Or they have no, no training on design thinking. Y- yeah, I mean, it's a, it's a bunch of things. And you know, and, and I don't wanna be too critical or disparaging of this, you know, there's, there's teams and businesses that have done great work around there, and they're smart people, but I think there's two things. One is that it does take a certain design thinking approach to, to do this well. And two, I think often it needs someone from outside the team, right? It doesn't have to be a consultant, right? But it has to... But you know, ideally you want someone to facilitate this because you gotta, you gotta, you, you need to be able to really step back, right? And the other thing is you gotta be, of course, um, cross-functional. So how do I achieve this? So any project, I start off with a, a workshop. So a whiteboard, an interactive workshop with a whiteboard. I personally like using Miro. That's a nice, um, uh, kind of whiteboarding tool.

20:42Um, and using various visual interactive exercises, you start going through that process. What is the why? What are the objectives that are under that why? Um, what, um... Let's then look at the problem, right? Because the objectives have to relate to the problem. So what is the problem that you're trying to solve, right? That tie into those objectives. Um, and what are the problems from the user's perspective, right? So the pers- perspective of the business, not just the legal team. Um, then you've gotta prioritize those ob- objectives, right? Because you're not, you may not be able to do everything all at once, so you've gotta somehow prioritize it. So maybe prioritize it based on kind of, uh, effort versus impact or some other kind of s- uh, um, framework, some other matrix where you can pr- start prioritizing it. Um, and when you prioritize that, then you gotta start sort of understanding, okay, so we know these are the top priorities, but what is the, you know, when are we gonna do this, right?

21:39And that allows you to st- to, to create the fra- you know, the beginnings of a project plan, right? And then you go and plan that out. And, and so, so I always do that through a se- through one or a series of, um, interactive workshops with the right stakeholders, uh, on board. So that means, you know, someone from legal, someone from business, um, or from the relevant functions. Um, maybe some of the other functions like finance or HR or IT, depending, de- depending on the context. And really sort of really drill down to that because obviously everything else that you do in this project, everything, um, the design part, the automation part, whatever, all of that stems from getting those, that initial exercise right. And if you don't get that right, and it's not clear, and it's not fully aligned, well then you g- you're gonna get sort of, uh, stuck, um, uh, later on in, i- in the process, or fail to achieve, um, all the, all the objectives or fail to make everyone happy. Um, so it sounds really obvious. I, I mean it, I... But, but as I say, in my experience, often when I do this, companies will say, "Yes, we've done this." And I say, "Well, let's run through this."

22:44And it becomes very clear immediately that there isn't an aligned and clear understanding on those things like the big why and the, and the big purpose and the, and the top objectives. Mm-hmm. Um, so that's really, that's the first kind of exercise. And once, once you, once you've done that, then you've, you can start sort of designing the solution. Um, and you know, with designing the solution, again, there's various techniques. You can use kind of like a sprint type, uh, technique where you sort of prototype, um, the solutions to meet, uh, a, you know, a specific problem or a set of problems. You get, you, you re-loop it, you, you, you kind of, you test it, and et cetera, and then you sort of, uh, build, build a solution once you've designed and prototyped it. Um, I mean if, if, if, um, what I can also just, um, you know, there are s- it sounds very complex, right? I mean, but one of the things I wanna emphasize is that, so you do have to do that initial bit right. But I don't believe that you need to organize a massive, huge, cross-functional, multi-month project to start getting some things right and to start getting the low-hanging fruit, right?

23:45Um, and you know, there is, there is a menu of tried and tested techniques, um, that you can apply to improve your contracts. Um, and I'll give you a couple examples. But if you, if you go through that initial process, it'll be v- it should become very clear which of those techniques you can start applying and, and prioritize, and you can get working really quickly and start getting lower, lower-hanging fruit. So just as a kind of example, you know, um, depending on the problem, maybe the, the, the issue that you've got is language. Your language is too complex and archaic In, in, in the contracts and let's simplify the language. So plain language, um, is one of the techniques. Um, or maybe it's struct- it's structure, right? Maybe you need, um, you know, you've got quite a complex agreement and there are some clause, and depending on the deal, some clauses or schedules or whatever get put in and some, and, and or need to be taken out, right? So it gets very fiddly to, um, uh, to, to put, you know, to work with that.

24:41And, you know, people have to go into the document and do lots of cut- cut, you know, deleting and filling in, and it just gets really problematic, right? Takes a lot of time. Mm-hmm. Business can't do it on their own, always need lawyer support. So if that's the problem, well, maybe you need like a more modular contract, right? So a contract that consists of multiple modules and you pick and choose which ones you need, depending on the deal, and you don't have to fiddle around with the content. You just choose the modules, right? Or maybe the problem is that no one understands your contract because most of the contract is just legalese and risks type stuff, right? It's focusing on risk. Well, then in that case, the solution might be to say, "Well, look, what are the key as- you know, what are the key commercials?" And put them at the front of the contract, right? Um, so summarize them at the front of the contract so business can start working with that and negotiate on that basis and understand what the contract says. So it's a kind of business first, kind of cl- clarity approach, and that's a, and that's a kind of a co- a, you know, that's another contract design, uh, technique.

25:38So I mean, those are some examples of the kind of solutions that you can start using. Um, and of course it takes a bit of time and effort, um, to get those up. But, but you know, you, you can start doing those at a, a kind of very early stage of your project. You know, you, it does not necessarily take months and months to do something like this. Okay. No, that's, that's, and that's great, you know? And, and I think a couple of the things we've covered here is, you know, what, what are these types of issues? How to, how to understand if this is something that, you know, your company needs to work on, how to go about starting this process. Things that, things that you can implement to, to help. Um, but Dennis, one of the things that we didn't really touch on is, you know, okay, let's say that a legal team, you know, they understand that this needs to be done. They, they need to go back in and they need to redesign their contracts. How, how do, how do organizations that you've worked with, once they understand that there is an issue here, how are they going to management and, and getting budget for a project like this? Yeah, I mean, that, that, that is quite challenging.

26:33Um, that's one of the reasons why I find, uh, companies are not moving forward with this is, is, is budgetary constraints, or more importantly, it's not that they don't have the money, it's that they have to, uh, uh, align with other functions, right, to get that money and agree it. Um, and they, and the, and there's also, uh, sometimes a, you know, uh, someone who holds the, the, the purse, right? Who needs, uh, our proof of ROI. Mm-hmm. Exactly. So needs to show that there's a return of it, of investment. And the return of investment is, is, is quite tricky. I mean, you, you know, it's tricky with, uh, automation products. I know you guys have some great models for this. Um, it's trickier I think with design because it's less, how, how do you say it? It's been, it's just been done less than automation. Um, and it's just by definition a little bit less, uh, kind of precise. It's a bit more fuzzy. So, um, but, but, but it can, but it can be done.

27:29I mean, what, what, you know, and, and, um, one of the challenges of course with, with proving ROI in these projects is that companies don't have prior data, right? So they don't have data of, well, how long does a contract take? And which, what are the different components of the contract? And, um, you know, what are the bits that are holding it up, right? What's creating the bottleneck? Um, but, uh, so, so that makes it, uh, a little bit more challenging to, to, to get the data and, and prove the ROI. Um, so there's, there's two ways in, but, but, but it is doable and there's two ways in which, um, uh, uh, you can do it, um, without necessarily doing a huge project and buying a, you know, an AI engine that will analyze your portfolio and try to extract data. Um, there, there, there are simpler ways of doing it.

28:17Um, the first way, um, and this is my sort of kind of usual go-to technique, is that you, you get the right people in the room, so the right stakeholders who are involved. So the lawyers, the business, maybe finance, uh, maybe procurement, and you go and you ask the right, you, you ask them questions. So let's take some typical contracts. How long do they take? And the lawyers will say, "Uh, it takes a few days," and the business will say, "It takes months." So they all have different pers- per- per- perspectives. But you can get, but you know, they, they work with this so that you can, you can start getting some soft, what I call soft data, um, right? And you can start splitting up the different parts of the process and understand, well, how long does the drafting, well, how long does the intake take? How long does the drafting take? How long does the, um, you know, internal alignment take? How long does the legal review take every time, right? And if you start breaking it up into these, uh, sort of component parts, you can then understand, well, what is really taking up the, the, the, the time and effort and what is creating the delay, right?

29:14Because it might be that legal is really, really busy. It takes them half an hour to review a query from, from procurement, right? But because they're so busy, it takes them a month to turn it around. Um, so you can start, I believe that a, a lot, most of the time, you know, these are sen- people who are living this day to day, they will be, be able to give you sufficient soft data, right? If you find that, um, uh, uh, a- a- and, and once you've got that soft data, you can then start es- seeing, well, we c- you know, how the different things that you can do can improve it. So you can start estimating, um, how much, uh, you think, how much time you can save, and then you can test that going forward. Um, if you don't have, if, if you're not comfortable with that or you want something a bit more precise, or if the, you know, your finance director says, "No, no, no, I need real hard data," then, then there is something that you can do there as well. And that is simply just to get y- you know, take a, take a, a period of time, maybe a few weeks, um, where you go through a, a measurement process, right? And that, and that, and you can do that simply.

30:13You just ask people to, um, record- Uh, it doesn't have to be sort of, you don't have to use software, you know, you don't have to use anything complex. You can record it in a spreadsheet or, um, or, you know, in some other sort of simple way. Just record different stages of the process and how long it takes, you know, how many contracts people are receiving, how many queries. So you just, uh, it's a bit of an effort. Um, you know, people hate this sort of stuff, and it's quite difficult to, to, to, to kind of remember to do it on a day-to-day basis. But you don't, it doesn't have to be a massive exercise. But if you can collect some data like that, then you can start validating the anecdo- the, you know, the soft anecdotal data. Um, and again, then you can sort of, um, uh, uh, you know, through a combination of, uh, e- e- experience and sort of some initial, uh, understanding of what solutions you could bring in, um, you can start estimating. And here, you know, getting some external advice, whether it's, uh, you know, uh, people like you who've implemented software or consultants like me who've done this design stuff, um, you know, or, or you, you can start, um, if you get s- you can get some advice that where, you know, people, people like us are able to estimate, you know, roughly, um, and with different levels of precision.

31:19Maybe you can, you guys can probably do it more precisely than I can. But, you know, you can start estimating what, how mu- how much can you, do you think you can sort of save here? How much e- you know, cost can you reduce? Um, that's, um, that, I, you know, I hope that's helpful. But that's, that's the, the way I would think about sort of ROI exercises. That's perfect. So Dennis, and have you seen that there are more project managers inside, in the legal teams or working with the, with the legal teams? Because for, for what we have talked about so far is that a lot of this work is about project management, right? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. It's like how you can, uh, be, how, how you can monitor all this information and, and have it clear, right? Have, have clear, clear KPIs, have clear, um, uh, maybe not in a, in a contract automation tool, but you also need somebody that can record all that information on a s- on a spreadsheet.

32:18So have you seen this is, this is kind of a, of a trend, or this is something that have happened since quite some time? Well, I, I think in, in the last sort of year or two, uh, that's really, um, uh, I mean, I'd call it more than a trend. That, that, you know, that is how the smarter, uh, businesses and legal teams are starting to work, you know? They're realizing that a legal team does not just necessarily need to consist of lawyers, and those lawyers do not need to do everything, right? So bringing in kind of legal ops, legal operations professionals, um, is, um, i- is, i- is the smart, is a smart thing to do if you're a sort of bigger team. Uh, getting some kind of paralegal, uh, support who can do certain, um, certain activities like, uh, uh, triaging, let's say, of business queries. I mean, this is something that we successfully implemented quite a number of years ago at my old company.

33:10Um, we s- we set up a s- a sort of simple self-serve checklist that our procurement, uh, people could fill out and submit to legal, and we had a paralegal who was reviewing that, uh, triaging, answering. You know, we found that 80% of the queries could be answered by a paralegal, because usually they were really, really basic queries rather than legal. But it meant that we reduced the amount of, uh, time that the lawyers spent on day-to-day contract queries- Right... from about 30 to 40% to about 5%. Okay. Right? So, so, um, yeah, that's just an example. And I think the other thing I've seen is that those businesses who don't have the ability to bring in their own kind of non-lawyers, um, you know, the kind of paralegals or legal ops professionals, and who can't get enough resource from other functions to help out with that, will go to, let's say, an alternative legal service provider, um, and will say, "Okay, we, we need, we need some extra resource. We need some help. We need someone who can help with some of these, uh, activities."

34:13And there is a, you know, a wealth of, uh, uh, resources that are affordable and available now, um, uh, to, to, to help companies do those things. Okay. No, great, great. Yeah, we really appreciate that, Dennis. I think, um, we are actually coming up on time here, so we're, we're gonna be finishing up each episode with, uh, a single question and, and we're gonna be asking all of our guests this. So, uh, if you could give an organization one tip to make their life easier when working with contracts, what, what do you think that would be? Right. Uh, uh, I mean, for me, it's don't think about contracts as a process. Think about it as a system for building relationships, both internally and externally. So if you think about contracts as a human thing like that, that does encourage you to do several things. It encourages you to think about objectives and purposes before you think about requirements. It encourages you to think about simplicity, um, as opposed to complexity, and of course, it encourages you to think about user centricity as opposed to process centricity. Um, so I think at a very simple level, if you think about contracts as something, um, for the business rather than lawyers, something that's about building relationships, you will already do everything differently and you, and, and you, uh, and you'll win.

35:28Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, I, I think the, uh, the main takeaway of this lesson is just keep things simple. Um, hey, but, uh, Dennis, thanks for, thanks for, uh, sitting with us for a bit. You know, I, I know that the three of us could probably go on and on about this for, for hours, as we have in the past. Um, but, um, we're probably gonna go ahead and wrap up now. We just wanted to, uh, let you take an opportunity to, uh, tell people where they can find you, if they wanna connect, if they wanna learn more about Majoto. Uh, w- where can, uh, where can they, uh, get some more information? Sure. I think the, the simplest is, uh, on LinkedIn, so Dennis Potemkin, uh, on LinkedIn. Uh, I, I don't think there's a huge number of Dennis Potemkins on LinkedIn. Masses of them on Facebook, but not that many on LinkedIn. Um, so, so find me there, or you can find me through Majoto. Um, and maybe you can give readers, uh, s- uh, the, the links. Uh, on, on, so I publish, uh, through LinkedIn and on my, uh, uh, website blog, um, which is potemkin.legal.

36:27Uh, I publish a series, a contract series called Better Contract. Um, and that's, uh, that, that, that's, uh, you know... In those series, I give a kind of both high level, uh, overviews of some of the things I've talked about, but also some very, very specific practical examples about how do you actually do it. Uh, so I'd encourage you to, to, to find those and to follow me. Um, and your, and that's where you can also see clips of me skateboarding and talking about contracts, and I promise you, I'm the only lawyer on LinkedIn who does skateboarding plus contracts. Awesome. Awesome. That's amazing. Well, thank you, Dennis. Yeah, and we'll, we'll go ahead and link those in the description on the podcast. Uh, Dennis, thanks for, thanks for sitting with us today, and, and I'm sure we'll be chatting with you again in a, in a couple episodes, because I think our, our listeners just have a lot to learn from you. So, uh, we appreciate your time.