Last week I spoke to a client who runs 300 construction companies. They have been around for over 70 years, operating in 12 cities and manage multi-million dollar contracts each year.
Do you know what they don't have? In-house legal team.
They fired them two years ago. However, they maintain full SOC2 compliance and an improved audit trail compared to before.
Please listen to me before closing this article. This is not a reckless startup. It is the construction of Yates. It's a company that saved $15,000 a month after eliminating the legal department. They handle contracts faster, have fewer errors, and their boards love improving visibility into contract obligations.
They are not brave. They're just early.
Mathematics that your board should look at
Here's what all CFOs know, but there's nothing they don't say it out loud. You pay your lawyer between $300 and $500 an hour to see a contract that never changes. Meanwhile, the cash conversion cycle suffers as the transaction is legally sitting for two weeks.
Think about the last 100 vendor contracts. How many people have actually been negotiated? How many people were signed? Honestly, it's a 90% rubber stamp.
That's not legal work. It is the most expensive management feature in your company.
I learned this firsthand in 2009 when I spent six months manually reviewing vendor contracts at a 5 billion euro telco. Build a spreadsheet with 52 columns. Email word documents to hundreds of people. revelation? Most were the same templates. While our working capital was frozen in contract purgatory, we had a great legal heart to do glorious data entry.
Questions that competitors have already asked
Does Salesforce really sue you for violating your subscription terms? Does AWS take you to court via standard service agreements?
Competitors understood this. A contract is not a legal document. They are operational workflows. They determine when your revenue recognition is, your payment terms and your renewal revenue. While your competition processes them in hours, you choose to lose treating them like sacred legal texts.
Transformation is hidden in the gaze of the eyes
Today, AI reviews standard contracts in 26 seconds, which are more accurate than junior lawyers. It catches missing payment terms, flags unusual clauses, and maintains a full audit trail. More importantly, we recognize the distinction between contracts that require human expertise and those that do not.
Your NDAS? Template. Your vendor contract? Template. What are your customer's requirements? Template.
AI handles 90% that is not negotiated. Your lawyer focuses on 10% actually protecting your corporate value if you hold any: M&A, complex partnerships, intellectual property disputes.
No one shares the playbook
Here's exactly what Yates and other advanced CFOs have done:
First, they audited which contracts were negotiated and engraved with rubber. The results shocked their boards. Less than 8% saw changes.
Second, they implemented AI reviews using stronger compliance controls than the legal teams they have maintained. All contracts are recorded, all obligations are tracked, and all risks are automatically flagged.
Third, they maintained external advice for complex tasks. It requires actual legal expertise and strategic thinking.
Fourth, they gave contract ownership to finance and operations. This is a team that really cares about the impact of cash flow and optimization of updates.
result? Fastest revenue recognition, improved days sales released unpaid capital for growth initiatives rather than legitimate overhead.
Your competition is already moving
One software company we work with went from the full legal department to a single paralegal. The contract processing fell from two weeks to 36 hours. Their revenue speed increased 23% from faster contract execution.
They didn't announce it. While competitors still shuttle paper between departments, they quietly transformed and lost deals with faster moving rivals.
In three years, reviewing regular contracts with an attorney seems as old-fashioned as requiring physical signatures. Today's CFOs don't have the largest legal department. They are those who have realized that legal reviews are merely pattern matching. And the machine makes it even better.
It is a fear that is decorated as governance.
What happens if I stop reviewing a contract that never changes? You accelerate your revenue, relocate millions of legal expenditures into growth initiatives, and wonder why your peers don't understand this yet.
The question is not whether to change legal practices. Whether to explain to the board why competitors are doubling their speeds, or to explain to the board.
