For many in corporate legal, the principal tool for managing in-flight contracts — those in the process of negotiation — is Outlook, and the back-and-forth of emails and redlines serves as the primary notification of what needs to be done next.

Today, during its State of Digital Contracting event, the contract management company Ironclad unveiled enhancements to its product that are designed to help corporate legal professionals better track, act on and analyze these in-flight contracts.

Among these new features is turn tracking, which, as the name suggests, shows whose turn it is to act next in the negotiation process. This can be particularly helpful for legal teams that are negotiating and redlining multiple contracts at a time, indicating which are in need of their attention and which are awaiting the counterparty.

Ironclad says that this turn tracking feature can monitor behavior to anticipate a turn change as it happens, eliminating some of the manual back-and-forth that occurs and thereby speeding deal cycle times and alleviating negotiation bottlenecks. It also shows the full history of the back-and-forth between the parties.

Also introduced today is Ironclad Insights, a tool to provide visual insights into the entirety of a company’s in-flight contracts, providing information such as how long it is taking to execute agreements and whether work is being evenly distributed across a team.

Finally, Ironclad has updated its dashboard with a new look and new functionality. The dashboard shows all a company’s contracts, but the new functionality allows users to create custom views to personalize the specific set of in-flight agreements that are most important to them. It also now shows the turn tracking and turn histories described above.

 

Photo of Bob Ambrogi Bob Ambrogi

Bob is a lawyer, veteran legal journalist, and award-winning blogger and podcaster. In 2011, he was named to the inaugural Fastcase 50, honoring “the law’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries and leaders.” Earlier in his career, he was editor-in-chief of several legal publications, including The National Law Journal, and editorial director of ALM’s Litigation Services Division.