From Bottleneck to Business Driver, Legal Clears the Way

In this article we discuss:

• When Legal Is Bypassed, Governance Breaks Down

• Is Legal the Bottleneck?

• How Contract Intelligence Breaks the Cycle

Contracts aren’t just paperwork. They are strategic data assets, containing intelligence powering business-critical KPIs that boards and executives care about most—innovation, revenue, growth, profitability, and compliance. Yet the intelligence within contracts remains largely untapped, buried in contracts shared across drives, inboxes, CRM systems, ERP, Slack, and Teams.

Your legal department is uniquely positioned to unlock the intelligence inside contracts. As the 2025 Contract Intelligence Index (CII) Report reveals, Legal can maximize contract intelligence to enable cross-functional collaboration, expand agentic AI and CLM’s value, and accelerate business performance. But to be successful, Legal must capitalize on its untapped role in the contract process and change widespread perceptions as a prohibitive bottleneck. 

When Legal Is Bypassed, Governance Breaks Down

The CII Report reveals that disjointed communications and scattered storage create governance gaps, particularly during the contract approval processes. While the majority (85%) of legal respondents report their involvement in approving contracts, only two of every three (67%) enterprise employees say Legal is included. This disparity exposes a serious gap in contract governance and raises critical questions about Legal’s ubiquity in reviews and approvals.

• Are employees executing agreements without Legal’s oversight?

• Is Legal aware it’s excluded from key contract workflows?

• Are companies aware of the risk?

According to the CII Report, the situation is compounded by poor tracking. Nearly 90% of legal respondents believe contract terms are regularly overlooked. In fact, just one in four (25%) legal professionals and one in three (33%) enterprise employees say that they track contracts relevant to their work.

Is Legal the Bottleneck?

Why do employees fail to involve Legal in contract reviews and approvals? How can a legal team manage risk and liability for an entire business if it is only included 67% of the time?

Perhaps the answer stems from perceptions of Legal’s speed. When asked to identify the top issues in the contract lifecycle, more than two in five (41%) respondents believe contract processes are too slow. Legal respondents are part of this figure.

The number nearly doubles with departments like R&D and Engineering, in which four in five (79%) respondents acknowledge that contract delays slow innovation, team sprints, and product delivery. Sales, Operations, Finance, and HR share similar views of Legal’s sluggishness.

It’s a vicious cycle. Legal is seen as slow, so it’s excluded, creating more risk, which demands more legal intervention.

How Contract Intelligence Breaks the Cycle

Contract intelligence provides the structural fix. It fuels agentic AI-enabled contract lifecycle management (CLM) systems that do not just route contracts—they surface high-risk terms in real time, ensuring Legal is looped in before issues escalate. This is merely one example. Contract intelligence accelerates the entire contract lifecycle, keeping Legal engaged at the right moments. No longer a bottleneck, Legal becomes the business hero who enhances speed, clarity, and control.

When this happens, Legal becomes proactive, not reactive. Risk is governed, not guessed. Executives gain confidence knowing contracts have been reviewed with the right context.

AI does not replace Legal. It empowers Legal to move faster with greater intelligence. The rise of next-generation optical character recognition (OCR), generative AI, and agentic AI empowers Legal with modern guardrails to move fast without cutting corners. 

As the CII Report verifies, enterprises see Legal as the steward of risk. Their perception presents an opportunity for Legal to champion contract intelligence and use it to drive smarter, faster, and compliant businesses.

Download the Contract Intelligence Index (CII) Report to learn how Legal can take a more prominent leadership role within enterprises and harness contract intelligence to accelerate growth and reduce enterprise risk.