By Matt Lhoumeau, CEO, Concord.
The robots aren’t coming for lawyers’ jobs. But something more interesting is happening: companies are realizing they don’t need lawyers for most contracts in the first place.
I’ve spent the last decade watching how small and mid-sized companies handle their contracts. What I’ve discovered might shock you: 65 percent of our 1,500+ customers don’t have a legal team at all. Not a single lawyer on staff.
This isn’t just my observation. A 2023 Thomson Reuters study found that 76 percent of legal departments are now outsourcing routine contract work, with many companies shifting contract ownership to operations and finance teams. The transformation is real.
And here’s the thing—these companies aren’t struggling. They’re thriving.
Contracts aren’t legal documents
Let’s be honest about what a contract really is. It’s not a legal document. It’s a business process.
Whether you buy something, sell something, or hire someone, there’s always a contract in the middle. It’s how you start a relationship. The legal aspect is just one small part.
This isn’t new. What’s changing is that companies are finally acting on this reality.
When we started Concord, contracts were “legal’s problem.” That was the default assumption. But over the past five years, we’ve watched a massive shift. CFOs and COOs are taking ownership of contracts, treating them as operational tools rather than legal handcuffs.
This trend is backed by data. KPMG’s 2023 Contract Management Survey found that responsibility for contract management has shifted dramatically, with finance and operations now controlling the contract function in 57 percent of organizations—up from just 35 percent five years ago.
Why? Because it makes sense. CFOs manage how money moves in and out of a company. Contracts govern those movements. The connection is obvious once you stop viewing contracts through a purely legal lens.
You’re not negotiating as much as you think
Here’s another reality check: more than 90 percent of the contracts signed on our platform have zero negotiation. They’re just getting signed.
Think about your own contracts:
HR documents are templatized
Your customer contracts are probably templatized
And when you sign up with a vendor? You’re using their template
If you’re not Walmart negotiating with Procter & Gamble, you probably don’t have the leverage to change much anyway. So why waste time pretending?
This matches World Commerce & Contracting research showing that for most companies, only 10 percent of contracts undergo significant negotiation. For the rest, legal review adds time without adding value.
Smart companies understand this. They know which battles are worth fighting. For routine agreements, they’re increasingly skipping the legal review altogether.
AI isn’t causing this shift—it’s accelerating it
The headlines love to claim AI will replace lawyers. That’s missing the point entirely.
AI isn’t creating this trend—it’s accelerating a change that was already happening.
Contract management software with AI capabilities gives everyone access to legal knowledge they didn’t have before. You can put your contract into ChatGPT or specialized tools like Concord AI and get an instant first review to understand if there’s a problem—a missing clause, poor wording, or inconsistencies.
This first-level analysis used to require a lawyer. Now, anyone can do it.
Even the American Bar Association acknowledges that AI tools are already performing first-pass contract reviews with over 90 percent accuracy for standard agreements. We’re not talking future technology—this is happening right now.
What we’re seeing is democratization of legal knowledge, not replacement of lawyers. The result? Legal teams can focus on truly complex matters where their expertise adds genuine value.
The future of contracts isn’t what you think
If we take a step back and ask what contracts would look like if we invented them today, we’d create something radically different from the documents we use now.
Current contracts are extremely inefficient. They’re all different. Critical information is buried in the middle of 15 clauses. Important dates are scattered throughout dozens of pages.
The World Economic Forum estimates that inefficient contracts cost the global economy over $2 trillion annually. This isn’t just a legal problem—it’s a massive economic drag.
In 10 years, AI will help transform contracts into something more like term sheets—simple tables showing exactly what the agreement means. You’ll immediately know where to look whether it’s a customer contract or vendor agreement.
Long term, I believe we’re heading toward smart contracts—not necessarily blockchain-based ones, but agreements where computers negotiate directly with each other based on parameters set by humans. This isn’t science fiction. It’s the logical endpoint of the trends we’re already seeing.
What this means for SMBs and mid-market companies
If you run a company with fewer than 500 employees, the writing is on the wall: by 2035, you probably won’t need any legal people involved in your routine contracts.
This isn’t speculation. It’s already happening.
Last week, I met with a 300-person construction company in Texas that’s been around for 70 years. They have no legal team anymore. They’ve outsourced everything, using contract analytics software to manage their agreements instead.
According to McKinsey research, this pattern is accelerating. Their analysis shows that by 2030, approximately 23 percent of current legal work will be fully automated, with another 30 percent significantly augmented by technology—numbers that are even higher for routine contract tasks.
For companies that do maintain legal teams, their role is evolving dramatically. Instead of reviewing the fifteenth revision of a standard agreement, they’re focusing on strategy and high-stakes matters where their expertise truly matters.
The reality of contract management today
Need to understand exactly how this shift works in practice? Consider these numbers:
90% of NDAs and vendor agreements now pass without a single edit
40% of companies are outsourcing routine legal tasks
CFOs, not Legal, increasingly own contract processes
MIT Sloan Management Review recently highlighted how this transition is already visible at Fortune 500 companies, with legal departments shifting to “business enablement” roles rather than contract reviewers. If the giants are making this move, the middle market is sure to follow.
The winners in this new landscape will be companies that stop treating contracts like it’s 1990 and start using them as strategic business assets.
For legal professionals, the message is clear: evolve or become irrelevant for most everyday contract work. The highest value won’t be in reviewing standard agreements—it will be in strategic guidance and complex negotiations.
Less is more
I learned this lesson the hard way.
Five years ago, I was the person pushing for “just 10 more lines of code” when building our platform. Now I see what we pay for that approach. Technical debt is real, and it’s the same with contracts.
The future belongs to simplicity. When it comes to contracts, less is more.
That’s why at Concord, we’re building contract lifecycle management software that puts agreements where they belong: at the heart of your operations, not buried in legal’s inbox.
The question isn’t whether this transformation will happen. It’s whether you’ll be ahead of the curve or playing catch-up.
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About the Author: Matt Lhoumeau is the co-founder and CEO of Concord, a contract management platform used by over 1,500 SMB and mid-market companies worldwide. Before moving to the US, Matt worked alongside iconic leaders like former French President Nicholas Sarkozy and founded his first company at age 17.
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[ This is a sponsored thought leadership article by Concord for Artificial Lawyer. ]
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