Culture is definitely part of the problem, and I completely agree that tech alone can't solve it. I also think it's critical to change the incentives that lawyers are responding to.
I've spoken with lots of lawyers in procurement at large companies. They're typically perceived as a cost center, and they often have to deal with lots of people from the rest of the business complaining that the contracts need to be reviewed/approved faster.
If they are processing thousands of vendor contracts per year, think about how much faster they can be if most/all of those contracts are on their in-house template, rather than a different template for each vendor.
But if lots of their vendors are using a standard contract, then there isn't the same cost in terms of time for using it.
All that said, this is going to be hard, and we're not expecting everyone to change overnight. We have, however, been encouraged to see examples of large companies signing the standard contracts, and we're grateful to have attorneys from big companies like Thompson Reuters and Salesforce on our committee.
I've spoken with lots of lawyers in procurement at large companies. They're typically perceived as a cost center, and they often have to deal with lots of people from the rest of the business complaining that the contracts need to be reviewed/approved faster.
If they are processing thousands of vendor contracts per year, think about how much faster they can be if most/all of those contracts are on their in-house template, rather than a different template for each vendor.
But if lots of their vendors are using a standard contract, then there isn't the same cost in terms of time for using it.
All that said, this is going to be hard, and we're not expecting everyone to change overnight. We have, however, been encouraged to see examples of large companies signing the standard contracts, and we're grateful to have attorneys from big companies like Thompson Reuters and Salesforce on our committee.