Introduction


I’m going to tell you something that might shock you: 70 percent of companies don’t have in-house legal departments anymore. 

That’s what I’m seeing among our own customer base. I’ve been CEO of Concord for 10 years. I’ve been in the contract management space for 15 years. And I’ve never seen anything like the changes that are happening right now, with AI. 

But they’re changes I’ve been predicting for a long time. For the past decade, I’ve been saying, “Contracts are not legal documents. They’re business processes.” Most of them never get litigated in court. A full 90 percent of them never get negotiated or redlined at all. There’s no reason for lawyers to babysit them, when they could be putting their expertise to much better use. 

And now, in 2025, AI is finally making my prediction a reality. 


At most companies, CFOs are now the owners of contracts


Last month I was talking with a customer of ours; a large construction company with 300 employees and offices in 12 metro markets. They don’t have any lawyers in-house anymore. Their CFO and his team manage all the company’s agreements, with contract automation software. And this is increasingly typical. 

But it wasn’t always this way. Legal teams used to manage contracts manually. And I know all too well how painful this is. 

Back in 2009, I had what seemed like the dream assignment of a lifetime: The CEO of France’s second-largest telecom company tasked me with totaling up all our spend across all the company’s contracts, and renegotiating them for better terms. 

I spent the next six months digging through filing cabinets, scanning paper contracts, typing thousands of numbers into a massive spreadsheet, and emailing version after version back and forth as Word documents attached to emails. 

When this nightmare was over, I swore that no one would ever have to go through what I went through. And so I founded Concord, where we built a platform that handles every stage of contracting from intake to renewals, all in one place. 

Fast forward to today. 67% of legal teams are now using contract management software like Concord. This software enables Finance, Operations and Procurement teams to handle contract negotiations, renewals and cancellations, which were once Legal’s exclusive domain. 

And over the next five years, AI is going to radically rewrite Legal’s role even further.


Lawyers don’t need to babysit most contracts 


Recent research from insideAI News shows that 70 percent of legal experts expect contract management to be the area of the legal industry that’s most transformed by AI. Why do they think this? Because: 

  1. 90 percent of contracts don’t get negotiated. This can be hard to see, because the negotiations that do happen tend to take up a lot of your time. But the data shows that the vast majority of contracts sail through to signature without any redlining. 
     
  1. Legal teams cost money. Given the state of the economy, it’s not surprising that 99 percent of general counsels are trying to cut contracting costs. AI is an obvious way to do this, because… 
     
  1. AI is getting better at contract review every month. The newest ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini models now outperform humans on many contract risk identification tasks, according to 2025 studies. 

The better AI gets at contract review – and the metrics are improving every month – the more lawyers will be able to spend their time where it matters: on those edge-case negotiations where expertise really counts.


AI helps de-risk the majority of templatized contracts 


AI reviewing digital contracts with automated risk analysis and term extraction for streamlined contract management
AI-powered contract automation systems reduce risk, cut review time, and enhance contract management accuracy

For those 90 percent of contracts that never get negotiated or redlined, AI can already handle most of the routine tasks that legal teams would traditionally do: reviewing terms, identifying risks, checking compliance, and managing approvals. 

Researchers at Gartner predict that within the next few years, “implementing AI-based contract analytics will cut human work for contract assessment by 50 percent.” That lines up with our own internal data: AI can review a contract in just 26 seconds, compared to the 92 minutes it takes a human paralegal on average. 

Here’s what else AI is handling behind the scenes: 


  1. De-risking deadlines. Humans tend to miss steps. They forget to upload documents, to enter data, and to follow up in advance of a renewal or termination deadline. AI automated all these steps, so nothing gets missed. Modern contract workflows rely heavily on effective tools like legal contract drafting software to streamline agreement creation and reduce errors.
     
  1. Extracting key terms. AI systems can auto-populate key contract terms with 94 percent accuracy, and they’re getting more accurate every month. That means no more need for paralegals to type in all the data. 
     
  1. Standardizing workflows. Processes become consistent when AI automates them. It handles approval routing, collects e-signatures, and puts contracts in the right folders every time.  

How does this tie back to CFO ownership of contracts? Because when AI handles all these routine tasks, you don’t need a team of contract experts to keep everything organized. Your Finance, Ops and Procurement teams can own your contract processes, and can focus on what matters: driving revenue and growth.


Here’s what’s coming next 


I’m going to make a prediction: by 2035, no companies with fewer than 500 employees will have legal teams involved in contract management whatsoever. 

This is just a convergence of trends we’re already seeing now. For example, financial institutions that automate their contract workflows have already reported a 30 percent drop in contract approval time. As more industries wake up to these benefits, adoption of AI-powered contract analytics software will continue to expand. The global market is projected to react $10.5 billion by 2035 – three times its current size. 

Here’s what we’re going to see as more companies adopt AI-powered CLM tools: 

  1. Radical simplification of contracts. Instead of pages and pages of dense legalese, contracts will look more like term sheets: simple tables outlining exactly what the terms are. Contracts will be much easier for humans - and AIs - to understand. 
     
  1. Self-service contracting. Just as in so many companies today, Finance and Ops teams will create and approve contracts without getting lawyers involved. AI will guide them through the process, and will flag any issues they need to review. 
     
  1. AI-to-AI negotiations. It won’t be long before AI systems negotiate contracts directly with each other, each trying to optimize the terms for the humans they represent. Agentic AI is coming in 2025, and by 2035 it’s going to be the new normal. 

What does this mean for legal teams? Just evolution, not extinction. With AI handling routine negotiations and contract workflows, lawyers will be freed up to focus on high-stakes negotiations where their expertise can make a financial impact. 

If you’re a lawyer, this is good news! It means your days of reviewing version 17 of subsection 14.5.3 are quickly coming to an end. Soon, your job will be much less focused on contractual minutiae, and much more focused on actual interpretation of the law.


The revolution is already here


If you’re still managing contracts like it’s 2010 - with Legal reviewing every draft, and Word docs stored across multiple drives and systems - your competitors are already outpacing you. How do I know? Because they’re my customers. 

Forward-thinking companies have already adopted what I call the “post-legal” approach to contract management. This is a world where: 

  • Finance and opsteams own most contract processes 
  • AI handles basic compliance, risk assessment and review 
  • Legal only gets involved with strategic negotiations 
  • Contract data pipes straight into financial forecasts 

By now, the benefits should be clear. As Aberdeen Research found, contract automation will slash your admin expenses by 30 percent. The case for AI-powered CLM becomes even more compelling when you consider that contract mismanagement costs companies worldwide $2 trillion in lost revenue every year. 

The choice is simple: Adapt to the new reality, or get left behind. Which side are you on? 

Matt Lhoumeau is the co-founder and CEO of Concord, a leading contract management platform used by over 1,500 companies worldwide. After experiencing the pain of manual contract management firsthand, Matt built Concord to ensure no one would have to go through what he went through 15 years ago.