How can an in-house legal team clear its contract backlog with AI?
How can an in-house legal team clear its contract backlog with AI? The most reliable way is to use AI for the repetitive middle of the work: producing first drafts from the templates the team has already approved, and responding to counterparty markups against positions the team has already agreed. Judgement on the unusual points stays with the lawyer, and the queue shrinks because the routine points stop taking up the day.
Why backlogs build up
Most in-house teams are small relative to the volume of paper the business produces. Sales wants an NDA by lunchtime, procurement has a supplier agreement waiting, and a renewal is due on Friday. None of these is hard on its own. The backlog grows because each one needs the same careful but familiar steps, and there are only so many hours in the week.
Much of that time goes on finding the right template, working out which version is current, and remembering what the team agreed with a similar counterparty last time. That is where AI can help without anyone having to trust it with the hard calls.
Start from your own paper
A general-purpose assistant will happily write a contract, but it will write it from general text. You then spend the saved time pulling it back to your house style and your standard terms. A tool that drafts from the team's own templates and precedents starts much closer to something you would send, and it is easier to check because the language is already yours.
The best use of AI in a legal department is making the approved position the easy one to reach for.
Work inside Word
Legal teams and their counterparties still trade documents in Microsoft Word with tracked changes. A tool that works inside Word fits that habit, so there is no separate portal for the business to learn and no copying text between systems. If a tool asks colleagues to change how they send and receive contracts, adoption usually stalls.
Keep what the team learns
When a team of three handles a hundred contracts, the reasons behind each concession tend to sit in individual heads and inboxes. When someone moves on, so does the explanation. It is worth asking whether a tool records the positions your team takes and keeps them as a record your department owns, so the next contract starts from what you have already decided.
Questions to ask before you buy
Ask what the tool drafts from, where the work happens, and who owns the record of your positions. Ask for published pricing, so you can take a real number to your general counsel or finance team. Legora now markets to smaller in-house teams, and Harvey sells widely too, so compare them honestly. They are broad platforms covering many kinds of legal work. If your team’s work is mostly contracts, ask whether you need to pay for that breadth.
Where Scriptum fits
Scriptum is built for transactional work. It is a Microsoft Word add-in, it drafts from your own precedents, and it captures the positions your lawyers take into a clause library the organisation owns. Pricing is on our pricing page. It is designed first for law firms of twenty to a hundred fee earners, and many of the same needs apply to an in-house team handling contracts day to day. If your backlog is mostly routine paper, book a demo and we will show you what it looks like on a matter of your own.