Law Department Management Blog
Corp. Counsel, June 2010 at 76, tells us that Microsoft, with more than 450 lawyers, had unwittingly proliferated 1,836 different kinds of contracts. To hack away at that profusion its legal department “launched a new centralized contract tool last year [2009], slashing the number of contract templates to 212.”
Impressive as this simplification of the contract palette may be, massive additional benefits were foreseen. “That should save the department 45,000 hours and up to $1.4 million a year.” At $32 an hour, the dollars saved are not the value of the 45,000 hours put to better use but something additional, such as database costs, retention charges, temporary works, or otherwise.
It is good housekeeping to clear out varieties of standard contracts and settle on fewer, but better and more used, templates.