Law Department Management Blog
Exari’s white paper, Corporate Counsel Contracts Survey Report, Dec. 2011 at 7, draws on responses from approximately 100 companies. They report that “an average of 67% of their contracts is created on their own paper and 35% of those agreements are renewals. Roughly 72% of contracts created by the respondents are reviewed by legal.”
It would make sense that the larger the company the higher the percentage of contracts, at least on the sell side, would be on their own paper. They have the clout to prevail, which is yet another advantage of scale. Second, renewals are undoubtedly much easier to complete – at least in terms of legal approval – than the initial contract. Finally, although contract review occupies a significant chunk of many in-house lawyers’ time, from this data something like a quarter of all contracts created within a company is handled solely by the business units. That speaks to the plentiful supply of form contracts and fall-back provisions that clients can draw on by themselves. On the other hand, law departments review a much higher percentage of contracts that come on the other side’s paper.