A recent survey of corporate counsels shed some light on the pain points of contract management as viewed by heads of corporate legal departments.

According to an article posted on the Metropolitan Corporate Counsel’s website, one of the major pain points cited by respondents was the inability to find contracts when they were not properly filed.

Though a brief write up of the survey (see link below) didn’t distinguish whether these were electronic or physical files, it all adds up to the same result: lost time searching for key documents.

Considering the cost of work done by legal departments, time spent hunting down mis-filed contract and related documents can get pricey.

Although it is easy to overlook when reviewing all the benefits of a rich contract management software solution, the basic ability to centralize all contracts and related documents into one electronic repository is a huge benefit to all departments in a company – especially legal departments.

In most companies, legal and corporate counsel departments need to vet every new contract. Contract changes and amendments are not unusual either, and these too frequently need corporate counsel review. This often leads to a need to retrieve contracts and related documents and even administration-generated notes on contracts.

Without a contract management solution, this process can devolve into a kind of scavenger hunt when dealing with different departments: one department records contracts details on spreadsheets and stores originals and copies with separate users; another may just modify Word documents and add notes to a physical folder.

What’s a better use of a $100-an-hour paralegal’s time: hunting down stray Post-It notes or vetting the renewal conditions on an annual $50,000 contract?

Everyone knows the answer to that.

See complete article on the survey here. About 200 general counsels were surveyed by Business Integrity on contract management practices both online and at an annual meeting of the Association of General Counsels.