By
Contract negotiation is essential to any in-house lawyer's or legal manager's job. It is a slow process full of endless back-and-forth, manual changes to clauses, and a constant risk of errors. Each adjustment requires revisions, approvals, and, in many cases, long email chains that lengthen the closing of deals.
But technology has arrived to transform this process. Clause automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are enabling a much more strategic approach to the way we close deals, which brings us to the evolution of contracts. In this article, we'll explore how AI and legal prompting are changing contract negotiation and how you can leverage these tools to optimise your work and reduce negotiation times. Let's get started.
This article is available in Spanish.
In this article you will find:
- The challenge of traditional contract negotiation: lengthy processes and hidden risks.
- Automation: the next step in contract negotiation
- How new technologies are redefining contract negotiation
- Legal Prompting: the new approach to contract negotiation
- How to improve your contract negotiation with Legal Prompting and AI
- The era of efficiency in contract negotiation
The challenge of traditional contract negotiation: lengthy processes and hidden risks
If you have ever been involved in contract negotiation, you are familiar with this situation:
- Endless versions: multiple revisions of the same contract without centralised control.
- Drafting errors: manual adjustments that introduce inconsistencies in key clauses.
- Deadlines that extend indefinitely: lack of alignment between the parties and difficulties in reaching an agreement.
- Lack of visibility: contracts stored on different platforms, with no clear traceability of changes.
The problem is that these inefficient processes affect not only the legal team but also the business: delaying a contract can mean losing a commercial opportunity or increasing costs by not closing a deal at the right time.
The good news is that contract negotiation can be faster, more accurate and more strategic thanks to automation and AI.
Automation: the next step in contract negotiation
Today, a number of advanced legal tech tools make it possible to automate key parts of the contract negotiation process. For example, using Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) software with integrated AI, legal teams can:
- Reduce contract review time by 50% or more.
- Standardise key clauses to ensure consistency and avoid risk.
- Detect problematic contract terms automatically.
- Facilitate real-time collaboration, avoiding the classic sending of attachments in endless email chains.
A CLM with AI enables contract negotiation to be more agile and efficient, removing repetitive tasks and allowing you to focus on what really adds value: thinking strategically about contracts so that they help to secure favourable deals for the business and avoid legal risks.
You may be interested in: What is a CLM? Discover the power of Contract Lifecycle Management
How new technologies are redefining contract negotiation
Artificial intelligence is playing a key role in the transformation of contract negotiation. Its applications are very diverse, but among the most decisive ones we find:
- Automatic contract comparison: a legal AI assistant can analyse multiple versions of a document and highlight key differences in seconds.
- Suggestions of optimal terms: AI can identify which terms have worked best in previous negotiations and suggest them in new negotiations.
- Legal risk identification: advanced tools can detect problematic or incompatible clauses.
- Automation of approval flows: reducing the time needed to obtain internal approvals, speeding up contract closure.
The result is clear: AI does not replace human negotiation, but it makes it much more efficient and strategic.
Legal Prompting: the new approach to contract negotiation
One of the most disruptive advances in contract negotiation has come with the emergence of legal prompting. This is a methodology that optimises interaction with generative AI, allowing lawyers to obtain more precise answers tailored to each specific contract.
You may be interested in: What is Legal Prompting? How to optimise its use in the legal sector?
How does legal prompting work?
- Clear structure of the prompt: the type of contract, the sector and the key points to be considered in the negotiation are specified.
- Detailed instructions: specific conditions are indicated, such as payment terms, penalty clauses or confidentiality.
- Iterative refinement: from the initial response, the prompt is adjusted until the optimal result is obtained.
Practical example of legal prompting in action
Before: a lawyer had to manually draft an indemnity clause in a service contract, reviewing previous contracts for reference.
Now: using a well-designed prompt, AI generates an industry-tailored clause in seconds, aligned with current regulations and optimised for negotiation.
This approach reduces time, improves accuracy and allows legal teams to focus on more strategic and lawyer-satisfying tasks.
How to improve your contract negotiation with Legal Prompting and AI
If you want to take your contract negotiation process to the next level, here are some key tips:
- Leverage automation: use CLM tools to manage contracts and avoid manual errors.
- Define your prompts precisely: specify context, key clauses and clear objectives to get better responses from AI.
- Use data analytics: examine the results of previous negotiations to identify patterns and optimise future negotiations.
- Integrate collaborative tools: remove barriers between legal, commercial and finance teams to speed up approval processes.
- Become skilled in legal prompting: learning how to interact with AI will allow you to get the most out of this technology in the contractual arena.
Understanding technology and using it for everyday tasks is becoming a necessity for a legal sector that already embraces innovation. Ultimately, the future of contract negotiation lies not in endless manual reviews, but in the combination of technology and legal strategy.
The era of efficiency in contract negotiation
The way we negotiate contracts is evolving. Automation and artificial intelligence are no longer the future, but the present for legal teams looking to optimise their time and improve the accuracy of their deals.
If you want to take your contract negotiation to the next level, eliminate tedious processes and speed up deal closing, it's time to take the next step.
