Contract Intake and Triage: How CLM Software Stops the “Email Funnel” to Legal

Why Email-Based Contract Requests Don’t Scale

When contract requests come in via Slack and email, legal teams lose time chasing missing info, prioritizing blindly, and duplicating work. The business sees legal as slow; legal sees the business as chaotic. Contract management software fixes this by providing structured intake, standardized triage rules, and transparent status tracking.

Designing a Strong Contract Intake Form

The best intake forms collect essential context without overwhelming users. Typical fields include:

Contract type (NDA, MSA, SOW, vendor agreement, partnership).
Counterparty name and contact.
Value, term length, and deadline.
Risk flags (PII, security requirements, data processing, unusual liability).

Conditional fields keep forms short while still capturing what legal needs.

Automated Triage Rules and Prioritization

CLM triage can route and prioritize contracts based on:

Deal value and urgency.
Contract type and business unit.
Risk signals (security, regulatory, non-standard clauses).
Jurisdiction and governing law requirements.

This ensures high-impact work is handled first and low-risk work flows faster.

Status Visibility for Stakeholders

CLM intake portals provide transparency:

Requesters can see who owns the contract and what stage it’s in.
Legal can standardize SLAs by contract category.
Managers can see workload and bottlenecks in dashboards.

Visibility reduces “just checking in” messages that disrupt legal teams.

Final Thoughts

Contract intake and triage in CLM replaces the email funnel with a structured, measurable process. That improves speed, reduces frustration, and makes legal service predictable.