Legal and Contract Operations

Legal and Contract Operations modernizes how legal teams handle requests, contracts, approvals, and obligations—replacing email chaos with structured workflows, self-service, visibility, and measurable turnaround time.

December 17, 2025

Legal and Contract Operations: LCO Unified Workspaces Cut Cycle Time and turn legal support and contract management into a fast, trackable service—so work doesn’t get lost in inboxes, approvals do not stall, and teams retain visibility into what’s next. Email wasn’t built to run legal work.

Consequently, requests arrive incomplete, redlines scatter across versions, and approvals stall while everyone asks, “Where is it now?” Legal and Contract Operations fixes that problem by turning legal work into a measurable service: structured intake, visible workflows, governed templates, tracked signatures, and post-signature obligations.

Better yet, the workspace model doesn’t just “organize” work. Instead, it reduces friction at every handoff—Procurement to Legal, Legal to Approvers, Approvers to Signers—so cycle time drops and risk stays contained.

Why Legal and Contract Operations matters now

Legal demand keeps rising, yet capacity rarely grows at the same pace. Meanwhile, workload pressure shows up in real numbers: a study cited in PubMed Central reports 46% of attorneys felt overwhelmed. In parallel, in-house counsel burnout also stays high; one report summarizes findings that roughly 78% of in-house lawyers feel stressed or burned out.

At the same time, contract delays drag the business. For example, one contract management analysis notes inefficient workflows can cause average delays of three to four weeks. Finally, obligation tracking remains a major gap; multiple contract analytics sources cite that about 78% of organizations fail to track obligations systematically, which increases missed renewals and compliance risk.

What Legal and Contract Operations is

Legal and Contract Operations is an operating model that connects:

Legal intake + triage (requests come in clean, complete, and routed)
Matter and investigation execution (complex work runs with plans, tasks, and audit trails)
Contract lifecycle execution (request → review → redlines → approvals → signature → closeout)
Obligation and renewal tracking (so “signed” doesn’t mean “forgotten”)

ServiceNow gives economies of scale, and stress reduction with Legal Service Delivery, which is designed to help teams handle legal work with more efficiency and security.

Contract Management service levels in ServiceNow

Level	Best for	What you can do (what changes as you level up)
Standard	Digitize intake + handle common agreements	Self-service contract intake (portal/forms), common contract workflows (ex: NDA requests), approval + e-signature routing, and storage so you stop living in email threads.
Pro	Run end-to-end contract operations with a legal “command center”	Adds optimized contract workspace, Microsoft Word contract authoring, template + clause library, contract dashboards/KPIs, contract relationships, and deeper integrations (e.g., e-sign + cloud storage).
Pro+	Scale review speed + reduce risk using GenAI in the flow of work	Adds Now Assist in Contract Management—AI-assisted contract review and metadata extraction, to summarize, classify, and route faster (instead of manual reading + rekeying).

Why the workspace approach improves the process

1) It centralizes reality

Instead of splitting truth across inboxes, Teams chats, and shared drives, a workspace keeps requests, tasks, documents, approvals, and signature status together. As a result, stakeholders stop chasing updates and start moving work.

2) It standardizes intake, so rework collapses

When intake forces the right fields up front, Legal stops doing “forensics” on missing details. Therefore, triage gets faster, routing improves, and cycle time shrinks.

3) It makes handoffs visible

A unified activity stream shows what happened, who owns the next step, and what’s blocked. Consequently, Procurement and Legal stay aligned without constant meetings.

4) It enforces controls automatically

Templates, clause guidance, approval plans, and SLAs move from “tribal knowledge” into workflow. That shift reduces risk because exceptions become explicit, trackable events—not silent edits.

5) It creates usable data for continuous improvement

Because the workspace captures structured data at each stage, you can measure bottlenecks, predict workload, and fix root causes—week after week.

The workflow: Source-to-Pay → NDA → Signature → Close

Step 1: View contracts inside Source-to-Pay

The Legal and Contract Operations workspace is ServiceNow’s single, role-based work hub where Legal Ops and Contract Ops teams intake, route, execute, and measure legal work—without running the process in email. ServiceNow positions Legal & Contract Operations as a way to transform manual, unstructured legal and contract processes into faster, trackable delivery.

Procurement starts inside the Source-to-Pay workspace and opens the purchase context. Next, they navigate to Contract Requests to see what’s linked and what’s missing.

Step 2: Initiate the NDA (Own paper)

Legal and Contract Operations NDA initiation (fast path)

Goal: get confidentiality coverage quickly so work can proceed.

How it’s initiated (typical)

Procurement or requester opens the purchase/sourcing context (Source-to-Pay).

Click Contract Requests → New → Initiate contract.

Select:

Contract type: NDA

Type of paper: usually Own paper (your template)

Signature type: Electronic signature

Generate/attach the NDA document.

Add signatories and click Send for signature.

Status updates to Signed/Complete and the NDA is stored with an audit trail.

Why it’s fast: NDAs are standardized and usually stay on your template, so redlines are limited.

Then Procurement selects:

Contract type: Non-Disclosure Agreement
Type of paper: Own paper
Signature type: Electronic signature

Because “own paper” uses your approved template, the NDA typically moves quickly.

Step 3: Create or view the NDA document

After initiation, the contract request record stores the working document (and often the document link). Consequently, the record becomes the single source of truth.

Step 4: Send for signature

Legal and Contract Operations:
What the “Send for Signature” step does in an NDA workflow

The Send for Signature step is the moment you move an NDA from draft/review to formal execution. In other words, you stop emailing PDFs and instead trigger a controlled eSignature process (often DocuSign) directly from the contract record.

What must be true before you click “Send for Signature”

The NDA document is the final version (or approved version) attached to the contract request.

The signatories are set correctly:

Internal signer(s) (your company)

External signer(s) (vendor/customer)

Signing order (if required)

Any required approvals are complete (if your workflow enforces approval gates).

Key metadata is filled in (contract type = NDA, dates if needed, supplier/counterparty, etc.).

What happens when you click “Send for Signature”

ServiceNow packages the NDA
It binds the correct document version to the contract request so you have “what was sent.”

It pushes the document + recipient list to the eSignature provider
Typically this is DocuSign (or another provider). The system transfers:

document

signer names/emails

signing order

any required fields (signature blocks, initials, date)

Recipients receive an email to sign
The external and internal signers get a DocuSign email link, open the NDA, and sign electronically.

The contract record updates automatically
As each person signs, the NDA record reflects progress:

Sent / Out for signature

Partially signed (if multiple signers)

Signed / Completed

The executed NDA is stored and tracked
Once complete, the signed copy is attached/stored and the record holds the audit trail:

who signed

when they signed

what version was signed

completion status

Why this step is important (business value)

Prevents version confusion: everyone signs the same approved version.

Creates an audit trail: proof of exec

Next, the user confirms signatories and clicks Send for Signature. Recipients receive the DocuSign email, complete signature, and the record updates automatically.

Step 5: Signed, closed, and fully tracked

Finally, the NDA closes as complete with a clean audit trail. This is where the workspace wins: nobody has to “confirm via email,” because the status is already in the record.

The heavier workflow: MSA upload → Legal review (CMR) → redlines → approval

Legal and Contract Operations: MSA (Master Service Agreement) is usually the “heavy” contract, so ServiceNow treats it like a tracked work item: one record holds the document, ownership, status, approvals, redlines, and signature progress.

1) Initiate the MSA from Source-to-Pay

From the Purchase / Sourcing record in the Source-to-Pay workspace:

Open Related work → Contract Requests

Click New / Initiate contract

Set the key fields:

Contract type: Master Service Agreement (MSA)

Type of paper: typically Third-party paper (vendor paper)

Signature type: Electronic signature (if using DocuSign)

Start/End dates: if known (helps renewals later)

This creates an MSA Contract Request tied back to the procurement record.

2) Upload the MSA document (the “source of truth” step)

Inside the new MSA Contract Request:

Go to Contract documents

Click Attach / Upload

Upload the vendor’s PDF or Word file (prefer Word if you’ll redline inside Word)

Use clean naming, for example:

MSA_VendorName_V1.pdf

MSA_VendorName_Redline_V2.docx

After upload, the document is now governed by the record—not buried in email.

3) Route it for Legal review (CMR)

Next, you move the request out of “draft” and into execution:

Click Submit (or the equivalent action your flow uses)

The record routes to Legal / Contracts Support (often a CMR queue)

At that point, Legal sees it in their workspace, clicks Start work, and takes ownership.

Step 1: Begin MSA creation and tracking (Third-party paper)

MSAs often start as vendor paper. Therefore, Procurement initiates an MSA using Third-party paper and uploads the supplier document.

Step 2: Route to the Legal Attorney for Contract Management Review (CMR)

Next, the workflow assigns the record to Legal for review. Because the request, document, and activity history stay together, Legal can start work immediately.

Step 3: Drill down, redline, and revise

Then Legal performs redlines and revision cycles while the workspace tracks progress and ownership. Additionally, stakeholders can see status without interrupting attorneys.

Step 4: Send for MSA approval

After Legal completes review, the workflow routes for approval. Consequently, approvals stop living in email, and audit readiness improves by default.

Best practices that cut cycle time fast

Build the “front door” first

Create one intake portal for legal and contract work.
Require only the minimum fields that prevent rework.
Add routing rules by urgency, contract type, region, and value.

Separate “own paper” vs “third-party paper” at intake

Route third-party paper into deeper review automatically.
Set longer SLAs for MSAs than for NDAs.
Trigger exception approvals when clauses deviate.

Standardize templates and clauses, then govern them

Publish an approved template library and keep it current.
Maintain a clause library with fallback positions.
Review templates quarterly so “old language” doesn’t leak risk.

Keep negotiation in the record

Use one record for status, tasks, and decision history.
Capture redline cycles as structured steps—not scattered attachments.

Close the loop post-signature

Store the executed agreement in a centralized repository.
Create obligation tasks (renewal notice, audits, reporting).
Automate reminders so deadlines don’t sneak up.

Proof points and metrics to track

Snowflake is a ServiceNow customer story reports that workflow automation reduced stock preclearance cycle time from hours to minutes and achieved a 60% reduction in the time vendor contracts sit with Legal. That is exactly what a workspace model enables: fewer handoffs, less status-chasing, and faster execution.

Best Practices: Measure what Matters. Track these KPIs weekly:

Time to triage (intake → first action)
Time to signature (start → signed)
Aging by stage (draft, redline, approval, signature)
Exception rate (non-standard clauses / third-party paper)
SLA attainment by request type
Obligation completion rate and renewal lead time

FAQs for featured snippets

What is Legal and Contract Operations?

Legal and Contract Operations is a structured approach to managing legal requests and contracts end-to-end—from intake and routing to redlines, approvals, signatures, and obligations.

Why do unified workspaces reduce contract cycle time?

They centralize documents and decisions, standardize intake, make handoffs visible, and enforce templates and approvals in-system—so work moves without email delays.

What’s the difference between own paper and third-party paper?

Own paper uses your approved templates; third-party paper starts with vendor/customer templates and typically requires more redlines, risk review, and approvals.

Bottom line

If you want faster contracts and fewer surprises, stop running legal work through inboxes. Instead, adopt Legal and Contract Operations with a unified workspace that connects Source-to-Pay, contract requests, legal review, approvals, signature tracking, and obligations. Then, measure what matters—and improve it every week.

Why Legal and Contract Operations matters now

What Legal and Contract Operations is

Contract Management service levels in ServiceNow