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Thursday, April 7, 2011

Legal Advisers Should Be Included in Workflows, Too

Are 90% or 10% of your company's contracts templates? Do you make 10 agreements or 100 agreements yearly? Is your legal man in-house or an external attorney? And in Japan, there is the very important matter of the seal.
Workflows for checking contracts differ greatly by company, and this means the ideal state is different.
The below legal check workflow assumes the legal staff possesses basic knowledge, but might have to consult an external legal adviser. The external legal adviser logs into the workflow system.

Preparing this kind of workflow means the system will automatically record all decisions by every member made at all times. Accumulating contract drafts will surely lead to optimization of work. This is highly recommendable for internal control.

<Tasks>
1. Input Contract Draft, 2. Approve, 3. Evaluate and Comment, 4. Handle, 5. Confirm

[Contract Check <Concurrent Request> : "2. Approve" screen]


Now, the below workflow looks pretty much the same, but is a little bit move advanced. That is, after task 3 (Evaluate and Comment), the workflow can be sent to both the initiating employee AND legal adviser. It may get complicated, but if it is imperative for your company to reduce time spent on legal checking, it might be worth trying.

<Tasks>
1. Input Contract Draft, 2. Approve, 3. Evaluate and Comment, 4. Handle, 5. Confirm