Achievers slashes NDA review time 70% and cuts outside counsel spend

Achievers’ five-person legal team managed a high volume of NDAs, commercial agreements, and third-party paper while also handling product advisory, corporate secretary, and governance work. Contract review was largely manual—relying on Word playbooks and outside counsel for first-pass review—with clause-by-clause NDA review taking 15–20 minutes plus escalation time for non-standard terms. Outside counsel cost $1,000–$2,000 per third-party contract, and turnaround stretched to two days, creating business delays that weren’t sustainable as the company grew without adding headcount.

The Achievers in-house team deployed LegalOn for AI-assisted first-pass review and redlining against playbooks, completing that pass in under a minute so contract managers could focus on exceptions. They combined LegalOn’s attorney-built playbooks with custom Achievers positions, used LegalOn Assistant to answer contract questions without manually scanning agreements, and worked inside Microsoft Word via the plug-in. Adoption was fast during an offboarding of a separate contract repository; pre-built playbooks enabled immediate use, with custom playbooks and repository/search layered on over time.

First-round NDA review dropped from 15–20 minutes to 5 minutes per agreement—a 70% reduction—with significantly fewer escalations to senior counsel. Customer third-party paper that previously needed outside counsel for first-pass review is now handled internally, eliminating the $1,000–$2,000 per-contract outside counsel cost. Contract turnaround when using outside counsel fell from two days to the same day, and the legal team responds faster and more consistently to business requests.

• • AI first-pass review against playbooks lets a lean in-house team focus on exceptions instead of reading every clause from scratch.
• • Bringing third-party paper review in-house can eliminate four-figure per-contract outside counsel spend while speeding turnaround.
• • Starting with pre-built playbooks and layering custom standards over time enables fast adoption without a lengthy configuration project.