Duracell

For Duracell's in-house legal team, institutional knowledge was effectively trapped. Contract history spanning indemnity positions, pricing terms, and negotiated clause precedents lived scattered across PDFs, emails, and SharePoint — accessible in theory, but practically unreachable at negotiation speed. Retrieving a prior position on a single clause like indemnity required 40 billable hours of outside counsel review, often on documents the company had already paid to review multiple times. The legacy hourly billing model compounded the problem: costs were creeping upward 10% annually with no corresponding improvement in speed or output quality. As Chief Legal Officer Gary Hood noted, the result was "a compromise either on time or comprehensiveness" — a trade-off Duracell's business could no longer accept.

Duracell deployed Eudia's AI-Augmented Contracting solution, combining two parallel workstreams. First, an AI-augmented legal professional was embedded to handle day-to-day contract redlines, negotiation progression, and escalation on a predictable fixed-fee basis — replacing variable outside-counsel hours with outcome-based delivery. Second, a custom contract insights solution used large language models and generative AI to extract pricing, rebate, and margin-relevant clauses from legacy documents, linking them to Sales and Finance data. This gave Legal the ability to answer commercial posture questions before negotiations began and surface renegotiation targets proactively. Critically, the program was funded by reallocating existing outside-counsel spend rather than requesting new technology budget, which accelerated internal adoption and eliminated budget friction.

The transformation shifted Legal from reactive reviewer to strategic business partner. Precedent searches that previously consumed 40 billable hours now complete in minutes, and the 10% annual cost creep from outside counsel has been eliminated in favor of fixed, predictable fees. Qualitative outcomes are equally significant:

• Contract data and prior positions are now retrievable in minutes, not weeks
• Sales and Finance receive decision-ready insights on pricing, rebates, and risk before negotiations open
• Consistent redlines and clause benchmarks have replaced ad hoc review
• The model is expanding across business units without additional headcount

Each new agreement feeds a growing Company Brain, compounding the value of the system over time.

• Reallocate before requesting: funding AI contracting programs by redirecting existing outside-counsel spend avoids internal budget battles and signals ROI from day one.
• Static contract history is a hidden asset: structured extraction of legacy documents with LLMs creates a searchable precedent layer that immediately reduces reliance on external counsel.
• Shift billing model alongside technology: moving from hourly to fixed-fee outcomes aligns legal spend with business results and makes Legal's commercial contribution measurable.
• Embed a human in the loop: pairing AI tools with an augmented legal professional preserves judgment where it matters while automating repetitive tasks at scale.
• Start narrow, scale compounding: contracts are a low-risk entry point; capabilities built there extend naturally into broader commercial levers like rebates and cost escalators.