The GLS Contracting Doctrine: How to Engineer an Industrial-Scale Contracting Function

Introduction: A new approach to your contracting function is needed

Contracting is one of the most commercially critical functions a legal team performs — yet it remains one of the least fully optimised. Despite repeated efforts, many teams struggle to overcome the structural headwinds that limit contracting performance.

It sits directly on the path of deal velocity, revenue certainty, cost control, and business agility. When contracting performs well, Legal is experienced as a commercial enabler. When it does not, friction is immediate and highly visible — making contracting a reliable proxy for how the legal function is valued by the business.

The upside of high-performance contracting is substantial and enduring. Faster contract closure, consistent risk outcomes, reduced cost of delay, and lower downstream dispute exposure compound over time. Cost improvements come not only from reducing senior-lawyer drag, but from properly structuring work so junior capability is safely and productively leveraged — improving both cost and quality at the same time.

Despite this, few in-house teams succeed in fully optimising their contracting function. This is not because the problem is poorly understood, or because solutions are immature. It is because contracting has traditionally been managed as a collection of documents and processes, rather than as strategic corporate infrastructure requiring deliberate design and sequencing.

At the same time, the gravitational pull of Contract Lifecycle Management Systems is now unavoidable. Whether driven by scale, governance, data demands, or executive pressure, most legal teams will either implement — or be forced to implement — a CLMS. That reality removes optionality. Contracting functions that are not structurally optimised will simply hard-code inefficiency, inconsistency, and frustration into technology.

This makes a disciplined approach to contracting optimisation more timely and more critical than ever.

GLS takes a different approach. We apply a performance-engineered model to contracting optimisation — one that is logical, intuitive, and grounded in how contracting actually scales inside complex organisations. That model is expressed through the GLS Contracting Line, which sets out a complete, end-to-end view of a world-class contracting function.

The Contracting Line is not a checklist of initiatives. It is a deliberately structured around 10 universally recognised performance engineering principles that we have adapted to determine how contracting functions deliver speed, consistency, control, and value at scale.

This piece sets out the doctrine behind that approach and explains how the GLS Transformation Tube Map —  Contracting Line can be used to optimise contracting function performance.

How most contracting functions have emerged

Most contracting functions are not designed. They accumulate.

They emerge in response to pressure: a new deal type, a new risk, a new business demand. Each need is met in isolation. A workaround is created. That workaround becomes precedent. Over time, the function grows into something that looks intentional but isn’t.

The result is rarely a coherent system. It is a layered mass of historical fixes — operationally functional, structurally fragile, and hostile to scale.

Standardisation, where it exists, is usually incidental rather than architectural. Templates proliferate by region, business unit, or individual preference. Clause positions drift. “Standards” exist, but they are not designed as reusable components or enforced as policy infrastructure. Assets multiply, but leverage does not.

Technology was never part of the original design. Most contracting functions evolved before CLMS, automation, analytics, or AI were realistic considerations. As a result, data structure, workflow logic, policy encoding, and performance measurement were never engineered in. Teams are now trying to digitise something that was never designed to be digitised.

As volume increased, people were added — not to create leverage, but to absorb demand. Headcount became the primary control mechanism. Senior lawyers carried risk in their heads. Juniors waited for review. Quality depended on who was involved, not on how the system worked.

Organisational boundaries compounded the problem. Contracting frequently sits across Legal, Procurement, Commercial, and Contract Administration, with blurred accountability and fractured ownership. Legal is often held responsible for outcomes without retaining full control over the system that produces them.

In this environment, a predictable secondary effect emerges: shadow legal teams.

Business units create their own templates, negotiation playbooks, approval workarounds, and external adviser relationships to bypass perceived friction. These pockets operate with partial information and inconsistent risk positions, further eroding standardisation, visibility, and control — and quietly multiplying risk across the organisation.

The symptoms are now familiar: too many templates, clunky processes, inconsistent negotiation positions, looping reviews, volatile cycle times, business frustration, under-leveraged junior capability, and over-reliance on senior judgement.

At its core, most contracting functions remain artisanal. They are talent-dominated, not talent-multiplied. Performance depends on individual effort rather than engineered capability.

And here is the constraint that ultimately cannot be ignored:

If you do not force-multiply talent with infrastructure, processes, and procedures, the only way to scale contribution is to add more people.

For most organisations, that is no longer an option. There is no headcount. No budget. And no business appetite to pay more for a function it already experiences as slow, expensive, or inconsistent.

That is the wall most contracting functions eventually hit — and why an industrial, performance-engineered approach is no longer optional.

“When headcount is capped and demand keeps rising, the only remaining lever is system design. Everything else is denial dressed up as effort.”

Why Contracting Optimisation Is Now Inevitable — and Why Continuing the Old Approach Is Perilous

The internal conversation around contracting has shifted.

A new generation of in-house legal leaders is focused on performance, scalability, and value delivery, not simply responsiveness. At the same time, many organisations are approaching a Contract Lifecycle Management System (CLMS) implementation, often initiated outside Legal by technology, procurement, or enterprise transformation teams.

Together, these forces remove optionality. Contracting performance must now be addressed.

What has not kept pace is the approach most teams take.

Internal self-optimisation efforts have largely underwhelmed. CLMS implementations, in particular, have consistently failed to meet expectations, with failure rates commonly estimated at around 90%. Systems go live. Disruption follows. The promised gains do not materialise.

The cause is consistent — and increasingly dangerous.

For years, contracting functions have evolved by addition. New templates, new checklists, new approvals, new workarounds. Each solved a local problem. Collectively, they produced fragmented systems held together by individual judgement rather than engineered structure.

In that environment, adding another process is tolerable.
Introducing enterprise technology is not.

When CLMS is introduced into an un-engineered contracting environment, it does not impose discipline or create scale. It amplifies and industrialises whatever already exists.

If the underlying system is artisanal — fragmented, inconsistent, and talent-dependent — technology does not correct it. It locks it in. It accelerates it. It spreads it across the enterprise.

What organisations end up scaling is not a high-performance contracting engine, but years of accumulated chaos that was never designed for industrial use.

This is why the risk profile has changed. What was once inefficient is now structurally dangerous. What was once tolerable friction becomes enterprise-wide failure when multiplied by technology.

“Technology does not fix contracting. It industrialises whatever already exists — which is why deploying CLMS without performance engineering is one of the most expensive mistakes legal teams keep repeating.”
 

That is the inflection point this doctrine addresses.

What follows is a performance-engineered approach to the contracting function — the principles that sit beneath the GLS Contracting Line on the GLS Legal TeamTransformation Tube Map. These principles allow legal teams to redesign contracting deliberately before technology is deployed, creating an operating model capable of industrial-scale support.

The objective is unambiguous: to move contracting out of the artisanal era and into the industrial era, and only then unlock the productivity potential of legal technology — safely, predictably, and at scale.

The Performance-Engineering Principles That Drive the GLS Contracting Line

High-performing systems do not rely on effort, experience, or goodwill. They rely on design.

Across disciplines that require reliability at scale — manufacturing, aviation, logistics, financial services, and complex technology platforms — performance is engineered around a small number of universally accepted principles. These principles are observable in practice, testable in operation, and transferable across domains.

GLS applies these same principles to the contracting function. They form the design logic that sits beneath the GLS Contracting Line and explain how contracting performance is made repeatable, scalable, and controllable.

◼️ Clear Purpose
◼️ Controlled Demand
◼️ Standardised Inputs
◼️ Engineered Workflow
◼️ Right-Sized Resourcing
◼️ Embedded Quality
◼️ Performance Visibility
◼️ Feedback Loops
◼️ Technology Enablement
◼️ End to End Value Protection

“The future of contracting is not faster lawyers or better tools — it is performance-engineered systems that make speed, quality, and control inevitable.”

How These Principles Power the Contracting Line

The GLS Contracting Line provides a visual depiction of a best-practice contracting function, designed to be easy to navigate and immediately familiar to in-house legal leaders.

At first glance, the Line presents concepts that most teams recognise — policies, templates, workflows, playbooks, analytics, and supporting tools. Each station gives you the analysis you actually need: scope and purpose, best-practice features, the productivity and risk consequences of leaving that capability under-developed, and the practical considerations for improvement. In that sense, the GLS Contracting Line is deliberately intuitive and easy to use.

What matters, however, is what sits beneath the surface.

The GLS Contracting Line is not a collection of disconnected initiatives or “bits and pieces”, which is how most contracting functions have historically evolved. It is the deliberate manifestation of the performance-engineering principles set out above.

Each station on the GLS Contracting Line exists because it reinforces one or more of those principles. Taken together, the stations ensure that the full set of performance drivers is present, aligned, and mutually reinforcing across the contracting function. This is what turns familiarity into coherence, and activity into performance.

In the next section, we show you the source code — how each station maps to the underlying performance-engineering principles — so you can understand the logic of the system and have confidence that the Contracting Line is engineered, not assembled.

1. Clear Purpose

The system exists to deliver defined business outcomes. The purpose of the contracting system is to deliver industrial-scale, world-class contracting support by maximising resource leverage and productivity enablement.

That purpose is formally captured and enforced through:

◼️ Group Legal Policy: enterprise-wide legal risk guidance
◼️ Legal Department Service Charter: Legal’s mandate, scope, and service boundaries
◼️ Contracting Parameters:  practical translation of policy into contracting guardrails

These assets are collectively empowered by a Legal Department mandate, establishing Legal’s authority, scope, and ownership of contracting risk and outcomes.

2. Controlled Demand

Work enters the system intentionally, visibly, and under governance.  Demand is structured before capacity is consumed. Contracting work does not arrive through urgency, escalation, or informal channels.

This principle is driven by:

◼️ Legal Services Request Form: controlled intake of contracting demand
◼️ Contracting Analytics: visibility over demand patterns and workflow pressure
◼️ Review Protocols: defined sequencing, escalation, and review authority
◼️ Risk Sign-Off: formal ownership of risk exceptions

These stations ensure demand is understood, prioritised, and governed.

3. Standardised Inputs

Work starts from a consistent baseline.

Upstream variability is reduced before legal effort begins, enabling speed, safe delegation, and predictability.

This principle is delivered through:

◼️ Templates: approved contract structures for repeatable use
◼️ Clause Bank: pre-approved legal positions embedded into drafting
◼️ SMART Schedules: structured schedules reducing bespoke drafting
◼️ Checklists: completeness and risk-control tools
◼️ Playbooks: standard negotiation positions and decision logic

These assets define approved starting positions for contracting activity.

4. Engineered Workflow

Steps, hand-offs, and decisions are deliberately designed. Contracting does not rely on implied sequencing or informal authority. Flow, escalation, and approvals are explicitly engineered.

This principle is reflected in:

◼️ Review Protocols: engineered review sequencing and escalation
◼️ Risk Sign-Off: controlled exception handling within workflow
◼️ Negotiations: managed negotiation process rather than ad-hoc interaction
◼️ Playbooks: workflow-embedded negotiation logic
◼️ Document Authoring & Execution Tools: standardised drafting and execution environment
◼️ E-Signatures: controlled execution and auditability
◼️ Contract Lifecycle Management Platform (CLMS): system of record for lifecycle flow

Together, these stations define predictable end-to-end flow.

5. Right-Sized Resourcing

Work is done at the lowest competent cost whilst still maintaining required performance standards. Capacity is deliberately engineered. Senior judgement is reserved for true exceptions; structured work is safely delegated.

This principle is enabled by:

◼️ Full-Time Legal Team: core contracting capability (Human Capital Line)
◼️ Agile / Flexible Resources: surge and specialist capacity (Human Capital Line)
◼️ Playbooks: safe delegation through encoded judgement
◼️ Checklists: execution control without senior review
◼️ Self-Help Resources: business-facing tools reducing legal touch
◼️ Review Protocols: structured escalation preventing over-lawyering

The system multiplies talent rather than consuming it.

6. Embedded Quality

Risk and error controls are built in, not inspected later. Quality is designed into assets and workflows rather than relying on post-hoc review.

This principle is driven by:

◼️ Playbooks: embedded risk positions and fallback logic
◼️ Clause Bank: pre-approved legal risk controls
◼️ Risk Sign-Off: formalised exception governance
◼️ Quality Assurance & Auditing: systemic quality and compliance checks
◼️ Checklists: execution-level risk controls
◼️ Contracting Analytics: visibility into quality and error patterns
◼️ Document Authoring & Execution Tools:drafting and execution safeguards

Quality becomes systemic, not discretionary.

7. Performance Visibility

Speed, cost, quality, and risk are measurable. Contracting performance is observable in real terms, not inferred from anecdote.

This principle is delivered through:

◼️ Contracting Analytics: insight into volume, cycle time, and risk
◼️ Contract Performance:  post-signature monitoring of obligations and outcomes
◼️ Deal Memory: institutional record of negotiated outcomes

Visibility enables control, prioritisation, and investment decisions.

8. Feedback Loops

Learning is institutionalised, not individual. Exceptions and outcomes feed back into the system so improvement is continuous and repeatable.

This principle is reinforced through:

◼️ Deal Memory: reuse of past positions and outcomes
◼️ Quality Assurance & Auditing: systematic identification of issues
◼️ Contract Performance: outcome-based learning
◼️ Value Seepage Recovery: identification and recovery of lost commercial value
◼️ Knowledge Line Support: institutionalisation of learning

Lessons are embedded into assets, not trapped in experience.

9. Technology Enablement

Technology amplifies a designed system. Technology is applied after the system is engineered. It accelerates discipline; it does not create it.

This principle is supported by:

◼️ Contract Lifecycle Management Platform (CLMS): lifecycle governance, data, and control
◼️ Legal Tech Contracting Tools: targeted technology amplifying engineered processes
◼️ Document Authoring & Execution Tools: drafting and execution efficiency
◼️ E-Signatures: controlled execution at scale
◼️ Contracting Analytics: performance insight and diagnostics

Technology scales what already works. GLS have developed the GLS Technology Doctrine in order to help legal teams engage with legal tech safely and successfully. 

10. End-to-End Value Protection

(Emergent property of the full system)

Value is preserved beyond signature.  Contracting performance extends through execution and lifecycle management.

This principle is realised through:

◼️ Contract Administration: lifecycle management post-execution
◼️ Dispute Detection: early identification of dispute signals
◼️ Value Seepage Recovery: recovery of lost commercial value
◼️ Contract Performance: monitoring obligations and outcomes

Value protection becomes systemic, not reactive.

The Contracting Line Is Part of a Larger System

Within the GLS Transformation Tube Map, no line is designed to operate in isolation.

The performance of the GLS Contracting Line is deliberately influenced by — and dependent on — other lines on the GLS Legal Team Transformation Tube Map. Contracting draws on shared capabilities such as human capital, analytics, knowledge, and technology, which are engineered elsewhere in the system rather than duplicated on every line.

For that reason, the Contracting Line is not incomplete — it is contextually complete. It is designed to function as part of an integrated operating system, where each line reinforces the others.

The GLS Transformation Tube Map reflects how high-performing legal functions actually work: as connected systems, not silos.

Can the GLS Contracting Line Help You?

Most in-house legal leaders recognise the symptoms. What is often less clear is why those problems persist — and why incremental fixes fail.

Below are ten common contracting performance issues, and how they almost always trace back to missing performance-engineering principles that are now built into the GLS Contracting Line.

This Is Where the Contracting Line Earns Its Keep

◼️ Slow cycle times → lack of Controlled Demand and Engineered Workflow
Work arrives unpredictably, approvals loop, and flow is repeatedly disrupted.

◼️ Inconsistent risk positions → lack of Embedded Quality and Standardised Inputs
Risk is carried in individual judgement rather than encoded into assets and process.

◼️ Senior lawyer overload → lack of Right-Sized Resourcing
Senior time is consumed by structured, repeatable work that could be safely delegated.

◼️ Under-leveraged junior capability → lack of Standardised Inputs, Playbooks, and Self-Help
Juniors wait for review instead of operating within engineered guardrails.

◼️ Ad-hoc or bloated template libraries → lack of Clear Purpose, Standardised Inputs, and Technology Enablement discipline
Templates accumulate without architectural intent, governance, or enforcement.

◼️ Inconsistent negotiation behaviour → lack of Embedded Quality, Engineered Workflow, and Standardised Input guardrails
Positions drift because escalation logic is unclear and templates lack in-built controls.

◼️ Poor visibility over contracting performance → lack of Performance Visibility
Decisions are made on instinct, guesswork and hunch - rather than defensible and justifiable data.

◼️ Repeated rework and looping reviews → lack of Engineered Workflow and Controlled Demand
The system allows work to bounce rather than flow.

◼️ CLMS disappointment → performance-engineering principles ignored
Technology is asked to fix what was never designed or engineered.

◼️ Shadow legal teams emerging in the business → lack of Clear Purpose, Standardised Inputs, and Controlled Demand
The business routes around Legal when friction exceeds perceived value.

If any of these sound familiar, the issue is unlikely to be effort, intent, or competence.

It is almost always structural. And you can start addressing these performance issues via the Contracting Line on the GLS Transformation Tube Map.

How to Use the GLS Contracting Line

The GLS Contracting Line is designed to be used, not admired.

It gives you a visual, intuitive depiction of a world-class contracting function, structured so you can explore it intuitively and with confidence — knowing that what sits beneath is a performance-engineered system, not a collection of best practices.

A practical way to use the Line is as follows:

◼️ Review the Line holistically
+ Understand what “complete” looks like before deciding what to fix.

◼️ Explore individual stations
+ Each Station explains:
- what that capability should encompass
- the value it generates when done well
- the productivity, risk, and cost consequences when it is under-developed
- the best practice features you should consider
◼️ Diagnose before acting
+ Use the stations and the performance principles to identify where your system is weak — not just where it is noisy.

◼️ Access deeper intelligence
+ Each station links to Related Knowledge — detailed blogs, tools, and guidance that allow you to go deeper on specific issues.
+ We pride ourselves on our intelligence being  the world class and leading freely available intelligence available globally 

◼️ Choose how far you go
+ Some teams will self-educate and self-sequence.
+ Others will use the Line to shape internal conversations with IT, procurement, or leadership.
+ Some will identify where external support could accelerate outcomes.

The Line is deliberately designed to support learning, diagnosis, and action — at whatever depth is appropriate for your environment.

What Next

If you do nothing else, do this: establish the baseline of your legal team's curernt performance against the best practices that we have shared with you.

Whether you intend to optimise the entire GLS Contracting Line or focus on a single station, meaningful improvement requires current-state data. Without it, prioritisation is guesswork and sequencing is speculative.

The GLS Contracting Line shows you what good looks like.
A current-state assessment tells you where you actually are.

GLS has deliberately shared enough intelligence for teams to engage with this material independently - helping you “self help” and reduce cost pressures. If, however, you want help accelerating progress — or you are facing a CLMS implementation and want to avoid hard-coding today’s problems into tomorrow’s platform — we can support you with:

◼️ contracting function efficiency assessments
◼️ workflow and demand diagnostics
◼️ sequencing and CLMS-readiness support
◼️ the optimisation of each and every Station on the GLS Transformation Tube Map.

The choice is yours.
The system is now visible.