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ARTICLE · 09 JUNE 2026

Contract Lifecycle Management And Why Legal Teams Need It

Contract lifecycle management has become the most widely adopted legal technology tool in corporate legal departments, addressing fundamental challenges around contract visibility, workflow automation, and risk management. Legal operations expert Jeff Reisner breaks down the CLM landscape, implementation considerations, and why this technology has emerged as the foundational piece most legal teams tackle first when modernizing their operations.

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Ask legal ops professionals what keeps them up at night, and contracts will come up almost every time. Where are they? Who has them? What stage are they in? When do they renew?

These are not complicated questions, but without the right infrastructure, they are nearly impossible to answer consistently. And that’s exactly why contract lifecycle management (CLM) software has become the single most adopted legal technology tool across corporate legal departments today.

During a two-part continuing legal education series hosted by Axiom, I shared my experience as a veteran legal operations professional and walked through the full landscape of legal tech tools, real-world implementation scenarios, and the decision-making process organizations go through when modernizing how they work. CLM came up again and again, not as a nice-to-have but as the foundational piece most legal teams tackle first. Here is what you need to know.

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