How Paddle creates and sends contracts out in four clicks with Juro

A lean legal team vs a manual workflow

Paddle’s legal team consisted of two lawyers and a paralegal, serving a rapidly-scaling sales function. The contract process left a lot to be desired, involving multiple tools and endless back and forth between sales, legal, and the counterparty. It went as follows:

• Sales rep saves a contract template from Google Drive and converts to PDF
• Rep sends the contract to the counterparty for signing via an eSignature tool
• If the counterparty requested redlines, rep converts the PDF back into a Google Doc
• Legal and the counterparty negotiate on this document, creating multiple versions
• Once both parties are satisfied, the contract returns to the eSigning tool 
• Final version is saved to Salesforce or a shared drive - but not in every case

This manual process was painful for both sales and legal, as Callum Hamlett, Senior Revenue Operations Analyst at Paddle, explained. 

“It would take a sales rep at least 30 minutes to download a template and adjust the information. On top of that, legal had to invest a chunk of time into reviewing the document.”

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Clio Anderson Garwood, Senior Legal Counsel at Paddle, recounted the negotiation and review process: “in a perfect world, without edits or redlines, we could probably get contracts out for signing in minutes - but that perfect world didn’t exist! Deviations from standard terms and back-and-forth negotiations would take up three to four hours of legal’s time, per contract.”

Not only was this process a huge time drain for legal, but it led to a lack of transparency and visibility.

“There was no oversight on the process,” Clio said. ”We couldn’t revise live from our eSignature tool, and as soon as deviation from standard terms took place, there were too many moving pieces for legal to track.” 

What did Paddle need?

The legal team wanted a contract automation solution that could help legal mitigate risk and maintain control of their contracts. 

In addition Clio wanted “a solution where legal could also upload third-party supplier agreements, and use a search tool to find them as and when we needed them,” meaning the solution needed to cover both self-serve automation and a data-rich repository.

Sales wanted a solution that would eliminate the pain of navigating between multiple tools. “From a revenue operations perspective, you’re facing so many pains, you have to prioritize the pains that you need to resolve immediately," rather than jumping between platforms, said Callum.

“With contracts, we reached a point where the legal pain was being felt by both sales and legal. We had to find a solution.”

All-in-one contract automation

In 2021, Paddle implemented Juro (integrated with Salesforce) following a GC’s recommendation. Juro’s implementation team collaborated with Paddle to get them up and running in record time - “we were sending contracts for signing after ten days,” said Callum.

For legal, value came even faster. “We uploaded our legacy contracts and made them searchable, and I was seeing the value by day two. It was so easy to mass upload into Juro - where contracts are accessible within a few clicks. It’s so much easier to pull documents out of Juro than it ever was out of a shared drive.”

• ‍Self-serve contracts: “before, it would take sales 30 minutes to prepare and send a contract - now sales can generate contracts and send them for signing in just two.”
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• Contract workflow: “Juro’s in-browser negotiation means legal doesn’t need to dip in and out of the eSigning tool - instead, I can be on a call with the prospect, editing a document in real time, and they can sign it two minutes later."
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• Contract repository: “sales has gone from using three tools, a shared drive, emails, PDFs, and involving the legal team, to having one tool for everything.”
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• ‍Time-savings: “sales has spent less time on legal contracts – and at the same time, streamlined the workflow and mitigated risk, all thanks to Juro.”

Contracts generated and approved in four clicks

Thanks to Juro, legal and sales at Paddle have a unified workspace for contracts that helps the business mitigate risk and maintain control.

Implementing a contracts platform has also had huge time-saving benefits for both teams - “it takes the sales team four clicks to generate and approve a contract in Juro. There’s less manual work, less admin, and we’re saving 25 minutes per contract,” Callum said.

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Clio had a similar experience in the legal team: “we’re saving at least three and a half hours per contract now, thanks to Juro.”

The impact of all-in-one contract automation extended beyond Paddle’s legal and sales teams, and the business recently moved to Juro’s enterprise plan. Now, Juro is used by sales, customer support, and account managers.

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“We started off using Juro as a minimum viable product for the sales team, and now we’re moving into other teams,” Callum said.

Juro enabled customer support to amend routine agreements without legal involvement, which allows legal to spend time on the work that really matters. “These tasks were perfect for Juro, because the template already existed,” Clio said.

“In a few clicks, the contracts are saved in one place, and we derisk in terms of data management and keeping track of our legal documents. When you’re pulling together a data room for a fundraise, this is invaluable.”

“Juro is a great platform for lean legal teams looking to have a bigger impact. You can do so much more, with so much less, just knowing that your risk is under control. I’d absolutely recommend Juro.”