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Legal teams today face growing pressure to move faster, do more with less, and support the wider business without becoming a bottleneck.
But many are still bogged down by clunky processes, scattered tools, and endless admin, from chasing approvals to wrangling version control in email threads.
The solution? Automating those legal workflows that hold your team back. And this guide gives you everything you need to start.
What is legal workflow automation?
Legal workflow automation refers to the use of technology to standardize and streamline legal processes that are repetitive, rules-based, and time-consuming. It allows teams to create step-by-step workflows, from intake to approval to signature, that run on logic rather than manual intervention.
Instead of manually creating contracts, chasing approvals, or managing version control in email threads, you can build automated systems that:
- Generate contracts from templated documents
- Route requests or documents for review based on deal value, region, or risk
- Trigger eSignature collection when approvals are complete
- Send reminders or escalate delays automatically
- Track obligations, renewals, or other post-signature actions
Legal workflow automation frees legal teams from routine admin, speeds up contract cycles, and ensures consistency across every agreement — all while maintaining control and visibility.
Do you need AI to automate your workflows?
There’s a common misconception that legal workflow automation automatically mandates the use of AI. In reality, in-house legal departments were beginning to automate their processes long before AI’s surge in popularity back in 2023.
You don’t need the flashiest AI tools to get started with legal workflow automation.
That said, AI has certainly expanded these use cases and increased executive buy-in for such automation, with our recent survey revealing that 93% of CEOs and CFOs are encouraging in-house legal teams to do more with AI.
7 legal workflows worth automating
You don’t need to automate everything. The repetitive processes that slow you down most and fulfil you the least are a good place to start. Here are some ideas for legal workflows that are ripe for automation.
Here are some common examples of legal automation in practice that we hear from in-house legal teams daily:
1. Low-risk document generation
Legal documents like NDAs are typically high-volume, low-risk, and rarely bespoke. With automation, business users can generate and send NDAs using pre-approved and automated templates. This means no more emails to legal asking for the latest version, and no delays for standard agreements.
With Juro, the team can leave a pitch and have a contract sent out within ten minutes, not two days. That’s a big win considering the most dangerous part of a sales cycle is when the prospect is waiting to receive more information from you" - Jessica Zwaan, COO at Talentful
2. Contract requests (intake)
Unstructured requests along the lines of "Can you take a look at this?" are a recipe for delays.
A smart intake form or intuitive legal front door captures the right details up front (e.g. counterparty name, contract type, deal value), routes the request appropriately, and ensures legal has what it needs from the start.
3. Sales contract workflows
When sales can generate contracts directly from the CRM using logic-driven templates, the process speeds up dramatically. Legal stays in the loop for high-value or high-risk deals, but isn’t blocking every order form. Integrations with Salesforce or HubSpot are key.
To explore what’s possible and how, start here:
- How to manage contracts in HubSpot
- How to manage contracts in Salesforce
- How to manage contracts in Pipedrive
4. Approval routing
Many teams set up conditional logic to trigger the right contract review process every time. For example, a contract over $100K routes to finance and legal, while a smaller deal gets fast-tracked past these reviewers by default.
This removes legal from being a middleman and ensures approvals are consistent and audit-ready where those extra eyes are needed.
For the best results, we recommend routing contracts for approval based on value, region, entity, or risk level. All of this is possible within Juro.
Juro’s approval sequences mean we can route sales contracts for their approval before they’re shared with counterparties for signature" - Christian Reynolds, Director of Compliance at Coviance
5. Redlining and clause review
Use clause libraries and escalation rules to empower business teams to negotiate within boundaries. Again, this means that legal only steps in when fallback positions are exhausted or risk thresholds are breached. Lots of in-house legal teams are already using basic contract negotiation playbooks to achieve this.
The next step is upgrading these playbooks and using them to enable AI to do a first pass of reviewing contracts on your behalf. We explore this use case in lots more detail in our guide to AI contract negotiation.
6. Signature collection
Instead of downloading a contract, uploading it to an eSignature tool, and emailing back and forth, consider how you can integrate eSigning better into your existing workflows.
For example, when you choose a platform like Juro, you can trigger signing requests once approvals are done, track signature status in real time, and avoid the chaos that is unstructured version control.
7. Renewal and obligation tracking
A contract having a signature doesn’t mean it is finished with. Many successful teams use automation to set reminders for renewal deadlines, payment milestones, or compliance checkpoints.
This reduces risk and ensures obligations don’t get lost in spreadsheets or inboxes. Using a tool like Juro, you can set reminders for key dates and obligations so you never miss those looming renewals, notice periods, or compliance deadlines.
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How to automate legal workflows
Start by mapping what’s really happening
Before you build anything, you need to see the full picture. Sketch out how your current workflow actually runs today — not how it’s supposed to work. Who's involved? What tools are used? Where do things get stuck?
Maybe sales is copy-pasting from a six-month-old MSA in Google Drive. Maybe approvals vanish in someone's inbox. Maybe legal’s spending half its time chasing missing intake info. Get it all down. Flowcharts or even messy whiteboard diagrams help here.
You’re not just documenting for the sake of it — you’re trying to spot where manual effort could be replaced with automation, and where the process needs cleaning up before it’s worth automating.
Define the logic behind each step
Once you’ve mapped the workflow, it’s time to add the rules. This is where you figure out what should happen when, and who’s involved at each point.
Think through:
- When does legal need to be involved?
- What deal sizes trigger finance approval?
- Do certain jurisdictions need specific clauses or sign-off?
For example:
- If it’s an NDA under £25K → no legal review → go straight to eSignature.
- If the counterparty is in Germany → use the EU template and route to the DACH legal team.
- If the term is over 24 months → escalate to general counsel.
You’re building the decision tree that your tool will use later. You want to keep it as clear and unambiguous as possible, because ambiguity is where legal workflow automation breaks.
Standardize your templates and playbooks
Next, you’ll need to tidy up your templates. You can’t automate a process that uses ten versions of the same document or lets people negotiate terms ad hoc. Instead, you need to:
- Use smart templates with dynamic fields for names, pricing, or territories.
- Build a clause library with pre-approved fallback positions.
- Create clear and practical contract playbooks: what’s negotiable, what’s fixed, and when to escalate.
- Establish a coherent, granular contract management policy.
This is your opportunity to run a tight ship when it comes to outdated documentation, old contract versions, and freehand terms. The more consistent and prescriptive your inputs are, the smoother your workflow runs.
Pitfalls to avoid
Even with the right tech stack and good intentions, legal workflow automation can go sideways. These mistakes are common — and costly — but they’re also avoidable if you know what to look for.
Here are some common pitfalls to avoid:
- Automating bad processes: If your manual process is slow and inconsistent, automation will just replicate that mess faster. Fix the process first, then scale and automate it later.
- Too much complexity, too soon: Over-complicating flows with 15 logic branches or nested approvals will slow you down and confuse stakeholders from the beginning. Start with the basics and work upwards from there.
- Setting and forgetting: Workflow automation isn’t a one-and-done project. It’s a system that needs tuning, ownership, and buy-in to keep working well. If you neglect it, you may aswell forget it.
- Ignoring the end user: Adoption is one of the biggest barriers for getting any legal tech solution approved and implemented. Just remember: if it’s confusing, clunky, or hidden behind logins and training decks, it won’t be adopted.
- Choosing the wrong tool for the job: A tool that’s too simple or too complex will go unused. Be realistic about what a company of your size and scale actually needs, and don’t opt for heavyweight tools to solve simple problems.
Modern legal teams don’t have the bandwidth to handle every single contract task themselves. But business teams don’t want to work in legacy CLMs or across disjointed tools.
Juro is different. We embed automation and AI in the tools business teams use every day, so they can agree and manage contracts end-to-end. And for lawyers, our uniquely flexible platform lets them stay in control - even as contract volumes increase.
Legal workflow automation isn’t about replacing lawyers. It’s about removing friction, scaling efficiently, and letting legal teams focus on strategic work.
With Juro, you can:
- Build automated contract templates with smart fields and clause logic
- Create self-serve intake flows for NDAs, MSAs, order forms, and more
- Route contracts for approval based on value, geography, or contract type
- Sign agreements natively with built-in eSignature
- Track every contract in a searchable contract dashboard, from draft to renewal
- Automate the review of third-party contracts with AI contract review
Juro gives you everything you need to automate the process end to end. Just ask the innovative companies using Juro to power 2.5 million contracts worldwide. To find out more, hit the button below.
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