A guide to Word contract management for businesses in 2025

Businesses are at a crossroads when it comes to contract management. 

Many legal teams are adopting automation to streamline workflows, while others rely on Microsoft Word—familiar and comfortable, but increasingly inefficient as contract volumes grow.

In fact, a recent survey revealed that 90 per cent of legal professionals use Word daily, spending hours in the tool.

We all know that Word has long been the default for contracts. But is it still the right tool today?

As legal teams weigh the trade-offs between static files and automated solutions, it’s time to ask: is Word slowing you down? And if it is, what are your options? Find out in this deep-dive.

Can you manage contracts in Word?

Many legal teams can and do rely on Word to draft, edit, and negotiate contracts. With tracked changes, version history, and PDF exports, it covers the basics. 

But as contract volumes grow, so do the challenges.

Without built-in workflows, approvals, or structured data, managing contracts in Word means juggling email chains, multiple versions, and shared drives. This slows negotiations, increases risk, and makes it harder to track key obligations. 

‍

While Word excels at word processing, it wasn’t built to handle the complexities of the contract lifecycle. Let’s deep-dive those complexities now.

1. Creating contracts in Word

Since it is impossible to automate contract templates in Word, Word-based agreements are often created by copying and pasting from previous agreements or outdated templates. This increases the risk of human error, such as forgetting to update key details like party names, pricing, or jurisdiction clauses. 

For example, a sales team might reuse an old contract template but fail to remove outdated payment terms, leading to risk, confusion and delays.

2. Negotiating contracts in Word 

Redlining in Word is manual and error-prone. If a user forgets to enable tracked changes, edits can slip through unnoticed. Since Word documents are often shared via email, multiple versions quickly circulate, making it hard to track who changed what and when.

For example, during an MSA negotiation, the vendor’s legal team might update liability terms in their version of the contract, but the customer’s procurement team—working from an older draft—doesn’t see the change. 

When legal reviews the final document, they discover inconsistencies, forcing both parties to backtrack and restart negotiations.

3. Approving contracts in Word

Word lacks built-in approval workflows, meaning teams rely on email or messaging apps for sign-off. This creates bottlenecks, especially when multiple stakeholders—such as finance, legal, and operations—need to review a contract.

Take an NDA for a new partnership: the business team needs approval from legal and finance, but the contract sits unread in a manager’s inbox for days. No one has visibility into where the contract is stuck as there’s no single source of truth, delaying execution and jeopardizing the partnership altogether. 

4. Signing contracts in Word 

While Word allows for basic electronic signatures, signing a contract in Word is rarely a smooth experience. 

To sign a contract in Word, users typically:

• Convert the document to a PDF
• Upload it to an eSignature tool like DocuSign or Adobe Sign.
• Send it for signature
• Wait for all parties to sign
• Download and store the final signed version manually

This process introduces friction—documents can get lost in email chains, signatories might miss requests, and the final signed version often ends up buried in someone’s inbox. 

5. Tracking contracts in Word

Once signed, Word contracts become static files stored in email threads or scattered across shared drives. The data within them is rarely tracked, and if it is, it’s by manually populating a contract management spreadsheet in Excel. 

Without structured contract metadata, businesses struggle to track key dates, renewal deadlines, and obligations. 

A SaaS company managing vendor agreements in Word might miss an auto-renewal clause, locking them into an unfavorable contract for another year.

Alternatives to Word for contract management

With growing pressure to do more with less, traditional contract processes are no longer sustainable.

Fortunately, businesses have alternatives to Word, with contract lifecycle management tools like Juro offering a more efficient, scalable solution. 

Here’s how Juro compares to Word:

‍

In short: CLMs like Juro replace a fragmented approach with a faster, smarter, and more collaborative way to manage contracts. 

From automated contract creation to real-time negotiation, seamless approvals, built-in eSignature, and a structured contract repository, Juro streamlines the entire contract lifecycle in one platform.

The result? Fewer manual tasks, faster contract cycles, and greater visibility into contract data—without the version control chaos of Word.

We’re not spending nearly as much time as a legal team on contracts - legal is saving at least 12 hours a week on contract review by using Juro" - Ryan Zahrai, Head of Legal, Eucalyptus

For legal and business teams looking to move faster while staying in control, a CLM isn’t just an upgrade. It’s a necessity.

How to bridge the gap between Word and CLMs

For many legal teams, Word remains a key part of contract workflows. Whether it’s internal teams preferring familiar tools or counterparties pushing for Word-based negotiations, moving away from Word entirely isn’t always an option. 

But that doesn’t mean legal teams have to sacrifice efficiency or visibility they’ve gained through implementing a CLM. 

With Juro’s Word Add-In, businesses can work flexibly across both platforms—leveraging Word’s familiarity while ensuring contracts remain structured, trackable, and centralized in Juro.

This means that: 

• Counterparties can work in Word while Juro automatically captures changes, keeping a clear, searchable record of every contract version.
• Legal teams stay in control with centralized tracking, ensuring no edits are lost and every contract remains accessible.
• Workflows stay efficient by bridging Word and Juro, so contracts move seamlessly from drafting to approval, signing, and storage—all in one place.

To find out more about Juro’s Microsoft Word add-in, fill in the form below to book a personalized demo.