The demos all look impressive. But AI is only as good as the data beneath it. A legacy CLM that can’t capture the full extent of your contract data still needs a human to open the document — so the AI sits on top, surfacing metadata fields without understanding the legal and commercial context underneath. Impressive in demos. Impractical in the real world.
What you’ll find in this paper:
The four stages of CLM modernization, and how to tell which one you’re in
Why “adding AI” to a legacy system doesn’t work — and what a real data foundation looks like
What changes at each stage: the current state, the challenge, and the move forward
How contracting shifts from a system of record to a source of enterprise intelligence