Last month, I watched an AI agent negotiate a vendor contract with another AI agent. No humans were involved until the final sign-off, and no contract templates were necessary. The entire negotiation term adjustment, risk analysis, and clause optimization process took under three minutes. What would have taken our team days of back-and-forth was resolved before I finished my coffee.
That’s when it hit me: the contract templates we’ve been perfecting for decades are about to become as obsolete as fax machines.
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The Contract Templates Trap
For the past century, we’ve approached contracts the same way. Legal teams craft the “perfect” contract templates. Sales teams use it until they hit a snag. Legal updates the template. Rinse and repeat. It’s a system built on the assumption that we can anticipate every scenario, every negotiation point, every edge case.
But here’s the problem: we can’t. And we never could.
At my previous telecom job in France, I managed a thousand vendor contracts. Each one started from a template, but by the time negotiations were done, they were all different. The templates were just expensive starting points for what became manual, time-consuming negotiations.
Today at Concord, we see the same pattern. Companies spend months perfecting their contract templates, yet 90% of contracts still require some modification. The template becomes a straitjacket rather than a tool.
Enter the AI Negotiators
What’s happening now in contract management is fundamentally different from previous waves of automation. This isn’t about digitizing paper or adding e-signatures. It’s about AI systems that can understand context, assess risk, and make decisions.
Companies like Walmart and Maersk are already using AI agents to handle thousands of supplier negotiations simultaneously. These aren’t simple automated responses—they’re sophisticated systems that analyze historical data, market conditions, and company policies to negotiate optimal terms.
But here’s where it gets really interesting: what happens when AI negotiates with AI?
I’m already seeing this in our customer base. One client’s AI-powered contract workflow system now handles initial negotiations with vendors who also use AI tools. The result? Negotiations that used to take weeks now happen in hours, with better outcomes for both parties.
The Death of Static Contracts
Think about how we create contracts today. We start with a Word document—a static artifact from the typewriter era. We negotiate via email technology from the 1970s and store the final version as a PDF, a format designed to replicate paper.
It’s like we’re trying to run a modern business using stone tablets.
AI doesn’t need templates because it can generate optimal contract language in real-time based on:
- The specific context of each deal
- Historical performance data from similar agreements
- Current market conditions and regulatory requirements
- Both parties’ risk profiles and negotiation patterns
Instead of starting from a rigid template, AI can create bespoke agreements that are perfectly tailored to each situation. More importantly, these aren’t static documents—they’re living agreements that can adapt as conditions change.
The New Contract Paradigm
In five years, I predict contracts will look nothing like they do today. Instead of lengthy documents full of legalese, we’ll have structured data agreements—more like smart contracts than traditional documents.
Imagine contracts that:
- Auto-adjust terms based on performance metrics
- Flag compliance issues in real-time
- Suggest renegotiation when market conditions shift significantly
- Integrate directly with sales contract automation systems to update deal terms dynamically
This isn’t science fiction. The technology exists today. What’s missing is the mindset shift.
The Human Element
Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Matt, are you saying lawyers and contract managers will be obsolete?”
Not at all. But their role is fundamentally changing.
Instead of drafting contract templates and reviewing routine agreements, legal professionals will focus on:
- Setting strategic parameters for AI negotiations
- Handling complex, high-stakes deals that require human judgment
- Designing the business logic that powers AI decision-making
- Managing relationships and resolving disputes that require empathy and creativity
It’s similar to what happened with airline pilots. Autopilot handles most of the flight, but you still want a human in the cockpit for critical decisions.
Preparing for the Post-Template World
For companies still clinging to their template libraries, here’s my advice:
- Start small. Don’t try to AI-enable your entire contract process overnight. Select one high-volume, low-risk contract type and conduct an experiment.
- Focus on outcomes, not documents. Stop thinking about contracts as documents to be perfected. Think about them as data structures that define business relationships.
- Invest in data, not contract templates. The quality of your AI negotiations will depend on the quality of AI Insights DualMedia and your historical contract data. Start capturing and structuring that data now.
- Embrace dynamic agreements. Static contracts made sense in a paper world. In a digital world, contracts should be as dynamic as the businesses they serve.
The Bottom Line
The companies that will thrive in the next decade aren’t the ones with the best contract templates. They’re the ones who recognize that templates are a limitation, not an asset.
At Concord, we’re already seeing forward-thinking companies abandon their template libraries in favor of AI-driven contract generation. They’re not just saving time—they’re creating better agreements that actually reflect the nuances of each business relationship.
The age of the contract template is ending. The age of intelligent, adaptive agreements is just beginning.
And frankly, it’s about time. After spending six months of my life managing contracts in Excel, I’m ready for a world where AI handles the mundane so humans can focus on what really matters: building great businesses and relationships.
The future of contracts isn’t about better templates. It’s about no contract templates at all.
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Matt Lhoumeau is the co-founder and CEO of Concord, a contract management platform pioneering the shift from static templates to intelligent agreement workflows. Before founding Concord, Matt experienced firsthand the pain of manual contract management at a major telecom company, inspiring him to reimagine how businesses handle agreements in the AI era.
