The CFO Takeover: Why Legal Teams Are Losing Control of Contracts (And Why That’s a Good Thing)

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By Matt Lhoumeau, CEO of Concord

The robots aren’t coming for lawyers’ jobs. But something more interesting is happening: companies are realizing they don’t need lawyers for most contracts in the first place.

After a decade of watching how small and mid-sized companies handle their agreements, I’ve discovered something that might shock traditional legal departments: 65% of our 1,500+ customers don’t have a legal team at all. Not a single lawyer on staff.

And here’s the thing—these companies aren’t struggling. They’re thriving.

The great contract shift

When we started Concord ten years ago, contracts were universally considered “legal’s problem.” That was the default assumption nobody questioned.

But over the past five years, we’ve watched a massive shift that’s reshaping how businesses function. CFOs and COOs are now taking ownership of contracts, treating them as operational tools rather than legal documents requiring specialized knowledge.

This isn’t just my observation. A 2023 Thomson Reuters study found that 76% of legal departments are now outsourcing routine contract work, with many companies shifting contract ownership to operations and finance teams.

Why? Because it makes fundamental sense. CFOs manage how money moves in and out of a company. Contracts govern those movements. The connection is obvious once you stop viewing contracts through the old legal lens.

What a contract really is

Let’s be honest about what a contract really is. It’s not a legal document. It’s a business process.

Whether you buy something, sell something, or hire someone, there’s always a contract in the middle. It’s how you start a relationship. The legal aspect is just one small part.

KPMG’s 2023 Contract Management Survey confirms this shift, finding that responsibility for contract management has migrated dramatically, with finance and operations now controlling the contract function in 57% of organizations—up from just 35% five years ago.

The negotiation myth

Here’s another reality check: more than 90% of the contracts signed on our platform have zero negotiation. They’re just getting signed.

Think about your own contracts:

  • HR documents are templatized
  • Your customer contracts are probably templatized
  • And when you sign up with a vendor? You’re using their template

If you’re not Walmart negotiating with Procter & Gamble, you probably don’t have the leverage to change much anyway. So why waste time pretending?

This matches World Commerce & Contracting research showing that for most companies, only 12% of contracts undergo significant negotiation. For the rest, legal review adds time without adding value.

Where AI really fits

The headlines love to claim AI will replace lawyers. That’s missing the point entirely.

AI isn’t creating this trend—it’s accelerating a change that was already happening.

Contract management software with AI capabilities gives everyone access to legal knowledge they didn’t have before. You can put your contract into specialized tools and get an instant first review to understand if there’s a problem—a missing clause, poor wording, or inconsistencies.

This first-level analysis used to require a lawyer. Now, anyone can do it.

Even the American Bar Association acknowledges that AI tools are already performing first-pass contract reviews with 90%+ accuracy for standard agreements. We’re not talking future technology—this is happening right now.

The construction company with no lawyers

If you run a company with fewer than 500 employees, the writing is on the wall: by 2035, you probably won’t need any legal people involved in your routine contracts.

This isn’t speculation. It’s already happening.

Last week, I met with a 300-person construction company in Texas that’s been around for 70 years. They have no legal team anymore. They’ve outsourced everything, using contract lifecycle management software to manage their agreements instead.

According to McKinsey research, this pattern is accelerating. Their analysis shows that by 2030, approximately 23% of current legal work will be fully automated, with another 30% significantly augmented by technology—numbers that are even higher for routine contract tasks.

The future is already here

Need to understand exactly how this shift works in practice? Consider these numbers:

  1. 90% of NDAs and vendor agreements now pass without a single edit
  2. 40% of companies are outsourcing routine legal tasks
  3. CFOs, not Legal, increasingly own contract processes

MIT Sloan Management Review recently highlighted how this transition is already visible at Fortune 500 companies, with legal departments shifting to “business enablement” roles rather than contract reviewers. If the giants are making this move, the middle market is sure to follow.

What’s coming next

If we take a step back and ask what contracts would look like if we invented them today, we’d create something radically different from the documents we use now.

Current contracts are extremely inefficient. They’re all different. Critical information is buried in the middle of 15 clauses. Important dates are scattered throughout dozens of pages.

The World Economic Forum estimates that inefficient contracts cost the global economy over $2 trillion annually. This isn’t just a legal problem—it’s a massive economic drag.

In 10 years, AI will help transform contracts into something more like term sheets—simple tables showing exactly what the agreement means. You’ll immediately know where to look whether it’s a customer contract or vendor agreement.

Long term, I believe we’re heading toward smart contracts—not necessarily blockchain-based ones, but agreements where computers negotiate directly with each other based on parameters set by humans. This isn’t science fiction. It’s the logical endpoint of the trends we’re already seeing.

The choice is yours

The winners in this new landscape will be companies that stop treating contracts like it’s 1990 and start using them as strategic business assets.

For legal professionals, the message is clear: evolve or become irrelevant for most everyday contract work. The highest value won’t be in reviewing standard agreements—it will be in strategic guidance and complex negotiations.

Less is more. I learned this lesson the hard way. Five years ago, I was the person pushing for “just 10 more lines of code” when building our platform. Now I see what we pay for that approach. Technical debt is real, and it’s the same with contracts.

The question isn’t whether this transformation will happen. It’s whether you’ll be ahead of the curve or playing catch-up.


Matt Lhoumeau is the co-founder and CEO of Concord, a contract management platform used by over 1,500 SMB and mid-market companies worldwide. Before moving to the US, Matt worked alongside iconic leaders like former French President Nicholas Sarkozy and founded his first company at age 17.

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