The Endless Redlining Cycle: It’s Time to Break Free

Redlining. No matter what you might think, no lawyer looks forward to it. It’s time-consuming, always accompanied by a ton of pressure, and requires lawyers to be legal experts, project managers, document administrators, and secretaries. I’ve been there—spending hours emailing versions back and forth, chasing down stakeholders and subject matter experts, and trying to find where exactly did I file that email from the head of product that explained the limitations of the technology on the SLA commitments. All the while trying to juggles phone calls and emails from my colleague-client who wants to know if I’m done yet. The process isn’t just exhausting; it took me away from the high-priority strategic work that I was hired to do.

I can hear you asking already, though:

“But isn’t this what lawyers do? Handle all the detail and fact gathering so that you can advise the client on the best path forward to minimize legal risks?”

Yes…and I used to bill a lot of hours as outside counsel doing that work. When I moved in-house, though, I realized the in-house role was quite different. My success was no longer based on how many hours I could bill, but on getting deals done with the right level of risk. My goals were now more focused on partnering with the business to ensure they knew the legal risk so that only acceptable risks were taken. But I still had to learn the business and manage the work, but now without my legal secretary (sigh…still miss you, Molly!) and library research assistants.

As a former engineer who focused on process quality and efficiency, I looked to any chance I could get to optimize the negotiation and redline process – and to stop spending so much time exchanging redlines. I was limited, though, to the IT tools and platforms I had available to me and could never get anything to work exactly how I wanted it to.

As my personal interests got me more and more involved in the startup community, and I learned how LLMs could power technology that provided me with an automated research assistant, project manager, and legal secretary, I realized that the prior vision is more possible now than it ever had been – and I wanted to share it.  From that, V4 Final was born: V1 is the template. V2 is the redline. V3 is the response. V4 should be final – ready to sign and move on to the next deal.

Are you tired of endless redlines? Comment below if this resonates or sign up for updates to learn more about how V4Final is streamlining contract negotiations for in-house legal teams. Get to V4 and make it Final.