How to run a contract review and approval workflow
A contract review workflow exists to make sure the right contracts get scrutiny and the routine ones do not queue behind them. In Jestor, a review request carries the contract, the commercial context and a risk classification, and routing depends on that classification rather than on who asked first.
Why legal becomes a bottleneck
Legal receives contracts as attachments in emails, with no context about the deal, the counterparty or the deadline. Establishing that context takes longer than the review itself.
Everything then queues in arrival order, so an urgent renewal waits behind a routine agreement.
What structured intake fixes:
- Contracts arriving without commercial context
- Legal asking the same questions on every request
- No prioritization beyond who asked first
- Standard agreements consuming specialist time
- No record of which clauses were negotiated
Routing by risk, not by value
| Category | Typical route | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Standard template, unmodified | Self service approval | Already reviewed once |
| Template with minor edits | Fast review | Only the changes need attention |
| Counterparty paper | Full review | Unknown terms throughout |
| Unusual liability or term | Full review plus escalation | Risk sits outside the norm |
| Renewal, unchanged | Light review | Terms already accepted |
Step by step to build it
- Create the request form, requiring counterparty, value, deadline and purpose.
- Ask whether it is your template or theirs, which is the single best risk signal.
- Attach the document, rendered inside the card so review needs no download.
- Classify risk on submission, driving the route.
- Set deadlines per route, so fast reviews are genuinely fast.
- Record negotiated clauses as structured fields, not only in the document.
- Feed approved contracts into the contract registry with their renewal dates.
Why recording negotiated clauses separately matters
A signed contract holds the answer, but finding which of two hundred agreements included a particular concession means opening all of them. Capturing the handful of clauses you actually negotiate as fields turns that into a filter.
Why choose Jestor
In Jestor, requests arrive through forms with conditional fields, documents render inside the card, routing and deadlines follow the risk classification, and approved contracts flow into a registry where OCR extracts dates and values and automations alert before renewal. Permissions keep sensitive terms restricted per role and field.
Frequently Asked Questions
What should route a contract to full review?
Whether it is on the counterparty's paper, which is a better signal than value alone. See jestor.com.
Does legal need to download the document?
No. The document renders inside the card.
Why capture clauses as fields?
So you can filter across contracts instead of opening each one.
Video Tutorial: Step by Step
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