The shift from siloed contract review process to integrated workflows within a combined CLM ecosystem.
Agiloft, a leader in data-first contract lifecycle management (CLM), announced on January 14, 2025, its acquisition of Screens, the Colorado-based provider of the world-first standards-based and community-supported generative AI contract review and redlining solution.
This marks a crucial leap both for the CLM field, and any customers looking to streamline redlining process and gain efficiencies in contract review. The combination of Screens and Agiloft signals a future of contract review as a vital part of the wider CLM ecosystem, a process that includes contract creation, negotiation, approval and execution.
The strategic acquisition aims to enhance Agiloft's Data-first Agreement Platform by standardizing the contract review process, ensuring consistency, and unlocking the value of contract data through a community of global expertise. It promises to deliver unprecedented user value by linking contract data, automation and expert knowledge into one seamless platform.
Screens' AI contract review technology centres on its customizable playbooks, which allow customers to rapidly assess contracts against defined standards without requiring the creation of a bespoke clause library. The playbooks are based on pre-defined contract standards and can be tailored to customers as needed. This will provide clients to build playbooks around their needs and gives lawyers and in-house teams the ability to scale knowledge and standardise best practices.
Additionally, a community of recognized legal experts offers freely available playbooks, enabling organizations to evaluate a contract's compliance against criteria created by individuals with domain experience.
By integrating Screens' technology, Agiloft plans to provide:
Standards-based reviews and redlining: Utilizing configurable playbooks, customers can quickly assess whether a contract meets predefined internal standards and receive AI-driven suggestions for improvements.
Community support: Access to a community of Screens creators who publish expertly crafted playbooks, allowing users to evaluate contracts based on the knowledge of experienced experts.
Market data insights: Tracking pass and failure rates of playbooks to give users context on industry standards and practices. This will allow users to see if particular clauses are worth insisting on, or indications on what should be eliminated going forward.
Eric Laughlin, CEO of Agiloft, announced, "With Screens' contract review technology available both integrated into our platform and as a standalone solution, businesses everywhere will have a data-driven, community-supported, and standards-based way to accelerate their business."
There are two takeaways here. Firstly as a stand-alone solution, Screens’ review technology is able to bring AI-driven contract review to business of all sizes, who can now tailor contract review guidelines to fit their unique industry and operational standards without needing extensive legal expertise. Screens will serve businesses from start-ups needing basic compliance to large enterprises managing high contract volumes.
Moreover, the integration of Screens' AI-powered contract review solution into Agiloft's platform marks a huge advance in automating data-first contract management. It is not only that the integration will reduce inefficiencies and risks associated with the manual processes. But it signals a conceptual shift beyond the traditional siloed process of contract review, disconnected from the broader CLM ecosystem. The end-to-end CLM integration, as Screens becomes part of Agiloft’s contract lifecycle, from creation and negotiation to storage and analysis, signals a future of contract review as a connected process across related stages and departments.
The unified data flow will ensure that data generated during the contract review process (e.g. flagged risks, compliance issues, negotiation trends) is automatically shared across systems, ensuring stakeholders can access insights easily and immediately without requiring manual updates. This eliminates inefficiencies over duplicate efforts, and allows integrations with other departments – e.g. procurement, sales, compliance – to collaborate on the same platform and maximise input to receive updates in real time.
This combined development of the Screens’ solution with Agiloft’s platform signifies a pivotal moment in the CLM landscape, and a leap in AI-driven data-first contract management. It will be important for firms to look at Agiloft as they continue to drive transformation in the CLM landscape, and for businesses to start using these technologies to maintain the speed, accuracy and standardisation to stay ahead. (Hart, Principle at KKR)
