Top 3 ways to streamline NDA negotiation

High volumes of NDAs are a given for large investment banks and alternative asset managers. Frequently, too, are the drawbacks of old-school, manual NDA negotiation. Without legal tech tools, NDAs take up too much time and distract teams from higher-value work.

So, what’s the best way to effectively handle a high volume of buy- or sell-side NDAs? Leverage a purpose-built, AI-powered solution from Ontra.

Ontra offers two contract negotiation solutions to fit any firm’s needs: Contract Automation and Accord. Join the 700+ private market firms that trust Ontra to help them manage repetitive contracts and close deals faster. Our solutions leverage AI to streamline buy- and sell-side NDA negotiations and management.

Disadvantages of manually negotiating NDAs in-house

Your firm might currently tap internal resources to handle repetitive legal work like NDAs. Unfortunately, in-house legal teams and deal professionals often lack the bandwidth and purpose-built tools to manage these. Time spent manually handling NDAs comes at a cost, as these time-consuming agreements take everyone away from mission-critical work.

In some cases, the business professionals handling your NDAs lack the expertise required to negotiate and manage NDAs and other agreements effectively. They could agree to off-market or inconsistent terms or mismanage negotiations to the point of damaging a potential business relationship.

Manually negotiating NDAs in-house has serious disadvantages:

• Pulls in-house talent away from more strategic tasks
• Burdens in-house talent to the detriment of work-life balance and morale
• Risk of off-market and inconsistent terms
• Prolonged negotiations that may damage potential business relationships
• Inability to scale with a rising volume of NDAs

Disadvantages of outsourcing NDAs to external counsel

You might outsource NDAs to a traditional law firm where the work usually falls to junior associates. These attorneys often have minimal experience, though the law firm charges their costly standard rates. Junior associates could mismanage negotiations if they’re unaware of market terms or your firm’s specific preferences.

Relying on outside counsel has similar disadvantages to manual, in-house NDA management:

• Slow turnaround time on markups
• Risk of off-market and inconsistent terms
• High costs
• Prolonged negotiations that damage the potential business relationship
• Inability to scale with a rising volume of NDAs

3 ways to streamline NDA negotiations

1. Adopt AI-powered NDA negotiation software

AI-powered contract automation solutions have become the ideal option for managing NDAs and other recurring agreements. Purpose-built technology enables your internal teams to perform repetitive legal tasks at a lower cost than relying on manual contract workflows or external counsel.

The key here is to look for a technology provider at the forefront of AI technology for contracts, instead of an NDA outsourcing provider focused on staffing. Truly efficient and cost-effective NDA negotiations come from AI-driven workflows and automation. With AI, NDA automation can drastically cut down on contract turnaround and completion times, enabling parties to access data rooms and perform due diligence sooner.

2. Choose an industry-specific solution

Carefully consider your options when choosing an NDA negotiation solution. Although sell- and buy-side NDAs are common agreements for corporate transactions, effective NDA negotiations and management still require industry expertise. For the best return on your investment, select a legal tech partner with in-depth industry knowledge and experience.

Ontra offers two contract negotiation solutions. Contract Automation customers are matched with one or more fully vetted independent lawyers. These professionals are dedicated to your firm, ensuring they get to know your contract playbook inside and out. Ontra has high standards for our global Legal Network, and many of our network members have in-depth industry and BigLaw experience.

Accord is our SaaS option, which puts our powerful, battle-tested AI solution in your hands. Instead of relying on the Legal Network to handle negotiations, you keep negotiations in-house and accelerate the process with AI-powered contract markups, summarization, and reporting.

3. Establish a contract playbook

Establishing an NDA playbook for your firm is the key to getting the most out of NDA negotiation software. By defining your preferred and fallback positions, typically based on what’s market-appropriate for your industry, you can drive consistency across your NDAs. With the combination of a defined playbook and AI-powered contract negotiations, your in-house or external lawyers can tame negotiations, speed up contract turnaround times, and support more consistent compliance processes.

Ontra: A smarter way to negotiate

Ontra’s AI-powered technology platform for private markets includes NDA negotiation and management software for private equity and venture capital firms, direct lenders, investment banks, and other private markets firms. Firms can efficiently tackle a high volume of NDAs and other repetitive agreements with Contract Automation and our global Legal Network or negotiate and streamline in-house contracts with Accord.

Ontra’s AI-powered contract negotiation and management solutions provide:

Contract Dashboard: View the status and manage all of your contracts in one place, and easily access historical contracts.

Digital Playbooks: Customize and digitally document your negotiation preferences within the platform to create a dynamic, single source of truth and sync your negotiation preferences across internal and external teams.

Similar Documents: View similar agreements surfaced by Ontra’s proprietary algorithm. Our solutions can organize multiple versions of agreements, search across your saved agreements, and automatically generate redlines exportable to Word.

Markup Builder: Your lawyers can leverage our proprietary, AI-enabled markup tool, which generates suggested markups, limiting the need to start each negotiation from scratch and promoting consistency across NDAs.

Contract Summaries: View a customizable, AI-powered summary of key legal and business contract terms shortly after contract execution.

Data Analytics: Gain visibility into your agreements, run reports and analytics based on your NDA data, and view trends over time.

Ready to efficiently negotiate high-volume NDAs with AI?

Without the right solution for handling buy- and sell-side NDAs, private equity and investment firms are vulnerable to potential process inefficiencies, higher costs, and poor outcomes. Ontra offers AI-powered NDA negotiation solutions that combine industry expertise with cutting-edge technology.

Reach out today to learn more about Contract Automation and Accord.