How to write a contract efficiently? An actually useful guide

Writing a legally binding contract should be a repeatable, scalable process—not a heroic effort every time someone wants to close a deal or onboard a vendor.

Especially because contracts are quite literally everywhere. According to Juro, 60 to 80 percent of all B2B transactions are governed by business contracts.

And yet, for many mid-sized to enterprise companies, contracts are still painfully slow.

Teams waste hours chasing approvals, arguing over contract clauses, or just trying to find the “final” version in the depths of Google Drive. Meanwhile, deals stall. Contract risks slip through. Legal gets blamed. Sales gets frustrated. And procurement gets ghosted.

This guide is here to help you learn how to write a contract from scratch, smoothly.

It’s a step-by-step framework that helps cross-functional teams learn how to draft and manage contracts more efficiently—without sacrificing quality or control. And with modern tools to speed things up.

Whether you're drafting an NDA, negotiating an MSA, or turning around a complex SOW under pressure, this playbook walks you through a process that works.

Let’s get into the 9 hopefully easy steps to write a contract effectively. 

Step 1: kick off with clarity

Before writing a single word, stop and ask: what are we even agreeing to—and who owns the process?

This is the stage where most contracts go wrong. A sales rep rushes to Legal with a vague request. Procurement hands Legal a 37-page vendor contract agreement they haven’t read. Everyone assumes someone else will handle the details.

Instead, start with a quick internal intake process to align on the very basics:

• Parties involved, aka, who’s on each side of the written agreement? After all, a contract between parties involves, well, parties. Often external to the organization. Especially if the party’s external—make sure to properly identify it.
• Business context. Is this a new business relationship? Renewal? Vendor onboarding? Or something entirely different?
• Key terms. Decide on scope of work, pricing, deliverables, payment terms, timelines, all the important details.
• Risks to flag. Detail if the contract involves sensitive data handling, IP, liability, exclusivity, whatever can raise a potential red flag in a contract you’re writing.
• Contract type. Label the contract. Is it an NDA, MSA, SOW, partner agreement?
• Internal owners. Decide who’s responsible for drafting, reviewing, redlining, approving, etc.

Even a simple shared form or checklist can save hours of confusion later. And when everyone’s on the same page from the start, everything just goes smoother.

Quick win

Use a shared intake contract template (Google Form, Notion doc, or CLM platform) that can route requests based on the contract type or its value. This sets expectations early and helps organize the work more effectively.

Step 2: choose the right template (or build from a modular one)

Starting with a blank Word doc is the fastest way to waste time and introduce risk, staring at the blinking cursor. A solid, pre-approved template is your best friend—but only if it’s built to scale.

Too often, templates are either:

• Overly generic (and require hours of rewriting), or
• So rigid they break the moment real-world terms are added

The goal isn’t just to reuse documents. It’s to standardize structure and accelerate how you draft contracts, without losing flexibility.

A good template should:

• Separate legal and business terms clearly
• Use clause blocks that can be swapped in or out depending on the situation (e.g., different termination language for short-term vs. long-term deals)
• Include instructions or annotations for internal use (e.g., “insert fallback clause here if customer rejects standard IP terms” or “include a termination clause there if something else happens)
• Mark non-negotiables vs. flexible terms, so Sales or Procurement knows what they can edit vs. escalate

Besides whole contract templates, you can also think about starting a clause library for the most common cases your business is dealing with to then cherry-pick whatever fragment feels best for what you’re writing.

Instead of having to edit the whole thing, you’d get a basic, unchangeable template and fill it out with appropriate clauses.

Templates shouldn’t be dusty PDFs. They should evolve with your business and contract law updates. They should evolve based on what’s actually working—and what’s getting pushed back on.

Remember to also:

• Review your templates and clauses quarterly or after major negotiation cycles to check whether they’re still valid
• Log recurring redlines and build fallbacks into the templates
• Limit the number of “standard” templates—too many, and no one uses the right one

(Not-so) quick win

Work with Legal to modularize templates by clause type (e.g., payment terms, data handling, termination) and risk level. Then tag each clause for use cases: low-risk vendor contract, high-value enterprise deal, high-value sales contract, etc. This reduces drafting to more of a “plug and play” model—and saves hours on every deal.

Step 3: draft fast, but don’t wing it

Once you’ve got the right template, the drafting phase should be fast. But fast doesn’t mean sloppy.

Most contract slowdowns aren’t caused by the writing itself, they’re caused by unclear ownership, inconsistent formatting, or someone adding custom language “just in case.” This is where a little discipline saves a lot of time.

So, before the actual writing starts, clarify who’s responsible for:

• Business terms (pricing, deliverables, timeline). Usually that’s Sales or Procurement, depending on the contract.
• Legal terms (IP, indemnity, governing law). Usually that’s Legal or Contract Ops.

Important! Don’t let five people edit in parallel. Assign one person to drive the draft, and keep everyone else in reviewer mode until it's ready.

Some draft writing tips

Now getting to actual writing. A good contract is clear, not clever. If you’re drafting a custom contract, writing it from scratch:

• Use plain language where possible
• Avoid stacking multiple conditions into one sentence
• Break up complex contract sections and long paragraphs into sections or bullet points

This isn’t about “dumbing down” the contract—it’s about making sure everyone understands what they’re agreeing to. That includes the people who will have to enforce the contract six months from now.

You should also:

• Number your sections logically
• Use consistent headers and font sizes
• Match defined terms exactly (e.g., “Effective Date” vs. “Start Date”)

Little things like this prevent big headaches later when the doc gets redlined or reviewed.

Quick win

Create a short internal “style guide” for contracts that covers formatting, tone, and common pitfalls. It doesn’t need to be fancy—just a 1-pager that answers “how do we write things around here?”

Step 4: collaborate without creating chaos

The contract draft is done—now everyone wants to “take a quick look.” This is where collaboration either keeps things moving or derails the whole process.

The key is to collaborate asynchronously, in a controlled environment, with clear roles and a single source of truth. Digitally.

Nothing kills momentum faster than five email threads and filenames like Contract_v3_FINAL_editedByJohn.docx.

So, set one place for collaboration, whether it’s Google Docs, Word Online, a Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) platform, or an electronic signature software, like Autenti.

Whatever the tool will be, make sure that:

• Everyone’s commenting on the same version
• Edits are made in tracked changes
• Ownership of the document is clear, always

Not every stakeholder needs to be involved in every clause. Bring in reviewers based on what’s actually being changed:

• Sales may need to confirm pricing or discounts
• Legal may need to review liability or governing law
• Procurement may need to validate payment terms

Quick win

According to Weshare, by 2025, manual efforts for reviewing and drafting contracts are expected to reduce by 50%, thanks to emerging technologies.

So use the emerging technologies. Better yet, use the secure, tried, and tested technology that's known to work.

Like Autenti that worked for the TZMO group, saving them 90% of time processing contracts.

With Autenti, you can not only sign any and all contracts electronically, you can also safely review the documents with complete version control with appropriate access roles of reviewers, approvers, and view-only users.

Step 5: handle redlines strategically

Redlines are inevitable. But how you manage them determines whether a contract closes this week or sits in limbo for a month.

The goal here isn’t to avoid negotiation—it’s to make the back-and-forth faster, more focused, and less painful.

Every team should have a clear policy on what they’re allowed to accept or revise without escalation. For example:

• Sales can adjust payment terms within a pre-approved range
• Procurement can tweak delivery timelines
• Only Legal can touch IP, indemnity, or governing law

If everything has to go back to Legal, you’ll create roadblocks. If nothing goes back to Legal, you’ll introduce risk.

Don’t negotiate from scratch every time. For high-friction terms like limitation of liability or data handling, maintain a set of:

• Preferred language (your default position)
• Fallback options (what you’re willing to accept)
• Hard stops (terms you won’t agree to)

This keeps the conversation grounded and helps junior team members negotiate with confidence.

Always review redlines in tracked changes, with comments or annotations that explain why something’s been modified. This reduces backtracking and makes approvals faster.

If you’re not using a CLM or an e-signature software, a disciplined Google Docs workflow (with version history + comment threads) works okay at first.

Quick win

Create a “redline playbook” that covers your 5–10 most commonly negotiated clauses. For each one, include:

• Default position
• Acceptable variations
• Who needs to approve changes

This turns redlining from a judgment call into a repeatable process.

Step 6: approve without roadblocks

Approval is one of the biggest choke points in contract workflows. A clear, well-defined process can save days or even weeks.

The goal here is to streamline approvals so contracts don’t stall—but still get the right eyes on them.

Not every contract needs sign-off from every executive or department. Tailor approval paths based on:

• Contract type (NDA vs. multi-million dollar MSA)
• Deal value or risk level
• Internal policy requirements

Document who needs to approve what—and when. Share this widely so everyone knows the process.

Long approval cycles often come from unclear expectations. Set firm deadlines and send automated reminders:

• “Approvals needed within 3 business days”
• Auto-escalate if no response by deadline

This helps keep momentum and accountability.

Quick win

According to a report done by World Commerce & Contracting in 2021, approvals are the most sought-after element of contracting to digitize with 74.6% of respondents choosing that part of contract management.

Source

Which is absolutely understandable. Chasing approvals after all the hard work to create the contract in the first place seems simply unnecessary. So, digitize that process.

You can even create an approval workflow flowchart or checklist. Visual aids make it easier for teams to understand their role and avoid unnecessary delays.

Especially so if you create each for the typical contracting scenarios to easily find your way in any case.

Need to send a gentle ping for a needed approval? Send automated reminders to those who need to approve or even sign a given contract, with Autenti.

Step 7: sign and store it (properly)

Signing a contract is the moment all that hard work pays off.

To put a cherry on top of a successful contract writing process, make the finale equally effective with e-signatures.

Using an e-signature platform like Autenti makes this step fast, completely secure, and legally binding.

Sign with Autenti

Autenti lets you send contracts online, cutting out the delays of printing, scanning, or mailing the documents to the other party just to sign the contract.

It’s simple to use and complies with eIDAS and other international regulations, so your signed contracts hold up legally.

But besides just signing different types of documents, with Autenti, you can also:

• Sign multiple documents at once with mass signing,
• Follow each signatures exact audit trail with IP addresses of signers, names, exact date & time of signature, and more,
• Get a dedicated Signature Card issued for each signed document,
• Verify the other party’s identity with several online ID verification methods,
• And more.

See how Bank Millennium signs all sorts of HR documents, including employment contracts, in just a few minutes with Autenti.

Step 8: track what matters post-signature

Now, to avoid missed deadlines, lost renewals, or overlooked obligations, you need a clear system for post-signature tracking.

Set automated reminders

Use your contract management tool or calendar system to trigger alerts for key dates, such as:

• Renewal deadlines
• Notice periods
• Payment milestones
• Deliverable due dates

This keeps your team proactive instead of reactive.

Monitor obligations and performance

Contracts often include obligations that require ongoing attention, like service-level agreements or reporting requirements. Assign owners to track these commitments and regularly review contract performance.

This helps avoid surprises, disputes, or missed business goals.

Use dashboards and reports

Many contract management software tools and contract lifecycle management (CLM) platforms offer dashboards that provide visibility into:

• Upcoming expirations and renewals
• Contract values and risk levels
• Bottlenecks or overdue actions

If you’re not using a CLM, consider building a shared spreadsheet or custom dashboard with key contract data to keep everyone aligned.

Quick win

Create a contract calendar with reminders visible to relevant teams (Sales, Legal, Procurement). Share it regularly in team meetings to keep contract deadlines top of mind.

Or use an already built-for-you archive out of signed (and not) contracts in Autenti. Then, you can easily search up any past contract using filters, keywords, and custom tags that keep things extra tidy.

Step 9: refine and repeat

Contract management isn’t a “set it and forget it” process. The best teams continually improve their workflows, templates, and tools based on real-world experience.

Keeping templates fresh reduces redlines and speeds drafting.

Analyze contract data

Look at key contract management KPIs like:

• Average time to draft a contract, review, and approve contracts
• Common negotiation points or redlines
• Renewal rates and missed deadlines

Use this data to identify bad spots and opportunities for automation.

Create a feedback loop

Encourage teams to share pain points and success stories. Regular check-ins or retrospectives can surface ideas for process improvements and increase cross-team alignment.

Bonus points for setting up a dedicated Slack channel or Notion doc for keeping up with the feedback.

Invest in ongoing training

Contracts evolve, and so do regulations, contract risks, and business priorities.

So, keep your teams sharp with regular training sessions on process updates, best practices, and tools.

Quick win

Document your contract process in a simple playbook or wiki. Make it easily accessible and update it as your process evolves, so new team members get up to speed fast.

Bonus: writing watchouts by contract type

NDA (non-disclosure agreement)

MSA (Master Service Agreement)

SOW (Statement of Work)

Procurement/vendor contracts

Partnership/joint venture agreements

Write efficiently, sign even smarter (with Autenti)

Writing contracts efficiently is only half the battle—signing them smartly completes the process.

With Autenti’s secure, legally binding e-signature platform, you can accelerate contract turnaround, reduce administrative headaches, and keep all your signed documents organized in one place.

Ready to streamline your contract workflow from draft to signature?

Try Autenti free with a 14-day trial and experience how effortless contract management can really be.