The stages of the contract lifecycle run from request and intake through renewal or closeout, covering eight distinct steps: request and intake, drafting, review, negotiation, approval, execution, storage and obligations, and renewal or closeout. Some organizations combine review and negotiation, or storage and obligations, into a single step, producing a shorter seven-stage model. The eight-stage version gives each activity its own measurable checkpoint, which matters more once an organization starts tracking where contracts actually lose time.
What is the request and intake stage?
Request and intake is the stage where a business user formally asks for a contract, starting the record that follows the agreement for the rest of its life. For context, research on contracting puts average value erosion at 8.6 percent of contract value, with the worst performers losing more than 20 percent. A standardized intake form, capturing contract type, parties, value, and risk level, begins the audit trail and gives every downstream stage a starting point to build on.
- Request-to-triage time. How long a submitted request sits before someone assigns it an owner.
- Channel compliance. The percentage of requests submitted through the approved intake process itself, the clearest sign the front door is actually being used.
Basla’s guide to contract intake design across regions and languages covers what this stage requires once an organization operates across more than one jurisdiction.
What happens during the drafting stage?
Drafting is the stage where the contract gets built from an approved template and clause library, producing the first version that moves into review. Manual drafting typically takes several days, with review, approval, and signature each adding days more, figures that drop sharply once a template and clause library replace a blank page.
- Time from intake to first draft. The clearest measure of how much templating is actually helping.
- Template and approved-clause usage rate. How often drafters pull from the library versus writing custom language.
- Non-standard clause frequency. How often a draft requires language outside the approved library, a leading indicator of upcoming review delay.
What happens during the review stage?
Review is the stage where legal, procurement, finance, or other business stakeholders check the draft against policy and risk tolerance before it goes external. Manual review typically takes five to ten days, the longest single stage in most manual processes and the one most sensitive to how many reviewers get looped in.
- Legal review hours per contract. A direct measure of how much attorney time each agreement consumes.
- Number of review cycles. More than two full cycles on a standard contract type usually signals a template or clause library gap.
What happens during the negotiation stage?
Negotiation is the stage where redlines move between the parties until both sides agree on final terms, and it is the stage most organizations should measure separately from review, since duration depends heavily on the counterparty’s own responsiveness. A well-built clause library shortens this stage by giving negotiators pre-approved fallback positions they can offer immediately, without improvising a response to every redline.
- Total negotiation duration. Measured from first redline sent to final terms agreed.
- Redline round count. More rounds correlate directly with longer cycle time and more legal escalations, and a count that keeps climbing on a standard contract type usually points to a fallback position nobody has actually pre-approved.
- Fallback acceptance rate. How often a counterparty accepts a pre-approved fallback versus pushing for a non-standard term.
What happens during the approval stage?
Approval is the stage where the finalized draft routes to the stakeholders authorized to sign off, based on contract value, risk tier, or type. Manual approval typically takes three to seven days, largely driven by how many approvers sit in the chain and whether they review sequentially or in parallel.
- Approval queue time. Time a contract spends waiting on a specific approver.
- Rejection and rework rate. How often an approver sends a contract back for revision, a signal that upstream review missed something.
Basla’s guide to CLM testing, proving clause and approval logic covers how approval routing gets validated before go-live, catching broken logic before it ever reaches production.
What happens during the execution stage?
Execution is the stage where signatures get collected and the agreement becomes legally binding. Manual signature completion typically takes one to five days, a range that collapses to minutes once electronic signature replaces printing, scanning, and mailing.
- Time from final approval to signature. The gap between an approved draft and a countersigned agreement.
- Signature completion rate. The percentage of sent agreements that actually come back executed within a set window.
Added together, these first six stages explain why the difference between a manual and an automated process is so stark. Combined drafting, review, approval, and signature delays commonly run to several weeks under a manual process, against a few days once CLM workflows and electronic signature handle the same steps. That gap alone justifies most of the business case for a CLM platform before obligation management or reporting ever enters the conversation.
What happens during the storage and obligations stage?
Storage and obligations is the stage where the executed contract gets filed, indexed, and actively monitored for the deliverables, dates, and compliance requirements it created. Among all the stages of the contract lifecycle, this is where most of a contract’s value actually gets lost or protected, since a signed agreement sitting unmonitored in a folder cannot flag its own missed obligations.
The scale of what is at stake here is well documented. Organizations lose an average of 11 percent of a contract’s value after signature, according to a World Commerce and Contracting report cited by IBM, split roughly evenly across poor negotiation follow-through, unrecorded changes, and poorly planned renewals.
- Repository completeness. The percentage of executed contracts actually indexed and searchable in the system of record.
- Obligation completion rate. The percentage of tracked deliverables and milestones met on time.
- Retrieval time. How long it takes an authorized user to find a specific executed agreement.
The difference between a repository and a full lifecycle system shows up most clearly at this stage. A repository stores documents; a system that manages the full lifecycle, including intake, drafting, negotiation, approval, execution, obligation tracking, and renewal, is the actual point of CLM. Basla’s guide to legacy contract migration and data preparation covers how older agreements get brought into that same monitored record.
What happens during the renewal or closeout stage?
Renewal or closeout is the stage where a contract either renews on reviewed terms, gets renegotiated, or terminates, ideally with enough lead time that the decision is a deliberate one made ahead of the approaching deadline. This is the stage where auto-renewal clauses do the most damage when nobody is watching for them.
- Renewal decision lead time. How far in advance of the actual deadline the decision gets made.
- Missed notice deadlines. The number of contracts that pass their notice window without a decision.
- Auto-renewal incidents. How often a contract renews by default, with nobody having made an active choice.
Ongoing configuration changes to the platform itself, including renewal workflow rules, need their own discipline once a program is live, covered in Basla’s guide to release management on configured legal platforms.
Conclusion
The stages of the contract lifecycle only deliver value when each one is measured on its own terms, since a single end-to-end number hides exactly where a contract is actually losing time. Request and intake sets the data quality for everything downstream. Storage and obligations is where most of a signed contract’s value quietly leaks away. Treating all eight as one undifferentiated process is how organizations end up measuring nothing at all.
How Basla can help
Basla provides delivery teams for contract lifecycle management software implementation, covering business analysis, clause and workflow configuration, legacy data migration support, testing, documentation, and post-go-live support. Basla has delivered legal technology services across more than a hundred jurisdictions, with hands-on experience supporting Onit matter management, eBilling, legal service request, and contract workflows.
Frequently asked questions
What are the stages of the contract lifecycle?
The stages of the contract lifecycle are request and intake, drafting, review, negotiation, approval, execution, storage and obligations, and renewal or closeout. Some organizations combine review with negotiation or storage with obligations, producing a shorter seven-stage model instead.
How long does each stage of the contract lifecycle typically take?
Manual drafting typically takes three to five days, review five to ten days, approval three to seven days, and signature one to five days, adding up to roughly 3.4 weeks end to end. Automated workflows with electronic signature can reduce that combined total to three to five days.
Why should negotiation be measured separately from review?
Negotiation duration depends heavily on the counterparty’s responsiveness and how many redline rounds occur, factors internal process improvements cannot fully control. Measuring it separately from review keeps internal efficiency metrics from being distorted by external negotiation delays.
What happens at the storage and obligations stage of the contract lifecycle?
The executed contract gets filed, indexed, and actively monitored for the deliverables, dates, and compliance requirements it created. Organizations lose an average of 11 percent of a contract’s value after signature when this stage is not actively managed.
What is the difference between a contract repository and a full contract lifecycle system?
A contract repository stores executed documents and answers only where a contract is. A full lifecycle system manages every stage, including intake, negotiation, approval, execution, obligation tracking, and renewal, turning the contract into active, monitored data.
What causes contracts to auto-renew by accident?
Contracts auto-renew by accident when nobody tracks the renewal decision lead time or notice deadline for a given agreement. Active monitoring of these dates during the renewal or closeout stage is what prevents an unintentional renewal.
*This article is provided for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. Basla Solutions provides legal technology implementation and support services and does not practice law.*