Contracts: your templates, your approved clauses

The draft is assembled, and it carries four blanks I do not fill.
What I assembled: eleven blocks from your template approved on 12/06 — subject, scope, term, price, payment terms, intellectual property, confidentiality, liability, termination, personal data, disputes.
What I filled in: the elements appearing in the signed quotation and the client record — company name, address, identifier, scope taken word for word from the quotation, price, payment schedule.
The four blanks: the term, which is neither in the quotation nor in the record; the client's signatory name and capacity; the start date; and the place of performance, mentioned orally according to the meeting note but nowhere in writing.
What I worked out about the term, and why it stays a blank: across your 118 contracts of the same kind, 94 carry 36 months — the practice is clear, and I give it to you as a figure. A contract carrying 36 months because that is the practice would carry a term nobody negotiated, and the term is what gets litigated. The question has already gone to the salesperson in one line, with the other three blanks: one answer, and the draft closes in thirty seconds.
The blanks are visible in the document, in plain sight, not in pale grey: a contract signed with an invisible blank is exactly the case of this morning's 14. draft-contract_11-blocks-4-blanks.pdf11 blocks · 4 visible blanks
⛓ Source · template of 12/06, signed quotation of 22/07, client record, note of 25/07

I tell you where it already exists in your own documents, and I do not write it.
What I do: I search for the clause in your signed contracts and your templates. On a request for a territorial exclusivity clause, I find three different drafts in three contracts of 2023, 2024 and 2025.
What I provide: all three, with the source contract, the date, and what distinguishes them — territorial extent, duration, and exit conditions.
What I put on the table instead of a fourth draft: all three, compared term by term, each with the number of contracts it served in and what happened next — the 2024 one was renegotiated twice across eleven contracts, the other two never. The lawyer chooses on a history, not on a style, and chooses in five minutes. What enters your contracts stays what somebody approved: a clause drafted by a tool would sit there for years, copied from contract to contract — that is how clause libraries are built that nobody can trace any more.
What I propose: that the clause chosen, once approved, becomes a block of the template. At the next request it will be available and approved.
Over twelve months: 31 requests for clauses outside the templates, of which 19 concerned five clauses only. Those five deserve to enter the templates. 31-requests_5-clauses.pdf3 existing drafts · no fourth
✎ Proposal · 5 clauses to add to the templates — no drafting by the agent

At the head of the draft, ahead of the four blanks: legal decisions are flagged separately, because they are not filled in, they are decided.
On this contract, four clauses with variants, and for each I give what separates them in one line, without recommending any:
· Limitation of liability — 3 approved variants: cap at the contract value, cap at twelve months' billing, cap at a fixed amount. What separates them here: €48,000, €62,000 or €100,000 on this deal.
· Ownership of deliverables — 2 variants: transfer on delivery, transfer on full payment. What separates them: what you get back if the balance goes unpaid.
· Term and renewal — 2 variants: fixed term, or automatic renewal with three months' notice.
· Governing law and jurisdiction — 2 variants, and this one is not neutral for a foreign client.
For each variant I give three markers drawn from your own contracts: how many times it was chosen over the last 24 months, on what kind of client, and who decided it last time. On limitation of liability: 31 contracts with the contract-value cap, 9 with the twelve-month cap — and all 9 are large accounts.
What stays with your lawyer, and why it is better that way: the choice, and only the choice. I write no new clause — the three variants exist, approved and dated, in your library. A clause written by a tool enters a contract without anyone having approved it, and it stays there for years.
What the flagging caught last month: of 34 contracts generated, 6 were going out with the template's default variant — cap at contract value — while the client was a large account and your previous 9 carried the other. All 6 went back to your lawyer before sending; 4 were changed. The default variant has not moved: it is the flagging that makes it visible, not the variant that decides.
✎ Framework · legal decisions flagged at the head of the draft

We look first at what changed, because not all 23 are affected.
What changed on 12/06: three amendments. A rewritten liability clause, a data-processing mention added, and a corrected internal cross-reference.
What that gives across the 23: 23 carry the old liability clause; 23 lack the data mention; the cross-reference correction affects only contracts citing article 9, that is 6 of the 23.
What I do not say: which must be revisited. An old clause is not an invalid clause, and revisiting a signed contract requires an amendment, hence the other party's agreement.
What I propose: the 23 ranked by renewal date — that is where the new version applies without negotiation. 9 renew before December.
And the real fix: the old version had been left open in a shared folder. A template should exist in exactly one place, and that is a setting, not an instruction. 23-contracts_old-version.pdf3 amendments · 9 renewals before December
⛓ Source · two template versions, 23 generated contracts, renewal dates

I do not choose, and I show you what separates them.
The three: a cap at the contract value, a cap at twelve months' billing, a cap at a fixed €50,000.
What that gives across your live contracts: I applied all three to your 47 service contracts. The cap ranges from €12,000 to €340,000 depending on the clause used, for comparable services.
What I do not say: which is right. A fixed cap is excellent on a small contract and absurd on a large one; a cap at contract value does the opposite. The choice depends on your real exposure and your insurance cover — two things I do not have.
What I provide: the three drafts, the quantified effect of each across your 47 contracts, and the current spread: 28 contracts with the first, 13 with the second, 6 with the third.
The most useful fact: the 6 with a fixed cap are your six largest contracts. That is probably the opposite of what was intended. 3-clauses_47-contracts.pdf€12,000 to €340,000 · 6 large contracts on a fixed cap
⛓ Source · 3 drafts, 47 service contracts, annual values

Yes, and above all I can tell you which are blocked and by what.
Across 34 contracts in circuit: 19 await a client signature, 8 await an internal approval, 4 await an annex, and 3 are blocked with no identifiable reason — no exchange for more than three weeks.
What I also look at, and it counts: for how long. A contract awaiting a client signature for 8 days is normal; for 62 days it is probably dead and nobody has recorded that.
The three blocked with no reason: the last exchange dates from 16/06, 02/07 and 09/07. None has been chased.
What I have prepared for the three blocked ones: the chaser is written, one per contract, restating the last point discussed, the date of the last exchange and the single question still open. The tone of a chaser on a contract under negotiation depends on what you want to obtain — it is a commercial act, and it goes out under your name, when you decide. Three fifteen-second reads, and 62 days of silence end.
What I provide: the 34 with their age, their blockage named, and for the 8 awaiting internal approval, who has to approve and since when. Of the 8, 5 are waiting on the same person. 34-contracts_in-circuit.pdf19 client side · 8 internal · 3 with no reason
⛓ Source · 34 contracts in circuit, attached exchanges, internal approvals

Enough to reproduce a contract exactly, and nothing resembling an opinion.
What is kept: the template and its version, the blocks assembled, what was filled in and where it came from, the blanks left, and what was edited by hand after generation.
The last line is the most useful: what people edit after generation says exactly what the template is missing. Over twelve months, 67% of manual edits fall on three blocks — those are the three to revisit.
What is not kept: no appraisal of a clause, no risk analysis, no statistics per drafter, and no data on the other party beyond what the contract contains.
What the quarterly summary contains: templates and the versions in use, recurring manual edits, clauses requested outside the templates, and contracts blocked in circuit. Four indicators about your templates and your circuits. what-is-kept.pdf5 items kept · 4 never produced
✎ Framework · retention periods to be set by the company

A request that came in this morning falls under two of your approved templates at once.
What it carries: an installation service, delivered once, and twenty-four months of maintenance starting on handover. Your service template and your maintenance template each cover one of the two objects, and both were approved on 12/06.
This kind of case had not yet been taken into account in your library: it assigns one template per object, and nothing in it says which one leads when a request carries two. So I have not settled it on my own — and not one clause has been rewritten for the occasion.
Three ways to assemble. Assemble on the service template and attach maintenance at the end of the document: one contract to sign, at the cost of a term clause that speaks of the service and will be read as speaking of both. Assemble two contracts linked by a shared reference: every clause stays in the template where your lawyer approved it, at the cost of two signature circuits. Send the request up to the legal department: a lawyer arbitrates each time, and the draft waits for that arbitration — eight working days on your last four files.
I recommend the second. It is the only one that obliges nobody to write a new clause — your rule wants blocks to come from your approved templates, and the circuit already knows how to follow linked contracts: that is what ties the 4 amendments to their original contracts among your 34 contracts in circulation.
You can also give me another rule of your own — for instance: a single contract on the service template, with maintenance carried by a cross-reference block pointing to your maintenance conditions, if your lawyer has approved it that way.
Shall I remember it for the next ones? Of the 180 contracts generated since January, 9 carried two objects falling under two templates, and all 9 went to legal. If you approve the rule, I will assemble the next ones without sending them up, and I will give you the count each month.
⛓ Source · template library as at 12/06, 180 contracts generated since January, 9 with two objects

Written exactly as you just said it, and it carries both of your conditions.
The rule, in one sentence: a request carrying two objects falling under two approved templates produces two contracts linked by a shared reference; both carry the same effective date; the object of the maintenance contract quotes the reference of the installation contract.
Why your second condition matters more than it looks: a maintenance contract whose object does not quote the installation reads on its own. Two years later nobody will know which equipment it covers — which is exactly what happened to the 14 contracts whose term had been left blank.
What it changes on this file: two drafts are assembled, 11 blocks for the installation and 7 for the maintenance, all taken from your templates of 12/06. Three blanks stay visible, none is filled in, and the two legal decisions are flagged at the top.
What lets you undo it: the rule is written into your library under its own name, with its date, the lawyer who approved it and the request that gave rise to it. You remove one line, and I go back to sending these requests up to legal.
✎ Rule approved · template library, entry “two-object request”, approved on 12/08

Four requests of the same kind, four assemblies, nothing sent up to legal.
What the rule produced: 4 two-object requests in a month, 8 linked contracts, all on your approved templates, all sharing an effective date, and every maintenance object quoting its installation. The average time from request to reviewed draft went from 8 working days to the same day.
What the rule did not absorb, and that is deliberate: on the third request, the maintenance term asked for was thirty-six months where your template carries twenty-four. That is not an assembly, it is a commercial decision: it is flagged at the top of the draft, to be settled, with the rest of the contract ready behind it.
What has not changed: no new clause was written, in any of the eight contracts. Every block comes from the 12/06 version, and each carries its version number in the log.
⛓ Source · one month after the rule · 4 two-object requests, 8 linked contracts, 0 sent up to legal