Conga has published research showing widespread use of artificial intelligence in contract lifecycle management, alongside a gap between adoption and governance.
Among 250 senior leaders surveyed across legal, revenue, compliance and procurement, 95% said their organisations use AI to some degree in contract lifecycle management processes. Yet 67% said their company lacks a formal AI policy for that use, and only 38% described their contract lifecycle management maturity as integrated.
The findings suggest a mismatch between confidence in the technology and the systems around it. Nearly half of respondents, 49%, said they were highly confident using AI with minimal oversight, even though far fewer viewed their wider contract management set-up as fully integrated.
That matters because contract lifecycle management spans several parts of a business, linking legal, finance, sales and procurement. Weak governance or patchy processes can create risks around compliance, data quality and contractual oversight as AI tools are introduced more widely.
The survey suggests many organisations remain in an experimental phase rather than a fully embedded operational one. Legal teams in particular face added pressure to manage contract risk and compliance while other functions push ahead with deployment.
Use cases
The most common AI applications in contract lifecycle management were search and reporting, cited by 69% of respondents, and risk assessment, cited by 68%. The clearest gains so far were in reporting quality, at 59%, and risk identification, at 51%.
These figures suggest companies are starting with areas tied to information retrieval, visibility and issue spotting rather than full automation of end-to-end contract decisions. They also indicate a focus on targeted tasks where benefits can be measured more easily.
Scaling those efforts remains difficult. Among early adopters, 40% said lack of staff training was the biggest barrier to wider use, followed by troubleshooting support gaps at 31% and unclear use cases at 27%.
The emphasis on training points to a workforce issue as much as a technical one. If staff do not understand when to trust outputs, when to escalate concerns and how to apply internal controls, high confidence in using AI may not translate into sound practice.
Jason Smith, global director, CLM product launch, at Conga, linked the findings to broader organisational discipline.
"With AI adoption accelerating, many organisations are moving faster in deployment than in discipline," Smith said. "What we're seeing is not a technology gap, but a readiness gap. AI is exposing weaknesses in process, data quality and governance that CLM programs can no longer ignore."
Legal pressure
The research covered leaders in healthcare, financial services, technology and manufacturing, sectors where contract controls and auditability often carry significant weight. That makes the absence of a formal AI policy in many organisations notable, particularly when legal and compliance teams are expected to oversee growing use of automated tools.
For companies operating in heavily regulated or high-volume contracting environments, uneven maturity could complicate efforts to standardise contract review, maintain records and demonstrate accountability. The survey suggests the challenge is less about whether AI is being adopted and more about whether businesses have built the structures needed to manage it properly.
Logan Maley, General Counsel at Conga, said the legal function was being reshaped by the shift.
"AI is accelerating the evolution of the legal function in ways we couldn't have predicted even two years ago," Maley said. "CLM sits at the center of that shift, connecting legal, finance, sales and procurement around a shared source of contractual truth. Organisations that mature their CLM programs, and close the gap between AI readiness and adoption, will be the ones positioned to move faster and with less risk."