We have a very compliance heavy industry and there's a lot of audit and oversight to make sure that we're doing things the way we're supposed to. [Ironclad] just makes those things a whole lot easier.
After 25 years at Liberty Mutual, including five years building their legal operations function, Elliot Mandel was ready for a new challenge. When he joined Alnylam Pharmaceuticals two years ago to establish their legal operations function, he quickly identified their most pressing need.
“Whatever I thought I was going to be working on, day one was pretty clear contracting needed attention,” Mandel recalls. The existing system, driven primarily by finance, offered only basic functionality for legal processes. “Their requisitioning system had two steps for legal. It was draft a contract and send it out, and then really everything else that you need to do is offline,” he explains.
A user-first approach
Alnylam’s environment presented distinct challenges. Rather than professional purchasers, their primary users were scientists and salespeople who needed straightforward processes that wouldn’t impede their core work. “You’re comparing a step where you’re negotiating an MSA and you’re comparing it to the next task, which is validate the cost center,” Mandel explains. “One takes five minutes, one does not take five minutes.”
The first step was education.
As a company really the first step that we really need to do is really even just educate people on what a CLM is and why it's valuable for a company like Alnylam in its current state and kind of where it's trying to go.
Starting small while thinking big
Rather than pursuing a broad rollout, Mandel’s team started with a small group testing simple confidentiality agreements. They expanded gradually through monthly cohorts of 30-50 users, allowing them to provide focused support to each group. This measured approach proved crucial, especially given concurrent technology initiatives across the organization.
The team tackled one of their most complex challenges early: agreements with healthcare professionals. “The language matters very much, the kind of things that you need to have in your contracts when you’re dealing with those kind of relationships,” Mandel explains. Through the ability to add conditional language with Ironclad’s Workflow Designer, they consolidated from 70 templates down to just 5, dramatically improving consistency and accuracy.
Circumventing legal–the right way
With the foundation in place, the team began automating key processes. The new system could automatically route contracts based on specific terms or changes, ensuring appropriate oversight without unnecessary delays.
We take advantage of the idea that if you don't change any of our standard terms, it just skips the legal review process altogether. [Ironclad] could also automatically trigger groups like procurement or our privacy or safety group only when they're supposed to be involved.
In just three months after implementation, Alnylam processed nearly 1,000 contracts through Ironclad. The platform’s activity tracking transformed visibility into contract status, allowing teams to see real-time progress including negotiations, approvals, and external communications–a stark contrast to their previous system where contracts would appear dormant for months despite ongoing work. The new system hasn’t just increased speed; it has fundamentally improved accuracy by building in the necessary logic and guardrails to ensure consistency across all agreements.
One relationship particularly exemplifies this transformation. A business leader, initially skeptical of the new system and frustrated by legal processes, became one of its strongest advocates after seeing how the team addressed their specific challenges. The change was so dramatic that Mandel was invited to present at the leader’s regional town hall – an invitation he notes he “never would’ve” received before. “I told his team, even though it’s virtual, I think I need plexiglass in case somebody wants to throw something at me,” Mandel jokes, reflecting on how far they’d come.
The path to strategic advisor
The numbers tell part of Alnylam’s story: thousands of contracts processed, templates reduced from 70 to 5, turnaround times cut from weeks to days. But for Mandel, the real measure of success lies in the changed conversations across the organization. Business leaders who once viewed contracts as a bottleneck now invite legal to strategic discussions. Scientists and salespeople who struggled with cumbersome processes can now focus on their core work. The legal team, no longer buried in administrative tasks, has emerged as a valued strategic advisor.
It puts you in a better position to have credibility with your business partners. They see you're taking steps that are putting you in a better position to meet their needs.
To find out more about how Ironclad can transform contract management at your organization, request a demo today.
