Your contracts come with a 90% markup tax — and you’re paying it.
I find it surprising that, when 90 percent of contracts get signed with ZERO negotiation, companies still waste months on legal review.
Just to be super clear here: In 2025, 90 percent of contracts do not get negotiated or redlined. At all.
So why are you paying lawyers to do nothing with them?
I don’t just call this inefficient. I call it a self-imposed tax you’re paying for no reason.
So why are most companies still paying this self-imposed tax in 2025?
Because they think of contracts as legal documents.
But they’re not. They’re business processes.
Think about it: Every time you buy something, sell something, or hire someone, you’ll always find a contract in between the two of you. But why is it there? Are you really going to sue a customer over a $1,000 deal? What are the chances that they going to sue you over that amount of money? Slim to none.
What about when you sign a contract with a much larger company? Are you going to send redlines back and forth with Salesforce? Of course not.
So let’s all wake up, and acknowledge that 90 percent of contracts don’t need high-priced lawyers to babysit them.
Many of our customers have already woken up to this reality. As of Q2 2025, a full 70 percent of our large clients don’t have legal teams anymore.
That’s because the vast majority of their contracts are templatized, streamlined, and automated with contract management software. They’re handled by Finance and Ops, not lawyers.
Why? Because most companies still think contracts are legal documents. They’re not. A contract is a business process.
When you sell something, buy something, or hire someone, there’s always a contract in the middle. But do you really think you’ll sue a customer over a $5K deal? Or that your redline on Salesforce’s contract will change anything?
Wake up. In 2025, about 70% of our customers at Concord don’t even have legal teams anymore. The most valuable contracts are templatized, streamlined, and handled by finance and operations teams who know what actually matters: getting business done faster.
What about you? Are you still paying the self-imposed markup tax, or have you joined the 2020s and cut your lawyers loose?
Matt Lhoumeau is the CEO and co-founder of Concord, a leading provider of Agreement Intelligence solutions. Concord empowers growing businesses to make smarter operational decisions by unlocking actionable insights from contracts, and is trusted by over 1,500 companies worldwide.
