What is Contract Metadata?
Contract Metadata acts as a structured summary of all the key information within a contract and its surrounding context. It's essentially a collection of fields and values that capture the essence of your agreements, helping you organize, search, analyze, and manage your contracts efficiently.
Think of it as a powerful tool for:
- Seeing a summary of your contract: Capture all key terms and data surrounding the contract.
- Organizing your contract repository: Categorize and group contracts based on specific criteria.
- Finding specific contracts quickly: Easily locate contracts by searching for key information.
- Gaining insights into your contracts: Analyze patterns and trends in your contract data.
- Managing risks effectively: Get a comprehensive view of contract obligations and rights.
Types of Contract Metadata
Contract metadata is highly customizable. You can set up any number of fields for a given contract type and then use them to store all key information surrounding the context of the contract. Typically, the different kinds of information can include:
1. Contract-Specific Information
- Type of agreement: (e.g., Non-Disclosure Agreement, Lease Agreement, Service Agreement).
- Parties involved: (e.g., Counterparty name, Signatories).
- Key dates: (e.g., Effective Date, Expiration Date, Renewal Date).
- Amounts: (e.g., Contract value, Payment terms, Revenue).
2. Business Context
- Department/Business Unit: The team or organization responsible for the contract.
- Industry: The sector or market that the contract relates to.
- Project: The project or initiative that the contract supports.
- Location: The geographic location where the contract is applicable.
3. Legal provisions in the contract
- Termination for convenience: Whether the contract provides for a termination for convenience
- Limitation of liability: The amount to which liability for either party may be capped
- Jurisdiction: The courts that will preside over the disputes arising from the agreement
Key Benefits of Using Contract Metadata
By using metadata to capture the key information in the contract, you can use it across the platform. This metadata is available on the contract repository in the form of a table, that you can search and filter through. You can create powerful views in the repository using this metadata that helps you find the exact insight you’re looking for. This data can also be exported in the form of excel spreadsheets. Having access to metadata across the platform helps in the following ways:
- Centralized Data: Relevant stakeholders like business owners, legal reviewers, approvers, and managers can see all contract data in a single place without having to read through a contract.
- Improved Efficiency: By using metadata as filters, you can get to the right contracts faster.
- Data-Driven Decisions: Being able to readily access metadata helps teams make informed decisions quicker.
- Risk Management: Tracking critical contract details like non-standard clauses, and important obligations helps effectively manage risks.
How to Create and Use Contract Metadata
1. Creating Contract Metadata Fields
1: Access the "Manage" Section
From your SpotDraft dashboard, navigate to the "Manage" section on the left sidebar and select the “Contract Metadata” option. Pro tip: Hit Cmd+K on a Mac (or Ctrl+K on a Windows PC) to open Quick Access and type “Contract Metadata”.
2: Choose Contract Type
Metadata is closely associated with contract types. Select the specific type of contract you want to create metadata for.
3. Add New Fields
Click on the "Add New Field" button to add new metadata fields.
4. Add Details
For each field, you'll need to provide:
- Field Name: A clear and concise name for the field.
- Type: Select the appropriate data type for the field. This could be:
- Short Answer
- Paragraph
- Date
- Duration
- Currency
- Dropdown
- Multi-dropdown
- Checkbox
- Phone Number
- Description: A brief explanation of the field and its purpose. This description is used by SpotDraft AI to accurately fetch this information from contracts automatically. Treat this description as in instruction for the AI to fetch the right information, for example “Jurisdiction: this is the location whose courts will preside over any disputes arising from this agreement”
5. Hit Save
2. Using Contract Metadata
You can access and utilize contract metadata in several key places within SpotDraft:
- Contract Summary Page: When you view a contract from the repository, the "Summary" page will display a "Contract Metadata" card with all the filled values.
- Contract Page Side Panel: Within the "View Contract" page, a side panel provides access to the metadata associated with the contract.
- Repository Filters & Columns: Filter contracts within the repository based on metadata values. You can also choose to add specific metadata fields as columns in the repository view for easier access to the data.
- Reports: Generate one-time or scheduled reports to view contract metadata in a spreadsheet format.
Mapping Metadata to Templates and Intake Forms
You can map contract metadata fields to templates and intake form questionnaire fields. This allows answers to those questions to be automatically populated into the metadata for the contract. This data from templates and intake forms will flow in for manually mapped fields only.
Using Tags for Better Organization
Tags are a powerful way to categorize and organize contracts based on specific attributes. This can make it much easier to find relevant contracts and manage your contract portfolio.
- Add Tags on the Contract Card: On the "Summary" page for a contract, you can add tags directly using the "Add Tags" button.
- Add Tags using the Repository: You can select one or more contracts on the repository and add tags to these contracts in bulk. After selecting the required contracts using the check-box, click on the three dot menu at the top of the contract list, and click on add tags.
Important Considerations
- Standardization: Consistent and standardized metadata practices across your team will improve data management efficiency.
- Regular Review: Periodically review your metadata fields to ensure they are accurate and meet your current needs.
- Automatically add metadata: Consider using Smart Data Capture to automatically populate your metadata so that it is always up to date.