Contract Manager

What this person does

Owns the day-to-day contract pipeline: intake, classification, redlining, approvals routing, signature, post-signature obligation tracking. In a 500–2,000 FTE company, one Contract Manager handles 200–600 contracts/year depending on industry. They are the person who makes sure the sales team's NDAs get out the door in 24 hours instead of 8 days.

This is not a contract drafter (that's an attorney) and not a paralegal (different career track). It's an operations role inside the legal function.

JD template

Contract Manager — Legal Operations
[Company] · [Location / Remote]

The role
You'll own the full contract lifecycle for [Company] — from intake through
post-signature obligation management — partnering with our legal team,
sales, and procurement. You'll be the single point of accountability for
contract throughput across the business.

What you'll do
- Triage incoming contract requests; route to the right reviewer based on
  risk, value, and template availability
- Negotiate standard commercial terms (NDAs, MSAs, order forms, DPAs) within
  pre-approved playbook positions; escalate to counsel when off-playbook
- Manage the contract repository and obligation calendar — renewals,
  auto-renewals, milestone payments, MFN clauses
- Build and refine playbooks, templates, and approval workflows so legal
  doesn't become a bottleneck as the company scales
- Partner with [CLM tool — e.g. Ironclad, Agiloft, ContractWorks] admin to
  improve workflows over time

What we're looking for
- 3+ years managing contracts in a corporate (not law firm) environment
- Comfortable negotiating commercial terms without a JD
- Demonstrated ability to track and improve cycle-time metrics
- Excellent written communication — you'll draft customer-facing redlines
- Bonus: experience with [your CLM tool], familiarity with [your industry]

What we're not looking for
- A drafter or attorney looking for a non-billable seat (this is an ops role)
- A paralegal looking to move into ops without commercial-negotiation reps

Comp band: $[X]K base + [bonus structure]

Interview rubric

90 minutes total: 60 working session + 30 fit.

Working session (60 min): Send the candidate three artifacts 24 hours in advance — a sample MSA from your standard template, a redlined version returned by a prospective customer, and your own playbook for that contract type. In the session, walk through:

Fit (30 min): career trajectory, why operations vs. law firm partnership track, what they're looking for next.

Pass bar: ≥18/25 on the working session, no single dimension scored 1.

Common hiring mistakes

• Hiring an attorney “to grow into ops.” They almost always want to do legal work, not operations. The first time you hand them a Salesforce report, they'll resent it.
• Optimizing for years of experience instead of throughput evidence. A 3-year operator who shipped a 60% cycle-time reduction beats an 8-year operator who managed a queue.
• Skipping the working session. Resumes and references can't tell you whether someone can actually negotiate. The 60-minute session is the single highest-signal hour you'll spend.