In-house legal teams are under pressure like never before. Budgets are tight. Headcount is frozen. Business partners expect faster turnaround. And leadership wants Legal to deliver all of this while “doing more with less.”

So, where do many teams look for relief? Legal tech. Generative AI. Automation. But here’s the catch: most legal tech rollouts stall. Not because the tools don’t work, but because the people implementing them are underwater, and the systems they’re trying to fix weren’t designed for clarity in the first place.

As Maryam Salehijam explained in a recent episode of “Notes to My (Legal) Self,” “You really cannot talk about AI and legal technology to an in-house legal team that’s already burning out.” She’s right. And one of the biggest sources of that burnout? Contracting.

Watch the full interview here:

The Real Blocker Isn’t The Tech — It’s The Contracts

If you’ve ever tried to implement CLM, launch a new playbook, or standardize templates, you know this firsthand. Contracts aren’t just legal documents. They’re systems. And most of those systems are messy, over-customized, and inconsistent. You can’t fix that with software alone.

In fact, trying to automate a broken contract process is like paving over a pothole-ridden road. It looks good at first, but it doesn’t hold up. “Start small,” Maryam advised in the interview. “Most legal teams don’t even have the basic operational functions optimized.” Before adding tech, you have to understand what’s broken and whether your people even have the bandwidth to address it.

The Case For An Alliance: ALSPs, Legal Ops, And Tech

Here’s where things get interesting. Maryam doesn’t just advocate for legal technology. She champions the power of ALSPs (alternative legal service providers) as a strategic bridge. Not just to reduce cost, but to enable progress. “ALSPs and legal tech should be best friends,” she said. “We can come in, take over the work that’s keeping lawyers really busy, so they can learn to use the tools and really optimize themselves.”

This is a perspective we don’t hear enough. Tech is not the hero; alignment is. When ALSPs provide capacity, legal ops lead process design, and legal tech powers automation, that’s when change takes root.

But this kind of collaboration doesn’t happen by accident. It starts with intentional planning and brutally honest scoping. Who is doing what? Where does human judgment still matter? How will success be measured? Without that clarity, change efforts collapse under their own weight.

What In-House Teams Can Do Right Now

If you’re staring down a contract transformation or trying to recover from one that’s gone sideways, there’s a better path forward.

Start with your team’s current capacity. Who is doing contract work today? What kind of work is it? Is it negotiable? Is it repetitive? Is it aligned to risk? From there, look at where the work is getting stuck. Is it a legal review? Redlines? Business confusion? Each of these pain points suggests a different solution and a different role for tech, ops, or external support.

Then, talk to your ALSPs. Not when you’re in panic mode, but before. “Have coffee chats,” Maryam suggested. “Say, I have no needs, I just want to learn.” These conversations build trust, surface new solutions, and help legal leaders see what’s working for others.

Lastly, set your team up for quick wins. If your contracts are full of inconsistencies, don’t roll out a contract AI tool on Day One. Start by simplifying templates. Clarify fallback positions. Create a process that works for humans, not just for software. As Maryam put it, “Think big. Start small.”

The Bottom Line

Legal teams don’t fail because they resist change. They fail because the support they get is fragmented. Tech wants adoption. ALSPs want projects. Ops wants scalability. But the contracting process needs all three: aligned, honest, and focused on outcomes.

The good news? That alliance is already forming. And legal departments that embrace it are discovering something powerful: clarity is a competitive advantage.

Contracting doesn’t have to be the bottleneck. With the right partners, it becomes a catalyst.

Watch the full interview with Maryam Salehijam here.

Olga V. Mack is the CEO of TermScout, an AI-powered contract certification platform that accelerates revenue and eliminates friction by certifying contracts as fair, balanced, and market-ready. A serial CEO and legal tech executive, she previously led a company through a successful acquisition by LexisNexis. Olga is also a Fellow at CodeX, The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics, and the Generative AI Editor at law.MIT. She is a visionary executive reshaping how we law—how legal systems are built, experienced, and trusted. Olga teaches at Berkeley Law, lectures widely, and advises companies of all sizes, as well as boards and institutions. An award-winning general counsel turned builder, she also leads early-stage ventures including Virtual Gabby (Better Parenting Plan), Product Law Hub, ESI Flow, and Notes to My (Legal) Self, each rethinking the practice and business of law through technology, data, and human-centered design. She has authored The Rise of Product Lawyers, Legal Operations in the Age of AI and Data, Blockchain Value, and Get on Board, with Visual IQ for Lawyers (ABA) forthcoming. Olga is a 6x TEDx speaker and has been recognized as a Silicon Valley Woman of Influence and an ABA Woman in Legal Tech. Her work reimagines people’s relationship with law—making it more accessible, inclusive, data-driven, and aligned with how the world actually works. She is also the host of the Notes to My (Legal) Self podcast (streaming on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube), and her insights regularly appear in Forbes, Bloomberg Law, Newsweek, VentureBeat, ACC Docket, and Above the Law. She earned her B.A. and J.D. from UC Berkeley. Follow her on LinkedIn and X @olgavmack.

The post Maryam Salehijam On Why Contracting Is The Hidden Bottleneck And How ALSPs, Legal Ops, And Tech Can Actually Fix It appeared first on Above the Law.