If you work in-house and you’re not treating your vendor contracts like strategic assets, you’re overlooking one of the most valuable sources of operational insight. In a recent episode of “Notes to My (Legal) Self,” legal ops leader Navin Mahavijiyan explained how most legal teams are sitting on a treasure trove of data without realizing it, and what to do about it.

Watch the full episode here:

Contracts Are More Than Agreements. They’re Data Sets.

Vendor contracts often live quietly in the background. They get filed away and rarely resurface unless something goes wrong or a renewal is approaching. But as Navin pointed out, these agreements contain critical information about how a business functions, spends, and scales.

“One of the things that I’ve come to learn in my career is that managing your vendor, your supplier, your subcontractor contracts is incredibly critical for the business,” Navin said. “That’s a huge amount of spend. Being able to track them — when they expire, when you need to have renewal discussions, or just the fact that you have them — is instrumental.”

This isn’t about building a better repository. It’s about turning static documents into living data that supports smarter business decisions.

AI Helps, But Only When You Know What You Need

Navin is a strong advocate for using AI to manage contracts, but with a caveat. He warns against rushing into a tool just because it can extract a lot of data. The key is clarity of purpose.

“When you’re just starting out, the typical motion is let’s take our contracts, dump them into a tool, and have the vendor’s AI analyze them,” he said. “That’s really easy to do. But it can become too much.”

Instead, start with your priorities. What do you actually need to know to support your business? Renewal dates? Payment terms? Auto-renew clauses? Navin recommends building a shortlist of must-have data points first.

“Have your own checklist on what data points you want to collect from your contracts,” he said. “Then you also know what needs to be trained into the AI.”

Searchable Is Good. Contextual Is Better.

Scanning and uploading contracts into a central system might check the box for “digitized,” but it’s not enough. Navin stressed that legal teams need to go beyond searchability and focus on usability.

This includes setting up alerts, triggers, and workflows that actually help stakeholders take action, whether that’s procurement needing to renegotiate a contract or finance needing to plan for upcoming obligations.

“You can use [AI] to analyze all the contracts, pull vast amounts of data out of it, make them searchable, and automate alerts and tracking,” Navin said. “The right people in different parts of your business can be notified when something as simple as the contract is about to expire, or when language creates risk.”

Not All Contract Data Lives In The Contract

One of the smartest points Navin made is that some of the most useful contract data isn’t in the contract itself. Details like vendor contacts, internal owners, and business context often live outside the document, but they’re just as essential.

“There are elements of the contract information that are not in the contract itself,” he explained. “That’s where AI can’t help unless you build that into your contract review process.”

Legal ops teams need a process to capture and associate this metadata. Intake forms, playbooks, and templates can go a long way in closing that gap and making the contract lifecycle more complete.

Too Much Information Can Be Just As Bad

As contract systems become more powerful, there’s a temptation to broadcast every bit of data to every stakeholder. Navin cautioned against this approach.

“Finance wants to know very different things from your delivery folks or your accounting team,” he said. “You need to understand their cadence, how often they need to be notified, and craft alerts that are robust and unique to each group.”

The goal isn’t to make everyone a contract expert. The goal is to deliver the right insight to the right person at the right time.

Legal Ops Can Lead The Shift

For too long, vendor contracts have been treated like legal housekeeping. But as Navin made clear, they’re a window into how your business spends, risks, renews, and grows. With the right combination of tools and processes, legal teams can turn that window into a control panel.

This is more than a tech upgrade. It’s a mindset shift.

The return on investment isn’t just cleaner records. It’s better visibility, faster action, and greater alignment with the business. Vendor contracts are already sitting there, waiting to be unlocked.

Ready to start digging?

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.

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