# NDA & Contract Request Intake: done-for-you AI automation by BufferSol

> A done-for-you NDA and contract request intake automation is an AI agent that acts as legal's front door. It picks up requests from Slack, Teams, email and Salesforce, asks the requester for whatever is missing, checks for an existing NDA with that counterparty, and generates your standard mutual NDA for signature when the terms are standard. Non-standard requests become a complete ticket routed to the right lawyer. BufferSol builds it, connects your systems and logs every request.

- Canonical: https://buffersoltech.com/done-for-you/legal-compliance/nda-contract-intake
- Category: Legal & Compliance
- Provider: BufferSol Technologies (New York; serving the US, UK, Ireland, Canada and the EU)
- Timeline: live in 3 to 6 weeks
- Pricing: quoted after a short scoping call

## Every NDA and contract request captured, completed and routed from one front door

**Who it is for:** Growing companies whose legal team of one to ten people gets NDA and contract requests from sales, procurement, partnerships and HR through chat, email and hallway conversations, with no single place to see them.

### Signs you need it
- Legal learns about an urgent NDA from a direct message on a Friday afternoon.
- Requests arrive without the counterparty's legal name, the deal owner or what information will be shared.
- Nobody can say quickly whether you already have an NDA in force with a given company.
- Salespeople send old NDA templates they saved to their desktop.
- The legal team cannot report how many requests it handled last month or how long they took.

## Business outcomes
- **One queue for legal work.** Requests from every channel land in one tracked queue with owner, priority and status, so nothing gets lost in a direct message or a forwarded email.
- **Standard NDAs out the same day.** When a counterparty accepts your standard mutual NDA, the agent prepares it from the current template and sends it for signature without a lawyer drafting anything.
- **Business teams know where things stand.** Requesters get status updates in the same Slack thread or email they used, which cuts the chasing that eats legal's day.

## How it works today
1. A salesperson messages a lawyer directly, or emails the legal alias, asking for an NDA with a prospect.
2. The lawyer replies asking for the counterparty's full legal name, address, signatory and what the discussion covers.
3. Someone searches the shared drive and DocuSign folders to see whether an NDA already exists with that company.
4. The template is copied, edited by hand and sent for signature, or the counterparty sends their own paper and it joins the review pile.
5. Status questions come back through the same scattered channels, and the signed copy may or may not get filed.

Hidden costs:
- Lawyers spend hours a week on back-and-forth for basic details instead of on contracts that need judgment.
- Duplicate NDAs, expired NDAs and outdated templates create avoidable confidentiality risk.
- With no request log, legal cannot show its workload or make the case for more help.

## How it works done for you
1. A request comes in through a Slack or Teams shortcut, the legal email alias, a Salesforce or HubSpot button, or a short web form. The agent reads it and identifies the request type.
2. It checks for missing details and asks the requester in the same thread: counterparty legal entity, signatory, deal owner, purpose and any data or IP involved. It pulls what it can from the CRM first.
3. It searches your CLM, DocuSign or shared drive for an existing NDA with that entity and tells the requester if one is already in force and when it expires.
4. If the counterparty accepts your standard mutual NDA, the agent fills the approved template and sends it through DocuSign or Adobe Acrobat Sign. Any change to the template wording goes to legal.
5. Counterparty paper, MSAs, order forms and DPAs become a complete ticket in Jira, Ironclad or your legal queue, with the documents attached and routed by type and deal size.
6. Signed documents are filed with the right metadata, and every request, question, routing decision and approval is logged for legal ops reporting.

## What changes for the team
- **In-house lawyer.** Today: Answers direct messages, chases basic details and drafts routine NDAs between bigger pieces of work. Done for you: Works a prioritized queue of complete requests and only sees NDAs when the counterparty wants changes.
- **Salesperson or buyer.** Today: Does not know who to ask, waits without updates and sometimes sends an outdated template. Done for you: Asks in Slack or from the CRM record, answers a few questions and gets a standard NDA out for signature quickly.
- **Legal operations lead.** Today: Builds workload reports by hand from inboxes and memory. Done for you: Has a live log of request volume, type, requester and turnaround to plan staffing and templates.

## KPIs we measure
- **Standard NDA turnaround:** Hours from request to NDA sent for signature, compared with a sample of past requests from email and chat.
- **Requests captured in the queue:** Share of legal requests logged through the front door versus raised by direct message, sampled from lawyers' inboxes monthly.
- **Complete-on-arrival rate:** Tickets that reach a lawyer with every required field filled, tracked by request type.
- **Duplicate NDAs avoided:** Requests where the agent found an NDA already in force, logged with the counterparty and expiry date.
- **Requester follow-ups:** Status-chasing messages sent to legal per request, before and after launch.

## Industry data
- 3-5 days vs 1-2 days: Most common NDA turnaround expected by sales versus by legal (Lexion 2023 State of Legal Tech, reported January 2024) ([Legal Dive](https://www.legaldive.com/news/sales-teams-view-about-legal-departments-lexion-legal-tech-survey/704796/))
- 52 per cent: In-house lawyers in Juro's survey who cited feeling buried in low-value work as their greatest concern ([Juro](https://juro.com/learn/legal-front-door))

## Systems it connects to
Slack, Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Gmail, Salesforce, HubSpot, DocuSign eSignature, Adobe Acrobat Sign, Ironclad, Jira Service Management

## Guardrails
- Only the approved NDA template is generated automatically; any edit to its wording, or any counterparty paper, goes to a lawyer.
- Requests involving personal data, source code, regulated data or named high-risk counterparties are always routed to a lawyer.
- The agent cannot sign on the company's behalf; signatories are set by your authority matrix.
- Every request, question, generated document and routing decision is logged with requester, time and template version.

## What teams say about this work
- A law firm case study describes a small in-house team receiving requests through chat, email, document comments and calls with no central place to track them, spending too much time chasing information while matters slipped through. ([Lewis Silkin](https://www.lewissilkin.com/how-we-can-help-you/case-studies/case-study-nillion))
- A survey of sales and legal staff found the two sides expect very different NDA turnaround times, and many salespeople feel legal is slow to return documents. ([Legal Dive](https://www.legaldive.com/news/sales-teams-view-about-legal-departments-lexion-legal-tech-survey/704796/))
- A general counsel writing for in-house lawyers notes that contract delays often come from incomplete information and poor preparation on the sales side, yet the legal department usually takes the blame. ([Thomson Reuters](https://legal.thomsonreuters.com/blog/sales-team-and-the-legal-department-a-playbook-for-in-house-counsel/))
- Legal teams describe requests buried in emails, Slack messages and ad hoc conversations, with business teams unsure who to ask and lawyers feeling buried in low-value work. ([Juro](https://juro.com/learn/legal-front-door))

## Delivery: live in 3 to 6 weeks
1. Week 1: discovery, access and a baseline of today's numbers.
2. Weeks 2–3: build the agents and connect your systems, with your rules and approvals.
3. Weeks 3–5: test on your real history, then pilot on live work with your team reviewing.
4. Weeks 4–6: staged go-live, training, dashboards and handover.

## Executive Ask questions for this workflow
- How many NDA and contract requests did legal get this month, and from which teams?
- Do we already have an NDA in force with this prospect, and when does it expire?
- Which requests have been waiting on legal the longest, and what is missing on each?

## Frequently asked questions
### Will our sales team actually use a new intake process?
They don't have to learn a new tool. The agent works where requests already start: a Slack or Teams message, the legal email alias or a button on the Salesforce or HubSpot record. It asks only for what is missing and fills in what it can from the CRM. Requests that still arrive by direct message can be forwarded to the agent in one click.

### Can it send NDAs without a lawyer?
Only your approved standard NDA, and only when the counterparty accepts it unchanged. The agent fills in names, addresses and dates from the request and the CRM, then sends it through DocuSign or Adobe Acrobat Sign for your authorized signatory. If the counterparty wants edits, sends its own paper or the request involves sensitive data, it goes to a lawyer instead.

### How does it know if we already have an NDA with a company?
During setup we connect the places your signed NDAs live, such as a CLM, DocuSign envelopes or a SharePoint folder, and index them by counterparty entity, effective date and term. When a new request comes in, the agent checks that index and tells the requester whether an NDA is in force, whether it covers the new purpose and when it expires.

### How long does it take to go live?
Live in 3 to 6 weeks. We start by mapping your request types, templates, routing rules and signatories with legal. Then we connect Slack or Teams, email, your CRM, e-signature and document store, and test the flow with a few requesters before rolling it out to sales, procurement and other teams that send work to legal.

### What does it cost?
Cost is quoted after a short scoping call. The main factors are the number of request types and templates, how many channels and systems we connect, and how your approval and signatory rules work. We confirm scope in writing first, so you know exactly what is built, connected and supported before any work starts.