The Future of Contracting: CLM, Workflow, or AI-first?

The contracting stack has fragmented.

CLM vendors will tell you consolidation is the answer. Workflow tools will tell you not to bother with all the bells and whistles. AI true believers will tell you you can vibe code it all anyway. Everyone is selling certainty. Nobody actually has it.

So we went looking for what’s actually happening — and we’re publishing what we found in our forthcoming report, The Future of Contracting.

Here’s a preview of what’s inside.

Your best bet? Tech-stacking

The Josef team has seen more and more people in the market adopt the “tech stacking” approach – moving away from platforms, and instead knitting together best-in-class point solutions.

We’ve been seeing it so much, we made it the centerpiece of our recent event at CLOC Global Summit 2026 in Chicago: twenty-five in-house leaders from some of the world’s largest companies.

These are the patterns we’re seeing in the market, and where Josef thinks it’s going.

1. The market is uncertain, and the tech stack is a hedge

The speed of innovation, and pace of change within the legaltech market, is creating unparalleled uncertainty for in-house legal teams.

The smart ones aren’t putting all their eggs in one basket. They’re mapping their process, finding the best tool for each job — workflow, redlining, intelligence, e-sig — and building a stack that evolves as needs do.

It’s cheaper, faster, and best in class at every layer. And if something becomes redundant, you rip it out and replace it.

2. The platform/CLM is under pressure

Teams are paying for functionality they don’t want and not getting the best from what they do use.

In the age of AI, expectations of alignment are higher than ever, and teams are also expecting more of their AI.

While the fear of being trapped remains a key determinant of buying behavior, the cost of switching is falling faster than most people realise.

3. Where AI fits depends on where you are

For large enterprises it’s contract intelligence at scale. For everyone else, it’s the low-hanging fruit, automated routing, or extracting clean outputs from messy inputs. The trap is trying to boil the ocean before you’ve solved the basics.

Our full report drops soon.

The Future of Contracting features the data behind these patterns, customer stories, and a practical framework for thinking about your own contracting stack.