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Marshfield’s always there to help. Any time I ask, ‘How can I do this?’ or ‘What’s the best way to accomplish this?’ they have the answer.
Jason Schmidt, Paralegal & Legal Administrator
Overview
A cutting-edge computational platform that accelerates drug discovery chose Marshfield Consulting to create a scalable NDA process from generation through signature, all built on Docusign CLM technology.
The Challenge
Schrödinger’s Legal team handled up to 5 new NDAs a day through a patchwork of disconnected forms, spreadsheets, manually edited templates, and emails. The process demanded 10+ hours per week and lacked collaborative redlining. Without a unified system, sales reps and customers lacked visibility into an NDA’s status.
Marshfield's Solution
After selecting Docusign CLM, Schrödinger opted for Marshfield based on the consultancy’s knowledge of workflows and flexibility in building solutions—and glowing recommendation from Docusign CLM’s account executive.
The new process merges the requestor’s information into an NDA template, checks for duplicates, and routes for approval and signature. Rejections are automatically queued for collaborative redlining, with full version control and multiple options for re-routing based on the suggested changes. Sales and customers receive notifications at every step.
Signed NDAs are stored in Docusign CLM, serving as one central repository with advanced search and reporting functionality. To help ensure compliance with NDA terms, the system sends automated alerts when NDAs are 30 days from their expiration date.
Benefits & Results
Processing time for an average NDA has dropped from 30 minutes to 2—a 93% reduction in time. Complex NDAs that once demanded 45-60 minutes of manual intervention now take 10 minutes of Legal’s time.
The signature step’s automated notifications spare the Legal team from chasing signatures, one of the most time-consuming aspects of the old system. Because everything lives in Docusign CLM, tracking progress and reviewing version history takes place in the same location.
Based on the new NDA process’s unqualified success, Schrodinger plans to partner with Marshfield again to create NDA amendments and software-licensing contracts within Docusign CLM.
In the same amount of time that it would have taken me to read the email request and start the old process, an NDA can already be on its way to the external party.
Jason Schmidt, Paralegal & Legal Administrator
