Who Else is Streamlining Their Agreements?

Who Else Is Streamlining Their Agreements? A Software Attorney’s Take.

Short answer: streamlining is not about shorter sentences. It is about deciding which provisions are genuinely necessary, which are reflexes, and which belong in a policy. Most SaaS EULAs are four to eight times longer than they need to be.

Streamlining agreements is a problem software companies share with every industry that runs on contracts. The good news is that other legal minds have been at this longer than most software lawyers, and the methods they built translate cleanly to SaaS and software EULAs.

The Pathclearer Methodology.

The in-house team at Scottish & Newcastle (a beverage company based in Scotland) documented an approach to streamlining agreements they call “Pathclearer.” The idea is simple: strip commercial agreements down to the substance that matters, and push operational detail out to policies and SOPs. In an 8-page article, they explain the methodology and provide a template.

What stands out about Pathclearer is its discipline. The Scottish in-house lawyers did not just rewrite their templates with shorter sentences. Instead, they ferreted out real inefficiencies in their legal processes to help the business succeed. In other words, they identified which provisions were genuinely necessary, which were institutional reflexes, and which belonged in a separate document.

Why It Matters for Software Companies.

Software companies should look for ways to streamline their revenue-generating agreements (end-user, services, support, and channel) using approaches like this. Most SaaS EULAs are four to eight times longer than they need to be. And trimming them is not just about readability. It is about removing language that creates risk without delivering value. If you want that done for your paper, it is the core of our SaaS contract practice.

For the foundational decision about which contract structure to streamline in the first place, see SaaS Agreement vs. Software EULA: Which Template Do I Need? For the broader playbook on simpler contracting, see Microsoft’s Plain English EULA: A Better Way to Draft. Microsoft’s Windows 8 EULA is a real-world example of streamlining agreements done well. And for the customer-side rationale, see Contract or Policy? When Software Companies Should Use Each, which walks through what belongs in the contract versus a policy you can change.

Disclaimer:

This post is for informational and educational purposes only, and is not legal advice.