(GC perspective, 15 years in-house)

Parallel routing only works when ownership is unambiguous and information arrives complete. The goal is simple: legal should not be the system of record for technical, commercial, or security questions. Legal should manage legal risk. Everyone else needs to handle their part upstream.

My playbook breaks into six stages.

1. Intake must collect all non-legal information

Most delays occur because security or procurement does not have the information they need when the contract arrives. Intake should force the business owner to supply:

• Full vendor scope and purpose
• System architecture or data flow (even a simple diagram)
• Categories of data involved
• Pricing model and expected spend
• Whether the vendor touches production, customers, or regulated data
• Renewal expectations
• Any prior assessments or renewals

If intake is weak, parallel review collapses into serial review. I treat intake quality as a compliance issue, not a convenience issue.

I use Concord intake forms for this because they stabilize the dataset. But the tool matters less than the discipline.

2. Security triage must start the same day as contract routing

Legal review should never be the trigger for security review. Security needs enough lead time to run its own process, which typically includes:

• Questionnaire and evidence request
• Review of SOC2, ISO 27001, penetration tests
• Assessment of application architecture
• Data residency and encryption controls
• Vendor access model (SAML, SSO, VPN, etc.)

I instruct my teams to send security the intake packet and the relevant contract sections immediately, not after first legal redlines. When the two teams work in parallel, the most time-consuming path dictates total time. That is good. You want the long pole to be visible early.

3. Procurement handles commercial alignment before negotiation

Procurement should settle commercial terms upfront:

• Pricing
• Discounts and tiers
• Renewal structure
• Auto-renewal position
• Service levels
• Implementation timelines
• Any required obligations the vendor must meet

When procurement settles these items before legal redlines, negotiation becomes focused rather than exploratory. The legal team is not negotiating pricing or scope, which is where contract timelines blow up.

Procurement should also confirm whether the vendor is strategic, operational, or incidental. I tailor negotiation posture to that classification.

4. Legal begins review only once scope, pricing, and data posture are confirmed

Legal cannot meaningfully redline an agreement if the scope or data classification is still unsettled. My benchmark is simple:

If security cannot classify the data or procurement cannot articulate the commercial terms, the contract is not ready for legal review.

This avoids wasted cycles. It also reduces the “legal is slow” narrative that inevitably appears when legal is asked to negotiate an agreement that has not been internally aligned.

5. Weekly cross-functional standups during active vendor evaluations

Parallel workflows produce hidden blockers unless the teams talk regularly. I run a short weekly standup with:

• Legal
• Procurement
• Security
• Business owner
• Finance (if spend is material)

The agenda is the same each week:

1. What is the blocker?
2. Who owns clearing it?
3. What deadline applies?
4. What escalation path do we use if the owner cannot resolve it?

This is where cross-functional authority matters. If security needs more time, we escalate. If procurement is stuck waiting on the vendor, we escalate. Legal should not be the one holding the bag for someone else’s delay.

6. Final alignment: merge legal, procurement, and security positions before sending back to the vendor

Before returning a marked draft to the vendor, we consolidate the three review tracks:

• Legal redlines
• Security requirements
• Commercial terms from procurement

The most common operational failure is sending fragmented comments from different departments at different times. That guarantees churn. Vendors will sequence their responses and delay closing.

I require a single outbound document. One voice. One position. One set of fallbacks.

If internal groups disagree on a point, I resolve the conflict before the vendor sees it. That is the GC’s job.

How the pieces fit together

When procurement, legal, and security operate in parallel, cycle time compresses because:

• Security starts early
• Procurement aligns pricing before negotiation
• Legal focuses only on legal
• Each team has clear owners
• Standups expose delays quickly
• Outbound messaging is unified

The pattern is predictable. Each team owns its domain. No one waits for someone else to finish their part. And all three converge at the end rather than handing off work sequentially.