CLM Adoption for Enterprise Contract Automation: Key Findings
- The CLM market is projected to grow 88% to $3.5 billion by 2032, showing how enterprise brands can gain an edge by investing in scalable contract tools beyond legal.
- North America holds 39.1% of the global CLM market, signaling strong demand for automated workflows that legal tech providers and agencies should prioritize.
- Platforms like Summize increase adoption by integrating into tools teams already use, offering a roadmap for businesses to reduce legal bottlenecks and empower cross-functional teams.
Enterprise legal teams are under growing pressure.
As organizations scale, contracts multiply across sales, HR, procurement, and partnerships, yet many CLM platforms still treat legal as a silo rather than a strategic business function.
The global contract lifecycle management (CLM) market is projected to grow from $1.8 billion in 2025 to $3.5 billion by 2032, according to Fortune Business Insights.
And North America currently leads with a 39.1% share, underscoring the region’s push for faster, more automated contract workflows across large enterprises.
For Tom Dunlop, Co-Founder and CEO of Summize, that shift demands a rethink of how CLM platforms are built and who they’re really for.
His team focuses on fitting contract work into the tools teams already rely on, so managing agreements doesn’t become a bottleneck.
In this exclusive DesignRush interview, Dunlop explains how Summize is focused on building a CLM platform that actually gets used.
Who Is Tom Dunlop?
Tom Dunlop is the Founder & CEO of Summize, a CLM platform designed to help enterprises drive business-wide adoption through seamless integrations, expert implementation, and AI-powered contract intelligence.
Summize enables both legal and non-legal teams to manage contracts directly from the tools they already use without sacrificing control, compliance, or oversight.
Reduce Legal Bottlenecks by Empowering the Business
One of the biggest barriers to scaling legal operations is volume.
Routine, repetitive contracts often flood legal teams, leaving little room for strategic work.
Summize addresses this by enabling business users to initiate and manage contracts independently, while legal retains governance.
“The top three buying criteria we see are: reduce volume, improve efficiency, and enhance accuracy,” Dunlop says.
“A modern CLM should empower the wider business to be more self-sufficient, reducing the number of low-value, high-volume contracts that even reach Legal in the first place.”
Clear, automated summaries of obligations, renewal dates, and milestones ensure teams stay compliant without adding manual overhead.
Drive Adoption by Meeting Users Where They Work
Enterprise CLM adoption often fails for one simple reason: friction.
When platforms force teams into unfamiliar systems, engagement drops quickly.
“For large enterprises, the ability to work within the tools their people already use is critical for uptake and adoption,” Dunlop explains.
“We make it possible for employees to interact with legal and manage contracts directly from solutions they already use.”
By embedding workflows into shared team tools, Summize cuts down the time it takes to get people up to speed.
That faster onboarding helps drive stronger long‑term usage and ROI.
Use AI to Accelerate Contract Review Cycles
Manual contract review is slow, costly, and prone to error, especially at scale.
Summize uses AI to automate reviews, generate summaries, and support faster redlining, helping legal teams turn contracts around more quickly.
“Our advanced AI significantly reduces the time it takes to review contracts,” Dunlop says.
“It’s that combination of meeting users where they already are and using AI to make reviews faster and smarter that makes the biggest difference.”
Summize’s Review Pro feature enables legal teams to move from reactive review to proactive decision-making in just a few clicks.
Build for Every Department, Not Just Legal
Contracts touch every department, but each team approaches them differently.
Sales teams prioritize speed. HR values simplicity and compliance. Legal focuses on risk and control.
“Every team comes to contracts with a slightly different goal,” Dunlop says.
“A lot of the features we’ve built, like AI summaries or Review Pro, our contract review functionality for faster redlining, have come directly from how those teams actually work on a daily basis.”
Summize’s flexible workflows ensure departments can move fast without compromising legal oversight.
Let Enterprise Clients Inform Your Roadmap
Serving large enterprises means listening closely to customers while maintaining a clear long-term vision.
“We have a strong, long-term product vision and know exactly where we’re heading,” Dunlop says.
“Enterprise feedback helps us refine along that journey, but it doesn’t replace strategy.”
He describes the relationship with enterprise clients as collaborative but grounded.
“I’d describe it as influence, not direction,” he says.
“It’s collaboration without compromise on vision.”
That approach keeps Summize locked on its product vision while still building what enterprise teams actually use.
Apply Enterprise Lessons Internally to Scale Smarter
Working with enterprise clients who track everything has changed how the Summize team works.
They realized the same discipline they recommend to others could just as easily help them grow faster.
“Large organizations track everything from risk scores to real-time outcomes,” Dunlop says.
“We’ve adopted the same mindset using data to track product usage and engagement so we can scale teams faster and make smarter decisions.”
Summize has taken these lessons and used them to improve how they work.
The team now spots challenges earlier, streamlines processes, and bases decisions on real-time data instead of assumptions.
What Brands and Agencies Can Take Away
Summize’s approach offers a clear model for enterprise-ready CLM:
- Empower the business, not just legal.
- Make it easy for teams to manage contracts in the tools they already use.
- Use AI to scale speed, accuracy, and adoption.
Balancing usability with control and pairing integrations with a clear product vision allows Summize to prove that contract management can be both strategic and simple.
"We’ve always tried to make Summize something that works for all of them,” Dunlop says.
For brands navigating enterprise growth, it’s a model that turns legal operations into a business-wide advantage.
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