Thanks to Ironclad as always for the latest "What's New" update.
A few things stood out for me:
- Snippets - The Snippets functionality already exists so it appears this update makes it appear as a standard column every time? That would save time as currently you have to add it every time. However, this is really just an acknowledgment that the unified dashboard is a downgrade on the old repository. Search used to be easy as you'd get a full view of your search terms in context on an image of the document page, and could quickly flick between documents. That needs to be reinstated as soon as possible. Snippets, and the repository view generally are inadequate.
- On a related note, if the change is that the Snippets show up automatically - a more welcome change would have been to allow us to edit and save custom default views (columns, filters etc.). Saving a random custom view is clunky. Also, having your search views reset every time you click on a record to see if it's what you need and then try to get back to the dashboard view being searched is huge failure of UX.
- Signature - it is good to see digital certificates being introduced, however with missing functionality in Ironclad Signature this actually creates a problem for us. The lack of digital certificate currently means the documents are not locked - and as such you can extract pages from the signed PDF - this is helpful if you are having a number of documents signed at once - for example board resolutions or multiple agreements with a single internal/counterparty. AdobSign fixes this by having a setting that allows you to download individual documents from a signed packet - it would be great if Ironclad could introduce this. It will be a nightmare for the business to get multiple signing requests on the same topic. (p.s. the help article on this is not available to EU users. Is this change just in the US?)
- Jurist - We have been trialling other AI legal solutions - as an Ironclad user we would prefer to have one vendor in this space and the ability to redline and edit in one place would be amazing. However, we cannot justify the high price of Jurist when it offers less functionality than others on the market - and the significant inaccuracy of Ironclad's existing AI solutions does not bring trust, unfortunately. It feels to me that Jurist ought to be bundled with Ironclad to make the Ironclad CLM offer more attractive. Tech in this space has come on significantly and Ironclad is slipping behind in its offering by making customers pay extra for something that ought to be included. AI Playbooks do not cut it - they are inaccurate and are a nightmare to implement. Just my two pence.
- Insights - not included in this update but the MI we can extract from Ironclad is really poor. Support advised me to export to excel and use that to try and find the stats I am looking for. As an example, I have no way of telling the business "This is how many workflows we had in Review stage at the end of September 2024, and this is how many we had in review at the end of September 2025". This is a real failure and makes my job much harder - including justifying the high cost of Ironclad to the CFO. I can provide very little meaningful insights to the business about the state of our contracts.
I hope the above feedback is helpful to Ironclad, particularly if others have similar issues . I've long said I am a big advocate for Ironclad but developments in legal tech and the way we work have felt out of step with some of the recent updates.
