A contract drafting service writes and reviews agreements for small businesses and startups, often against a quick turnaround. Quality rests on a few reviewers and a library of templates, and the pressure falls on drafters who work from them.
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Share your requirementsA drafting service prepares rent agreements, service contracts, vendor and employment agreements, shareholder papers and non-disclosure terms for small clients, often ordered online with a promised delivery time. The team is made of a lawyer or two who review and sign off, a group of junior drafters, sometimes law students or interns, and an intake desk that takes the client's facts. Work starts from templates, and the main risk is a clause that does not fit the client. Orders arrive unevenly, with many on month-end. Drafters are asked to do more in less time, and the best ones are recruited by law firms or company legal teams. See also HR for professional services.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in contract drafting services. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
Everyone edits their own copy, so the firm ends up with several versions of the same agreement, each missing something different.
The order desk captures a name and a type but not the thing that changes the contract, and the drafter finds out late.
A two-day promise made at intake lands on a drafter who then has to skip checking.
Every document waits for the same counsel, and drafts queue at month-end while staff watch the clock.
Students draft client documents with little supervision, and the firm carries the risk as well as the benefit.
Count of documents rewards speed, so careful people look slow and the careless look productive.
Revision requests come by phone, chat and email, and nobody knows which version is current.
Law firms and in-house teams offer a clearer title and steady matters, and the service has no ladder to match.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Performance Management; Learning and Development; HR Operations and Governance. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
The pieces a contract drafting services business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
One person maintains each agreement type, logs changes and retires old copies, so there is only one live version.
One person maintains each agreement type, logs changes and retires old copies, so there is only one live version.
Questions per contract type that surface the points that change the draft, filled before work begins.
Questions per contract type that surface the points that change the draft, filled before work begins.
Set delivery times by contract type with the drafting team, not sales alone.
Set delivery times by contract type with the drafting team, not sales alone. The performance management process can track on-time delivery and errors together.
Train senior drafters to review simple types and keep the counsel for the complex ones, with a written scope of what each may sign.
Train senior drafters to review simple types and keep the counsel for the complex ones, with a written scope of what each may sign.
Tasks, supervision, confidentiality terms and a mentor.
Tasks, supervision, confidentiality terms and a mentor. See the employee onboarding process.
Junior to senior to reviewer, with samples of work at each stage.
Junior to senior to reviewer, with samples of work at each stage. The learning and development process shapes the training.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Measures that reward accuracy and on-time delivery, not only the count of documents.
A first-week plan for drafters and interns that covers confidentiality and house style.
Training that grows drafters into reviewers.
Written terms for interns and staff on confidentiality and client files.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in professional services, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why associates and managers leave consulting, accounting, legal and advisory firms, and how to ask about progression, workload and partners at exit.
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A practical design for an IT services appraisal cycle: when to run it, how to rate fairly across projects, and how to explain hikes so they hold.
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A founder's guide to hiring freshers and running a first-year programme: campus or open drives, a screening round, a training plan by quarter, mentors and checkpoints.
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Every growing company reaches a point where the founder approving everything stops being speed and starts being the bottleneck. Twelve signs it has happened, and what to fix first.
9 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Name one owner per type, store one live copy in one place and log changes. Staff then copy from the live version, not from old files.
A volume element can exist, but weigh it against corrections and client complaints. Otherwise careful drafters feel penalised.
Give them defined tasks, a mentor, review before anything leaves the office and written confidentiality terms. Ask a qualified professional about their status.
Train senior drafters to review the routine types against a checklist, and keep counsel for the complex documents.
Agree turnaround by document type with the drafting team and give sales a simple table. Exceptions need a drafter's agreement.
Template ownership, intake questions, review capacity and a ladder for drafters are common starting points. We first hear how orders flow through your week. Scope, timing and fees follow in writing.
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