A SaaS software company was ready to close. The commercial terms were agreed. The customer was ready to sign. Then their legal team got involved.

The company's security documentation was seven pages. The customer's legal team rejected it and countered with a 70-page contract packed with requirements written for a government defense system. Weeks of redlining followed. Legal fees mounted. The deal stalled.

Then someone suggested a five-minute call.

What the Call Revealed

On the call, the customer's legal team explained what they were actually worried about. The vendor's technical staff explained what the software actually did. Within minutes, it was clear that the legal team had been reviewing the agreement as if it governed a critical national infrastructure deployment — not a SaaS tool for commercial operations.

"We realised we'd been reviewing this like it was for a government defense system."

Once they understood the actual risk level, the customer's legal team reclassified downward. Two editing rounds completed the process in fourteen days. The deal closed.

Four Ways to Reduce Expenses in Contract Negotiations

  1. Start with your own template when you can. When you control the starting document, you're negotiating from a known position. The other side proposes changes to your structure, not the reverse.
  2. Request a conversation before you redline their contract. One call to align on what each party actually cares about eliminates most of the unnecessary back-and-forth before it starts.
  3. Make sure their legal team understands your product. Mismatched risk assessments are the single biggest source of unnecessary legal friction. If their lawyer thinks your product does something it doesn't, they'll protect against risks that don't exist.
  4. Embrace deliberate pacing to accelerate the outcome. Counterintuitive, but true: slowing down to have the right conversation upfront saves more time than pushing to close faster without alignment.

Legal fees in contract negotiations are mostly friction costs — money spent resolving misunderstandings that could have been prevented. The call is free. The redlining isn't.