Transforming contract review at NetApp with Agiloft Astra

Not long ago, the Legal team at NetApp was still manually handling contract redlining. Attorneys reviewed every agreement line by line, with no AI assistance in the process.

For this global intelligent data infrastructure company, that meant a steady stream of vendor and customer agreements requiring the same careful review.  

That's a lot to ask of any legal team, and Shelle Elzer, NetApp's Legal Operations Manager, knew it wasn't sustainable. So, she began looking for a better approach. That search led her team to Agiloft Astra, a new contracts AI platform built to review, redline, and analyze agreements within the tools legal teams already use.

NetApp needed more than a faster redlining process

Manual redlining was only one part of NetApp’s contracting headache. As Elzer recently shared on the “Contract Heroes” podcast, the team was also facing pressure to keep pace with the bigger shift happening across the Legal Operations profession as a whole.  

“The scope of legal operations is going under a huge transformation,” Elzer said. “What it looked like a few years ago is quickly morphing and is a lot more technology and AI-focused. Just being able to keep up with AI right now is a full-time job.”

In 2026 and beyond, Legal teams like the Elzer’s are being asked to do a lot more than manage a contract repository. They're expected to evaluate new AI tools, roll them out responsibly, and keep adjusting as those tools evolve, all while still handling the everyday volume of deals moving through the business.  

Selecting a CLM partner, not just a vendor

About a year and a half ago, Elzer brought together colleagues from Legal, Procurement, and Operations to run a full Request For Proposals (RFP) and evaluate CLM vendors. The team assessed four vendors, looking closely ease of platform configuration, the quality and accuracy of AI outputs, and how intuitive they would be for everyday users. They then ran complete proof-of-concept (POC) tests with two vendors.

Elzer noted that one of NetApp’s requirements mattered more than almost anything else: the tool had to live where attorneys already worked.  

“Bringing it to where they were was absolutely critical for my users,” she said. “If they're in Word negotiating their agreements, that's where the technology needs to be too.”  

Astra’s Microsoft Word add-in allowed attorneys to review and redline agreements inside the document they already had open, rather than moving the work into a separate system. The tool also scored highest across NetApp’s evaluation criteria.  

“It was a no-brainer to bring them on,” Elzer said. “And implementation was so easy...you really can be up and running with a basic screen in hours. So easy to get up and just start saving time.”

Speed wasn’t the only deciding factor, though.  

Elzer emphasized that she also valued the potential for a long-term partnership with Agiloft. “I don't need another vendor. I need a partner, especially in a space that's rapidly changing. They're going to grow, but we want to grow with them,” she said.  

Building AI contract review around existing contracting standards

To get Astra up and running, the NetApp team configured Screens around a specific agreement types, such as a service or distribution agreement. Each screen tells Astra what to look for and how to redline the document according to NetApp’s own standards.

NetApp's subject matter experts built and tested each Screen themselves, and super users partnered with them to test further before anything reached the wider legal team. That groundwork shows up in the results. NetApp now has seven live Screens, with each saving an average of 150 minutes, according to Elzer.

“That's a really big deal,” she said. “It's giving our attorneys that time to negotiate bigger deals, revenue deals, putting their time where they need to be focused, not on first-pass redlining.”

The value extends beyond time saved. When deciding which screens to build, NetApp considers both agreement volume and areas where specialist knowledge is in short supply. A screen can help share that expertise across the legal team, giving attorneys more support when they are handling negotiations outside their own area of specialization.

“If we only have one privacy attorney, they can’t be that expert on all of these deals,” Elzer explained. “Getting something like a privacy screen up and running empowers attorneys who aren’t the privacy experts to have a little bit more stake in the negotiation.”

Scaling AI contract review for the future

For NetApp, user adoption has not been the main challenge. The harder task has been building Screens quickly enough.

Each Screen is designed for a specific agreement type, so attorneys cannot use Astra when a relevant screen has not yet been built. As more attorneys see the value of AI-assisted review, the list of requested screens continues to grow.

Elzer’s advice to other legal teams sizing up AI tools is straightforward: “Jump in. We're waiting for a perfect solution, and it may never exist, but start somewhere. Pick a vendor that is willing to partner with you as you grow.”

If your team is still redlining everything by hand...

That was NetApp's starting point too, before Astra’s handy Word add-in and a stable of carefully-designed Screens changed how much of that work landed on an attorney's desk.  

Astra is free to sign up for, with no upfront costs, so there's nothing stopping your team from testing it the exact way NetApp did before deciding if it's worth building out further.

Sign up for Astra today!  

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