Legal teams track contracts across five tools and two shared drives. There's a DocuSign thread, a DMS with the canonical version, a Slack channel for redlines, and an email chain that nobody is CC'd on. Everybody has an opinion about which system is wrong. Nobody wants to consolidate.
The legal-ops team doesn't want a new product. They want one route in the tool they already use — with the document, the redlines, and the conversation side by side.
One route, one contract
A contract is a document, a history, and a conversation about both. Files handles the first two. Chat handles the third. They share a uid, so they share the same entity.
<wy-files uid="contract-<%= contract.id %>"></wy-files>
<wy-comments uid="contract-<%= contract.id %>"></wy-comments>The Files component opens Word documents in place — version history, locking, and live presence are built in. Two reviewers can't overwrite each other, the redline chain stays intact, and the "who touched this last" question has a real answer instead of a timestamp on a filename.
Redlines that don't get lost
Version history in Files is not a second tool. It's the same component. The June 14 draft sits next to the June 18 draft and the July 2 draft, each with the person who authored it and the comments attached. When counsel asks "what changed between rev 4 and rev 6," the answer is two clicks away.
Comments that live on the clause
Comments attach to the contract as an entity. They're not in a separate Slack channel, and they're not in an email nobody forwarded. When a new reviewer joins the deal, they open the contract and the conversation is already there.
Cloud sources for the inbound drafts
Counterparty sends a draft from their Google Drive. Files mounts Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, and S3 — the file shows up inline. No download-and-reupload ritual, no "I think this is the latest version" email.
What you don't have to build
- Office document editing with presence, locking, and version history.
- A cloud-storage mount layer that handles auth per user per provider.
- A commenting system anchored to a legal entity, not a Slack channel.
The contract is the entity. The document, the history, and the conversation all hang off it. One route, two components, the legal team stops exporting to Word every time they want to redline.