Inside Legatio: from dispatch to signed in under a day

Every product page claims to be fast. This is the specific version: one real agreement, start to finish, with the clock running.

The example is a mutual NDA going out to a new logistics client. It is deliberately unremarkable — the interesting thing about contract delay is that it happens on the boring documents too.

09:14 — Draft

The account manager opens Quick Dispatch and picks Mutual NDA from the template library. She does not open a Word file, does not search anyone's drive, and does not start from the last one she sent.

That matters more than it sounds. The template carries its clause set, its approval chain and its usage counter with it, so the version question — is this the current one? — never gets asked. Legal published it; that is the answer.

She fills in four fields: client, recipient, due date, urgency. The counter on the template ticks from 132 to 133 of 200.

09:16 — Approval

Because this template's value band needs one approval, it routes to the legal team the moment she hits dispatch. Not as an email with an attachment, but as a task sitting on the document itself.

The reviewer sees the filled document, the clause that differs from the standard set highlighted, and two buttons. She approves at 09:41, in the four minutes between other things, from her phone.

The approval is recorded against the agreement, not in someone's inbox. Nine months later, when an auditor asks who cleared clause 7, the answer takes one click rather than an afternoon of searching mailboxes.

09:42 — Dispatch

The document goes to the client's signatory as a secure link. There is nothing to install, no account to create and no licence for them to buy. They open it in a browser.

Tracking goes live at the same moment. Anyone internal can see exactly where the agreement is — sent, opened, signed, countersigned — without asking the account manager for an update.

11:20 — The counterparty signs

The client's operations head opens the link, reads it, and signs with Aadhaar eSign. She does not own a DSC token and does not need one: she signs once, so the instrument that fits is the one that authenticates her at the moment of signing.

If she had gone quiet instead, the reminder would have gone out on its own the next morning. Nobody on our client's side would have had to remember to chase.

13:05 — Countersignature

The company's authorised signatory countersigns with his Class 3 DSC. He signs frequently and on behalf of the business, so the credential that fits him is the one held on a token in his own possession.

Two different signature instruments on the same document, chosen by who is signing rather than by what the company happens to have bought. The agreement is now executed.

13:05 — Archive

There is no step here. That is the point.

The executed agreement is already in the archive, indexed by party, template, value and date, with its complete audit trail attached: every open, every edit, both signatures with their certificate detail and timestamps, exportable as a single PDF. The due date is read out of the document and flagged for renewal before it lapses.

Where the time actually went

Three hours and fifty-one minutes, of which the platform accounted for seconds. Everything else was people reading things, which is exactly as it should be.

Compare that to the same document on the old path: print, sign, scan, email, wait, courier, wait, file. We have watched that version of this NDA take nineteen days, and not one of those days was spent on the law.

The gap between the two is not signature technology. It is that in the second version, four different people each had to remember to do something, and any one of them forgetting cost a week.