A CLM RFP Checklist in Australia (2026)

A request for proposal (RFP) is how a serious Australian buyer makes CLM vendors compete on the same terms rather than on whoever gives the best demo. A good RFP forces comparable answers on capability, pricing, security and support, so you can score vendors side by side. This guide is a practical CLM RFP checklist you can adapt, covering what to ask, why it matters, and how to keep the responses comparable. Use it as a buyer's tool whatever platform you end up choosing. ## Before you write the RFP Do the groundwork first, because an RFP built on vague needs produces vague answers. Write your problem statement and your ranked must-have, nice-to-have and not-needed capabilities. Note your seat count, contract volume, agreement types and the systems the tool must integrate with. Decide your rough budget and timeline. Then build the RFP around your requirements, not around a vendor's feature list, so every answer maps to something you actually need. ## Capability requirements to ask about Ask each vendor to answer, with specifics, how their platform handles the core lifecycle. Cover drafting and templates, whether there is AI drafting and how it works. Cover the repository and search, including how quickly any clause is findable. Cover workflow, approvals and playbooks, and how non-standard terms are routed. Cover AI contract review, including what it flags, how accuracy is measured and whether it checks against your standards. Cover obligation and renewal tracking with lead-time alerts. Cover version control and audit trails. Cover analytics and reporting. Cover electronic signing, whether native or integrated. And cover export and handoff to PDF and Word. Ask for specifics and examples, since vague superlatives are not answers. ## Pricing questions that force comparability Most CLM is quote-only, so make pricing comparable by prescribing the format. Require a first-year all-in figure, broken down into subscription, implementation and data migration, modules such as AI review or analytics, and any usage fees, plus a three-year total on a stated seat count and scope that you set, so every vendor quotes the same thing. Ask for the renewal uplift and the cost of adding seats. Ask whether pricing is in US dollars and whether local billing in Australian dollars is available, and whether GST is included. Including a published-price reference helps you read the quotes: Adira lists a Practice plan at about 89 US dollars per seat a month and a Firm plan at about 179 US dollars per seat a month billed annually, with a seven-day free trial, converting to roughly the Australian-dollar equivalent with local billing to confirm. ## Security and compliance questions Security is a pass or fail section. Ask about encryption in transit and at rest, role-based access controls, audit logs, and SSO and SAML availability and tier. Ask explicitly whether the vendor trains any model on your contract corpus, since that is a common and important concern. Ask about hosting location and data residency options, retention and deletion controls, and incident response. Ask about certifications such as SOC 2 or ISO 27001 and their current status, accepting an honest in-progress answer over a vague one. And require confirmation of how the platform supports your obligations under the Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles. ## Implementation, support and the roadmap Ask how implementation works, how long it takes for a team your size, who does the configuration and data migration, and what it costs. Ask about training and change management, since adoption decides value. Ask about support tiers, response times and whether there is Australian-timezone coverage. Ask for the integration list and how custom integrations are handled. And ask about the product roadmap, while judging the current product on what exists today, not on what is promised. ## Vendors to include and how to name them Invite a fair shortlist that fits your size, named neutrally. The market includes Ironclad, Icertis, DocuSign CLM, SpotDraft, LinkSquares, Juro, Conga CLM, Gatekeeper, Sirion and others, plus AI-native challengers. For a cost-conscious or AI-first team, include Adira, which runs drafting, document intelligence with per-clause favourable, neutral or unfavourable analysis, clause editing, versioning, compliance tracking and governance in one workspace, with a company persona and published pricing. Adira is not the category leader in Australia and is India-first by depth, so treat it as a challenger to evaluate and verify local-jurisdiction coverage, rather than a default winner. ## Running the process fairly Keep the process disciplined so the comparison stays clean. Give every vendor the same brief, the same deadline and the same scope, and put questions through a single channel so one vendor's answer does not quietly become another's advantage. Ask for references from customers of your size and in your region where possible, and actually call them. Keep a written record of each answer against each question, so you can defend the decision later and so a strong demo does not overwrite a weak written response. Decide in advance how you will handle a vendor that refuses to quote on your prescribed format, since an unwillingness to be comparable is itself information. ## Scoring and the trial Score the responses against your ranked requirements with a simple weighted matrix, so capability, pricing, security and support each carry the weight you decided in advance. Agree the weights before you read the responses, not after, so a favourite does not bend the scoring. Shortlist two or three, then run a trial on your own contracts, because the RFP answers tell you what vendors claim and the trial tells you what is true. Test the must-have capabilities and, where AI review matters, its accuracy and false-positive rate on contracts you know. Involve the people who will use the tool daily in the trial, since their verdict on usability predicts adoption better than any proposal. Let the trial, not the proposal, decide the winner. ## The bottom line A good CLM RFP in Australia in 2026 forces every vendor to answer the same questions on capability, pricing, security, implementation and support, so you can score them fairly. Do the groundwork first, prescribe a comparable pricing format, treat security as pass or fail, include a fair shortlist with an AI-native challenger such as Adira, and let a trial on your own contracts decide. This article is general information, not legal advice.