--- title: Why Salesforce Isn't for Legal Teams description: There is a push for all departments to use Salesforce. Here are some reasons why it doesn't work for legal teams to live in Salesforce. image: https://blog.linksquares.com/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/no_salesforce.jpg --- [Skip to content](https://blog.linksquares.com/2016/03/02/salesforce-isnt-legal-teams#main-content) [LinkSquares](https://blog.linksquares.com/) Open Mobile Menu [LinkSquares](https://linksquares.com/) Close Mobile Menu [Why LinkSquares](https://linksquares.com/why-linksquares/) [Products](https://linksquares.com/products/) --- [The LinkSquares Cloud One platform for all your in-house legal needs](https://linksquares.com/products/linksquares-cloud/) --- Contract Lifecycle Management Create, review, manage and sign contracts Legal Project Management Centralize your work and keep projects moving Cross-product capabilities Get scalability, efficiency and connectivity LinkSquares Onboarding Experience A step by step guide to get started today --- [Solutions](https://linksquares.com/solutions/) [Customer Stories](https://linksquares.com/customers/) Resources Content [LinkSquares+ Content curated for in-house leaders](https://linksquares.com/plus/) [The Library](https://linksquares.com/library/) In the studio [Demo Library](https://linksquares.com/demo-library/) Community & Events [Customer Stories](https://linksquares.com/customers/) [Events & Webinars](https://linksquares.com/events/) Learning [Blog](https://blog.linksquares.com/) [In-House Insights](https://linksquares.com/inhouse-insights/) [Knowledge Base](https://help.linksquares.com/) [Events](https://linksquares.com/events/) [About Us](https://linksquares.com/about-us/) [Careers](https://linksquares.com/careers/) [Press](https://blog.linksquares.com/tag/linksquares-news-press) [Pricing](https://linksquares.com/pricing/) [Request a demo](https://linksquares.com/demo-request/) Back Close Mobile Menu [Contract Lifecycle Management](https://linksquares.com/products/) [Finalize Streamline your contract creation process](https://linksquares.com/products/finalize/) [Sign Get your contracts executed faster](https://linksquares.com/products/sign/) [Analyze Your post-signature analytics & repository](https://linksquares.com/products/analyze/) [CLM Suite One platform to rule them all](https://linksquares.com/products/) [Request a demo](https://linksquares.com/demo-request/) Back Close Mobile Menu [Legal Project Management](https://linksquares.com/products/) [Prioritize Manage, track, and report on legal work in one place](https://linksquares.com/products/prioritize/) [Request a demo](https://linksquares.com/demo-request/) Back Close Mobile Menu [Cross-product capabilities](https://linksquares.com/products/) [LinkAI Predictive and generative AI](https://linksquares.com/products/analyze/features/ai/) [Integrations Connect the tools you love](https://linksquares.com/integrations/) [Reporting Improve your teams efficiency with KPIs](https://linksquares.com/products/analyze/features/dashboard/) [API Integrate with any third-party app](https://linksquares.com/integrations/linksquares-api/) [Request a demo](https://linksquares.com/demo-request/) Back Close Mobile Menu [Cross-product capabilities](https://linksquares.com/products/) [Onboarding We're here for you from day one](https://linksquares.com/onboarding-services/) [Services Short on time? 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[Learn more](https://linksquares.com/agentic-ai/) Contract Lifecycle Management Create, review, manage and sign contracts Legal Project Management Centralize your work and keep projects moving Unified Capabilities Get scalability, efficiency and connectivity LinkSquares Onboarding Experience A step by step guide to get started quickly [Finalize Streamline your contract creation process](https://linksquares.com/products/finalize/) [Sign Get your contracts executed faster](https://linksquares.com/products/sign/) [Analyze Your post-signature analytics & repository](https://linksquares.com/products/analyze/) [CLM Suite One platform to rule them all](https://linksquares.com/products/) [Prioritize Manage, track, and report on legal work in one place](https://linksquares.com/products/prioritize/) [LinkAI Predictive and generative AI](https://linksquares.com/ai/) [Agentic AI Smarter contracting with a multi-agent approach](https://linksquares.com/agentic-ai/) [Integrations Connect the tools you love](https://linksquares.com/integrations/) [Reporting Improve your teams efficiency with KPIs](https://linksquares.com/products/analyze/features/dashboard/) [API Integrate with any third-party app](https://linksquares.com/integrations/linksquares-api/) [Onboarding We're here for you from day one](https://linksquares.com/onboarding-services/) [Services Short on time? We can help!](https://linksquares.com/services/) [Support Get answers to all of your technical questions](https://linksquares.com/contact-us/) - Solutions Use Cases [Crisis Management](https://linksquares.com/solutions/crisis-management/) [Contract Review](https://linksquares.com/solutions/contract-review/) [Contract Storage](https://linksquares.com/solutions/contract-storage/) [Data Privacy & Compliance](https://linksquares.com/solutions/data-privacy-compliance/) [Deal Acceleration](https://linksquares.com/solutions/deal-acceleration/) [Mergers & Acquisitions](https://linksquares.com/solutions/fundraising-and-ma/) [Vendor Management](https://linksquares.com/solutions/vendor-management/) --- DEPARTMENTS [Legal](https://linksquares.com/solutions/linksquares-for-legal/) [Procurement](https://linksquares.com/solutions/linksquares-for-procurement/) [Sales](https://linksquares.com/solutions/linksquares-for-sales/) - Resources Content [LinkSquares+ Content curated for in-house leaders](https://linksquares.com/plus/) [The Library](https://linksquares.com/library/) Community & Events [Customer Stories](https://linksquares.com/customers/) [Events & Webinars](https://linksquares.com/events/) In the studio [Demo Library](https://linksquares.com/demo-library/) Learning [Blog](https://blog.linksquares.com/) [In-House Insights](https://linksquares.com/inhouse-insights/) [Knowledge Base](https://help.linksquares.com/) [![](https://blog.linksquares.com/hubfs/Navigation/website-menu-navigation-hs-risk-scoring.png)](https://linksquares.com/events/product-spotlight-webinar-risk-revolution/) - Company [About Us](https://linksquares.com/about-us/) [Careers](https://linksquares.com/careers/) [Events](https://linksquares.com/events/) [Partner Program](https://linksquares.com/partners/) [Press](https://blog.linksquares.com/tag/linksquares-news-press) - [Pricing](https://linksquares.com/pricing/) - [Login](https://app.linksquares.com/) - [Request a demo](https://linksquares.com/demo-request/) ![](https://blog.linksquares.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/no_salesforce.jpg?width=575&name=no_salesforce.jpg) [Chris Combs](https://blog.linksquares.com/author/chris-combs) Mar 02, 2016 6 min read # Why Salesforce Isn't for Legal Teams Salesforce.com has built an [empire in the cloud software space](https://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2015/05/22/gartner-crm-market-share-update-47-of-all-crm-systems-are-saas-based-salesforce-accelerates-lead/?sh=39e468b47f97). over the last 10 years. Through their acquisitions and growth, they’ve build a “cloud” for almost every department inside a company. There’s a cloud for service, sales, support, marketing, and community. Salesforce deserves our respect and admiration for bringing software to the cloud and providing products that help millions of businesses function all with software running on the internet. However, there is an increasing push for all departments to use Salesforce and as a result internal legal teams have been forced to try and adopt tools that don’t make sense. Here are some reasons why it doesn't work: **A Workflow Built For Sales** Salesforce is most famously known for their Customer Relationship Management or CRM tool. The primary function of the CRM or as its called now, the "Sales Cloud", is to help sales team track and manage their sales process. This is one of the main problems for legal: Using a tool for contract management embedded inside the a sales cloud tool forces legal teams into a cluttered and confusing world. Legal teams deserve a tool that is built with their use case in mind, not as an afterthought to a sales-based product. **Search Is Limited** The ability to search for information is critical to an application for a Legal team. [Salesforce](https://www.salesforce.com/) only does a simple title and name based search on all the basic objects like leads, accounts, contacts, and opportunities. There is no ability to search within any of these objects (that’s in the reporting, we’ll cover that below) for key text or metadata. Legal teams that use a CRM will be limited to finding the names of customers and customer accounts, but not much more after that. **Reporting** The reporting function within the application does a few things really well, like being able to aggregate, summarize and report on the fields that live on specific objects and provide results that can be exported. On the other side, it’s limited to a "field level" search. So if a sales rep uploaded a finalized contract in PDF format as an attachment and now there’s a need to look into that PDF for a specific term. What do you do? The Salesforce reporting tool will not be able to perform this search. It’s not even remotely close to being able to perform a text based search. So what happens when a legal team has to respond to audit, due diligence and ad-hoc internal requests? They need a tool that can perform these queries and then export the results quickly and easily. Not leave them searching for hours. **Uneccessary Costs** The Salesforce Sales Cloud is priced on a per seat license. So each person who needs access is charged up to $150 a month. On top of that, implementation costs for Salesforce within an organization creates another significant time and financial commitment.  Salesforce has built an incredible ecosystem with the AppExchange over the last few years. The plugins and packages developed on the [Force](https://www.salesforce.com/products/platform/overview/) platform have been downloaded over =3 million times. These packages though have hidden cost though, so in addition to the price per user to use Sales Cloud, these packages can cost up to an additional $100 a user a month. Making the total cost of using Salesforce and, say a contract management package, could be **over $3,000 per user per year!** Salesforce recently touted they had multiple customers paying over a million dollars a year for their service, and with this pricing policy you can see why.  Why spend all that money for an experience that really isn't meant for a legal and contracts team anyway? Use your budget for a tool that works for your team and don't fall in the IT trap of everyone using the same tools. Salesforce’s Sales Cloud is not built for a legal teams managing contracts. Chose a piece of software that focuses on search, reporting and compliance and is built for you like [LinkSquares](https://linksquares.com). #### [Chris Combs](https://blog.linksquares.com/author/chris-combs) Chris Combs is the co-founder and SVP of Business Development at LinkSquares. [mailto:chris@linksquares.com](mailto:chris@linksquares.com) ## Subscribe to the LinkSquares Blog Stay up to date on best practices for GCs and legal teams, current events, legal tech, and more. ## Related Articles ### [Chris Combs Mar 22, 2016 7 min read Storing Legal Contracts in Salesforce? 3 Things To Know Last year, Salesforce reported that they had 150,000 customers and over 3.75 million subscribers. They have many different ... Start Reading](https://blog.linksquares.com/storing-contracts-salesforce-3-things-know) ### [Aparna Prasad Dec 07, 2023 3 min read LinkSquares Finalize Now on the Salesforce AppExchange We're excited to announce that LinkSquares Finalize is listed as an official application on the Salesforce AppExchange, a ... Start Reading](https://blog.linksquares.com/linksquares-finalize-now-on-the-salesforce-appexchange) ### [Alyssa Verzino Apr 25, 2023 6 min read CLM Salesforce Integration: 3 Benefits You Should Know Peanut butter and jelly. Bonnie and Clyde. Salt and pepper. Each piece of these pairings is good enough on its own, but ... 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Here are some reasons why it doesn't work for legal teams to live in Salesforce.", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Chris Combs" }, "dateModified" : "2023-09-05T18:14:40Z", "datePublished" : "2016-03-02T14:43:52Z", "headline" : "Why Salesforce Isn't for Legal Teams", "image" : "https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/6934676/Imported_Blog_Media/no_salesforce.jpg", "inLanguage" : "en", "keywords" : "[]", "mainEntityOfPage" : { "@type" : "WebPage" }, "name" : "Why Salesforce Isn't for Legal Teams", "publisher" : { "@type" : "Organization", "logo" : { "@type" : "ImageObject", "url" : "https://6934676.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6934676/Navigation/logo_643dd1b1.svg" }, "name" : "LinkSquares" }, "text" : "Salesforce.com has built an empire in the cloud software space. over the last 10 years. Through their acquisitions and growth, they’ve build a “cloud” for almost every department inside a company. There’s a cloud for service, sales, support, marketing, and community. Salesforce deserves our respect and admiration for bringing software to the cloud and providing products that help millions of businesses function all with software running on the internet. However, there is an increasing push for all departments to use Salesforce and as a result internal legal teams have been forced to try and adopt tools that don’t make sense. Here are some reasons why it doesn't work: A Workflow Built For Sales Salesforce is most famously known for their Customer Relationship Management or CRM tool. The primary function of the CRM or as its called now, the \"Sales Cloud\", is to help sales team track and manage their sales process. This is one of the main problems for legal: Using a tool for contract management embedded inside the a sales cloud tool forces legal teams into a cluttered and confusing world. Legal teams deserve a tool that is built with their use case in mind, not as an afterthought to a sales-based product. Search Is Limited The ability to search for information is critical to an application for a Legal team. Salesforce only does a simple title and name based search on all the basic objects like leads, accounts, contacts, and opportunities. There is no ability to search within any of these objects (that’s in the reporting, we’ll cover that below) for key text or metadata. Legal teams that use a CRM will be limited to finding the names of customers and customer accounts, but not much more after that. Reporting The reporting function within the application does a few things really well, like being able to aggregate, summarize and report on the fields that live on specific objects and provide results that can be exported. On the other side, it’s limited to a \"field level\" search. So if a sales rep uploaded a finalized contract in PDF format as an attachment and now there’s a need to look into that PDF for a specific term. What do you do? The Salesforce reporting tool will not be able to perform this search. It’s not even remotely close to being able to perform a text based search. So what happens when a legal team has to respond to audit, due diligence and ad-hoc internal requests? They need a tool that can perform these queries and then export the results quickly and easily. Not leave them searching for hours. Uneccessary Costs The Salesforce Sales Cloud is priced on a per seat license. So each person who needs access is charged up to $150 a month. On top of that, implementation costs for Salesforce within an organization creates another significant time and financial commitment. Salesforce has built an incredible ecosystem with the AppExchange over the last few years. The plugins and packages developed on the Force platform have been downloaded over =3 million times. These packages though have hidden cost though, so in addition to the price per user to use Sales Cloud, these packages can cost up to an additional $100 a user a month. Making the total cost of using Salesforce and, say a contract management package, could be over $3,000 per user per year! Salesforce recently touted they had multiple customers paying over a million dollars a year for their service, and with this pricing policy you can see why. Why spend all that money for an experience that really isn't meant for a legal and contracts team anyway? Use your budget for a tool that works for your team and don't fall in the IT trap of everyone using the same tools. Salesforce’s Sales Cloud is not built for a legal teams managing contracts. Chose a piece of software that focuses on search, reporting and compliance and is built for you like LinkSquares.", "url" : "https://blog.linksquares.com/2016/03/02/salesforce-isnt-legal-teams", "wordCount" : "816" } ```