How to change Contract Owner

This article explains how to change the Contract Owner, who can perform this action, and what business rules apply when ownership is updated.

🗺️ Overview

The Contract Owner is the primary responsible person for a contract in the CLM system. By default, the user who creates a contract becomes its Contract Owner. In some cases, ownership needs to be transferred - for example, when responsibilities change or a contract is handed over to another team member.

Changing the Contract Owner is a controlled action to ensure accountability and proper access management.

🧑‍🦱 Who Can Use This

The Change Owner action is available only to:

• CLM Power Users

Other users do not see this option.

⚙️ Contract Owner Assignment Rules

• The contract creator is automatically set as the Contract Owner.

• Editors who later modify the contract are not automatically added as Contract Owners.

• The Contract Owner field is disabled during:

  • Contract creation

  • Contract editing

This prevents accidental changes to ownership during routine updates.

Changing the Contract Owner does not automatically grant owner-level rights to the selected user.

The user can select a new owner from all users of the same Buyer who has at least CLM Business User access rights.

If a user is assigned as Contract Owner but has only basic CLM Business User access (and no Power User rights):

• The user can view the contract

• The user cannot edit the contract

• The user cannot transition the contract through workflow statuses

Users must ensure that the new Contract Owner already has the appropriate owner rights configured in the User Management module.
Owner access rights are not shared or assigned automatically when ownership is changed.

Availability of the Change Owner Action

• The Change Owner action is available on the Contract Overview page starting from the Draft status.

• The action is not available in contract statuses where attributes are read-only:

  • Ready for Signing

  • Manual Signing

  • Signed

  • Archive

After saving, the Contract Owner attribute updates and displays the newly selected user.

Best Practices

💡 Tips for Effective Use:

• Change the Contract Owner only when responsibility for the contract truly shifts.

• Before assigning a new owner, verify that the user has the required owner rights.

• Avoid ownership changes close to signing or archiving stages.

• Use clear internal processes to define when and why ownership changes are allowed.