netLex VisionHow Atvos's legal team scaled contract volume 4x with security and control
Legal acting faster, and with all the security we have always valued, makes our internal clients truly understand that legal is close to them and brings value to our business.”
About Atvos
Atvos is one of Brazil's leading biofuel producers and a strategic player in the global energy transition. With an integrated bioenergy model, the company produces around 3.3 billion liters of ethanol and 750,000 tons of VHP sugar per harvest, and has accumulated R$ 4.6 billion in growth since 2023. It has more than 11,000 employees across 8 agro-industrial units in the states of Goiás, Mato Grosso do Sul, Mato Grosso and São Paulo, with a presence in 23 Brazilian municipalities and a strong role in the socioeconomic development of those regions.
An operation of this size generates an intense, continuous flow of contracts with clients, suppliers and partners, and demands a legal department able to scale without losing control or security.
Atvos's legal team plays a strategic role and increasingly seeks to take part in business decisions, not merely to flag risks. As Fernanda Freitas, VP of Legal at Atvos, puts it:
What we always look for is to take part in the decisions the company makes, and not only point out the risks that exist — because that allows our company to make decisions with greater security.”
Key points
- 4x more operational volume: from ~80 to ~300 workflows per month, with the same team
- 27% less time: median completion time fell from 30 to 22 business days
- Steps in under a minute: automation drastically shortened operational effort
- Certainty about the right version: a guarantee that the validated document is the one signed
A procurement tool with no legal control
Before netLex, Atvos used a tool that was not a CLM. It was built for procurement, designed to handle purchasing demands, not the contract lifecycle from a legal standpoint.
The biggest pain was version control. The team had no guarantee that the document validated by legal was, in fact, the one sent for the parties' signature. In the words of Gleison Matos, Corporate Legal Manager at Atvos: “we could not provide that assurance that the last validated version was the version being signed. So that created the need to review more than once.”
That blind spot carried two costs: legal risk, because an unvalidated version could be signed; and rework, because every doubt about which version was the right one forced another round of review. It was the kind of problem that stays invisible day to day, until it turns into a loss.
What is the difference between a procurement tool and a CLM?
A procurement tool organizes purchasing demand. A CLM (Contract Lifecycle Management) handles the entire contract lifecycle: creation, review, negotiation, approval, signature and post-signature management, with version control, traceability and data. The difference is between fulfilling a request and actually governing a contract and making it secure.
A tailor-made flow, with legal in control
With netLex, Atvos was able to structure the contract process exactly the way legal wanted it, prioritizing efficiency and user experience. For Gleison, that was the biggest surprise of the first months:
The possibility of having designed the flow the way we would like it, in a customized way, always looking for the best efficiency, the best user experience.”
In practice, the turnaround happened on three fronts:
- End-to-end version control: the contract now follows a single flow inside the platform, from standardized creation through approval and electronic signature, guaranteeing that the version validated by legal is the one that goes to signature. The uncertainty that drove rework is gone.
- Standardization and automation of operational steps: steps that used to consume the team's time and attention are now completed in under a minute, freeing lawyers for work that requires human judgment.
- Data-driven decisions: the team advanced in selecting indicators to demonstrate the speed and quality of its work. With data from the contracts themselves, Atvos began to check values, identify recurring clauses and make safer, better-informed decisions — something a procurement tool did not deliver.
Results and impact
After 14 months with netLex, Atvos's legal department consolidated significant gains:
- 4x more operational volume: from ~80 to ~300 workflows per month, with the same team;
- 27% less time: median completion time fell from 30 to 22 business days;
- Steps in under a minute: automation drastically shortened operational effort;
- Certainty about the right version: the guarantee that the validated document is the one signed.
Conclusion
The Atvos case shows a transformation that goes beyond the tool. Legal stopped reacting and started taking part in decisions, supported by process, data and security. Security and speed stopped being opposites and began moving together inside the same flow.
It is the translation of a phrase Atvos's own team carries: “the pursuit of excellence cannot be a goal, it has to be a habit.” It was with that mindset that the department redesigned its contract process — and that is what made it possible to scale 4x without giving up what it values most.
Security does not slow legal down. It is what lets legal scale.
