Hines’ legal team needed to support a growing business without hiring more people or giving up the way they worked best.

As Hines expanded its global real estate footprint, its legal department needed to keep pace. With 45 team members supporting operations in more than 30 countries, the team needed to scale its impact without increasing headcount. Early on, several challenges stood out:

• Business users saw legal as difficult and cumbersome to engage with, leading to disorganized communication.

• Without a top-down mandate, the team had to prove technology’s value and show it made legal easier to work with, or risk low adoption and wasted effort.

• Hines found that CLMs lacked the flexibility of a no-code platform to customize contracting workflows around their own processes, starting with NDAs.

• Document templates were housed in shared folders, versions were hard to track, and everything ran through email, which caused delays and frustration.

Together, these factors made it difficult for Hines’ legal team to deliver a consistent, efficient experience while keeping up with the pace of the business.  

They wanted to introduce automation, but without having to rip up their internal processes. They didn’t want to force the business or legal to work differently just to fit the software. Instead, they needed a solution that could mirror their ideal way of working and scale with their internal complexity. In other words, Hines was looking for a system that fit into their processes rather than forcing them to adapt.  

Hines deployed a CLM-lite solution with Checkbox, proving that automation could be powerful without requiring compromise.

To overcome these challenges, Hines implemented a CLM-lite solution using Checkbox, a no-code workflow automation platform built for legal teams. They began by automating NDAs which were low-risk but high-impact, solving what the team described as a “buzzing fly” problem: constant, routine requests that on their own weren’t complex, but collectively consumed significant time and attention. By eliminating this daily distraction, legal freed up capacity to focus on more strategic, high-value work. But more importantly, this first workflow demonstrated how Checkbox could be tailored to match Hines’ internal processes with ease and adaptability.

A key part of this success was the support received during implementation. Checkbox’s Customer Success team partnered closely with Hines to ensure the rollout was smooth and effective, providing both expertise and hands-on guidance at every stage.

"Whenever I run into a situation that I can't solve on my own, the team at Checkbox has been so responsive. They are helpful and knowledgeable, making sure we're keeping things moving and using Checkbox as we intend to."

Jen Andrade

Contracts Administrator at Hines

Why Checkbox?

• User-friendly interface that encouraged adoption by business users.

• Customizable dashboards and centralized redlining to keep processes clean and consistent.

• Flexibility to design workflow automation separately from the repository.

• Customer-centric approach that made it faster and easier for the business to engage with legal.

• Modular platform that solved real problems first, without the rigidity and tradeoffs of a traditional CLM.

"Checkbox has made it as easy as it seems. It really is simple and straightforward."

Evan McCord

Sr. Managing Director & Co-Head of Legal at Hines

With Checkbox, Hines was able to avoid the rigidity of a monolithic CLM by using modular workflows to deliver quick wins, adoption, and efficiency. Rather than forcing their team to adapt to the structure of a CLM, they paired workflow automation with their existing repository to create the exact review process they envisioned, giving them faster time-to-value, smoother collaboration, and full visibility.  

Checkbox gave Hines the ability to manage contract workflows on their own terms, combining the structure and record-keeping of a repository with the flexibility of no-code automation that adapts to their unique processes.

"We see our CLM as more of a backend repository for analysis and tracking. But the front-end process has been designed to give us the flexibility to design the review process exactly how we want. We’re not stuck making tradeoffs inside a rigid system as Checkbox can be modified as much as we need. The only limit is our imagination."

Evan McCord

Sr. Managing Director & Co-Head of Legal at Hines

With Checkbox, Hines built a scalable and modular approach to contract lifecycle workflows that boost efficiency, compliance, and adoption.

Since implementing Checkbox, Hines’ legal team has achieved major gains in efficiency, adoption, and scalability. Their initial focus, the NDA process, is now automated and standardized, proving the value of a modular, flexible approach to legal technology. For Hines, the adoption of this approach was a necessary level up. As the business grew, the legal team needed to move faster and handle more without additional headcount. Checkbox gave them the ability to scale impact while continuing to demonstrate clear value to stakeholders.

"Now with using Checkbox, we have a much cleaner process when it comes to NDA automation. It has been so much easier to find things and see who is working on what."

Jen Andrade

Contracts Administrator at Hines

Checkbox has also enabled the legal team to operate as a more strategic partner to the business. By focusing on making processes user-friendly for their internal clients, they drove adoption and engagement across the organization. This approach encompassed simplifying complex legal language into business-friendly terms, while still maintaining the rigor of legal requirements, striking a balance between accessibility and compliance.

Hines is expanding their use of Checkbox, using modular workflows to scale legal across both contracts and non-contracting needs.

Building on the success of contract lifecycle automation, Hines is expanding its use of Checkbox to other areas of legal operations. The team sees Checkbox not just as a tool for contracting, but as a modular platform that mirrors the way their legal function actually operates, supporting a wide range of workflows.

"I think one of my favorite things about working in Checkbox is how accessible the knowledge base is. And now that we've built out our NDA tool, we're looking to do more things in Checkbox. I’m developing my skillset in the platform to build solutions that work really well."

Jen Andrade

Contracts Administrator at Hines

Other use cases on Checkbox include:

• Intake portal to manage all legal requests, giving Hines full visibility and control to capture, triage, and track legal work from request to resolution.

• Legal signature portal to streamline execution for U.S. and international projects.

• Expanding to other document generation workflows.

• Non-contracting workflows including know-your-customer (KYC) compliance.

Hines is empowering its legal department to scale globally while staying agile, consistent, and business-focused by continuing to add new modules and workflows as needs evolve. With Checkbox as its foundation, the team is proving that legal can scale impact without scaling headcount.

What Does This Mean for Your Legal Team?

Hines’ experience shows that successful workflow automation requires designing processes with adoption in mind. By creating a centralized, business-friendly system, the legal team not only improved responsiveness but also strengthened trust and collaboration with the business.

When processes reflect how your team and business actually operate, adoption follows naturally. And with it comes efficiency, engagement, and a scalable foundation for future growth. So, if you’re looking to amplify your team’s impact with automation:

• Design for adoption, not just efficiency — build processes that are simple and intuitive for business users.

• Treat training & setup seriously — invest the time up front to build workflows as if they’re already live.

• Embed thoughtfully — align workflows with real-world processes to ensure scalability and lasting impact.