# How EDENS Cut One Hour Per Lease With Automation Blog | LeasePilot [Blog](/blog)Business Case # How EDENS Cut One Hour Per Lease With Automation EDENS reduced lease drafting time by 50% across 100+ retail properties, eliminating manual data entry errors and standardizing state-specific language. ![David Saltman](/_next/image?url=%2Fleadership%2Fdavid-saltman.jpg&w=3840&q=75&dpl=dpl_2uqrzvFtdfjJy2rKqbPgTzBd5aYQ) David Saltman CEO, Former CRE Attorney November 4, 20246 min readCopy link TL;DR For four years, EDENS has used LeasePilot to draft leases, amendments, and license agreements across 100+ open-air retail and mixed-use properties. The result: one hour saved per lease, zero calculation errors, and an unexpected benefit nobody planned for. § 01 ## [The Problem With 100+ Properties and One Word Template](#the-problem-with-100-properties-and-one-word-template) Here is a scenario most CRE legal teams will recognize. You open a lease template. You need to insert the correct entity information for this property. The right signature block. The state-specific language. The property-specific provisions. You do it by hand, because that is how it has always been done. Now multiply that across 100+ open-air retail and mixed-use properties in different states, with different entities, different local requirements, and different deal structures. Every lease. Every amendment. Every license agreement. That was the daily reality at EDENS, a national owner and operator of more than 100 open-air retail and mixed-use places. EDENS' VP of Legal named the friction directly: > "Numerous redundancies and inefficient use of time in the lease draft process. The insertion of correct entity information, signature blocks, and property specific items had to be done manually for each new deal." Each lease took 1.5 to 2 hours to draft manually. Not because the legal work was complex, but because the mechanical work was slow. Finding the right entity. Confirming the signature block. Verifying state-specific language. Checking property-specific items. These are not judgment calls. They are data entry tasks dressed up as legal work. And they were slowing everything down. For context on what that kind of manual overhead costs across a portfolio, see [the true cost of drafting leases in Word and Excel](/blog/true-cost-drafting-leases-word-excel). § 02 ## [Why Speed Matters in Retail Leasing](#why-speed-matters-in-retail-leasing) The reason EDENS wanted to fix this was not abstract. The VP of Legal was direct about the business motivation: > "The main reason EDENS adopted LeasePilot was to assist in improving drafting inefficiencies, which in turn would speed up lease negotiations, resulting in tenants opening and paying Rent sooner." Every day a lease sits in drafting is a day the tenant is not open. A day rent is not collecting. In retail, where tenant mix and opening dates are tightly choreographed across a center, delays in one lease can cascade. The bottleneck was not the negotiation. It was not the business terms. It was the time spent assembling documents that should have been routine. § 03 ## [What Changed](#what-changed) EDENS adopted LeasePilot in 2022. The shift was straightforward: instead of manually inserting entity information, signature blocks, state-specific language, and property-specific items into every document, the system handles it automatically. You enter the deal terms. The lease assembles itself, with the correct entity, the correct signature block, the correct state language, the correct property provisions. On the impact, the VP of Legal was specific: > "LeasePilot has proven to save our department a great deal of time in drafting leases, amendments, license agreements and other lease related documents. We no longer have to insert shopping center specific information into our leases and amendments, as LeasePilot automates that process (including state specific lease language)." The numbers tell a clear story for EDENS: - **1+ hour saved per lease**, a 50% reduction in drafting time - **100% data accuracy**, correct entities, signature blocks, and property details every time - **0 manual calculation errors**, no more formula mistakes in rent schedules - **100+ properties standardized**, consistent language and provisions across the portfolio That hour saved per lease is not a small thing. Across a portfolio generating hundreds of leases, amendments, and license agreements per year, it adds up to a fundamental change in how the legal team spends its time. § 04 ## [The Benefit Nobody Expected](#the-benefit-nobody-expected) Here is the part that surprised the EDENS team. During onboarding, the process of deconstructing their existing templates and rebuilding them in the system, something else happened. > "The LeasePilot team is knowledgeable and detail oriented. With every single onboarding of one of our forms, LeasePilot has assisted us in identifying ways to improve our form documents, which is not an improvement that we expected." This is a pattern we see regularly. When you take a lease template apart clause by clause, inconsistencies surface. Language that evolved differently across property types. Provisions that were copy-pasted from one form to another years ago and never reconciled. Clauses that said slightly different things depending on which version of the template someone grabbed. The onboarding process itself became a template audit, one that most teams never have time to do on their own. It is the same [clause consistency problem](/blog/clause-consistency-problem) that affects nearly every portfolio, but it only becomes visible when you systematically examine every provision. § 05 ## [Four Years and Counting](#four-years-and-counting) EDENS has been on LeasePilot since 2022. Four years. That is not a trial. That is not a pilot. That is a tool that is woven into how the legal team operates. Four years in, the VP of Legal puts it simply: > "My only regret is that we didn't start using LeasePilot earlier!" What makes a multi-year relationship work is not flashy features. It is reliability. The lease comes out right. The entity is correct. The state language is correct. The property provisions are correct. Every time. The team does not have to think about the mechanical parts of drafting, they can focus on the legal judgment that actually requires an attorney. That is the real outcome here. Not just faster leases, though faster leases mean tenants open sooner and rent starts flowing sooner. It is that the legal team gets to do legal work instead of data entry. For teams still wrestling with the manual assembly process, the question EDENS answered four years ago is the same one worth asking today: how much of your drafting time is actually legal work, and how much is just moving information from one place to another? § Adjacent reading ## More from the ledger [§ 01JUN 10, 2024 Business Case ### How Hajjar Management Grew 170% Without Adding Staff David Saltman6 MIN READ Read →](/blog/how-hajjar-grew-170-percent-without-adding-staff) [§ 02APR 10, 2026 Business Case ### Building the Business Case for Lease Drafting Automation David Saltman8 MIN READ Read →](/blog/building-the-business-case-for-lease-drafting-automation) [§ 03DEC 27, 2024 Business Case ### What Your Lease Data Is Telling You. If You Can Access It David Saltman7 MIN READ Read →](/blog/what-your-lease-data-telling-you) § See it in practice ## Reading about it is one thing. Watching it happen is another. See LeasePilot draft a lease in your team’s own templates, with your clauses and your defaults. [Schedule a Demo](/demo)