MasterClass Bets on Sandstone to Consolidate Its Legal Stack and Kill the Double-Entry Problem

The Challenge: Three Core Constraints

Before Sandstone, MasterClass's legal operations were hampered by three primary issues:

1. Duplicated Intake and Approvals: Business users routinely had to submit the same request across multiple systems — Ironclad for the contract, a separate IT ticketing system for IT approval, and Coupa for purchase orders — and then track the status of each independently. As Kevin described it: "The IT guy says 'I approved it' — but he approved it in one system and not the other. So legal is sitting there wondering if it's still stuck, when it was never stuck at all."
2. Three Separate NDA Channels with No Unified Home: Third-party paper NDAs arrived via Gmail, a DocuSign power form handled another category, and an Ironclad external link covered a third. With no single point of intake, routing logic and playbook consistency were impossible to enforce across all three tracks.
3. Non-Contract Work Is Completely Invisible: A significant portion of the legal team's work — marketing copy approvals, support ticket triage, ad hoc policy questions — happened entirely over email or in Slack with no record, no tracking, and no way to report on volume, turnaround time, or outcomes. "Marketing sends an email to legal for approvals and I say yes okay — none of that's tracked in a system," Kevin noted.

The Solution: Why Sandstone?

MasterClass needed a platform flexible enough to handle both structured contract workflows and unstructured, non-contract legal work — ideally one that could serve as a front door for everything legal touches. Sandstone was selected for four key capabilities:

• End-to-End Contract Automation: For MasterClass's highest-volume workflow — independent contractor agreements — Sandstone ingests an email directly from the HR system (DoubleFin), evaluates whether the request meets independent contractor classification criteria against uploaded policies, auto-generates a consulting agreement from a template if it qualifies, and routes it to legal for review before signature. One process, zero duplicate forms.
• Consolidated NDA Intake: Rather than maintaining three separate NDA channels, Sandstone becomes the single intake point — handling third-party paper, internal drafts, and first-party paper through one unified queue backed by a tested playbook.
• Tracking for Non-Contract Work: Sandstone captures and tracks legal reviews that previously had no home — marketing copy approvals, support team Slack requests, and other unstructured asks — giving Kevin visibility into the full scope of his team's workload for the first time.
• Front Door for Unstructured Requests: Kevin is working directly with Sandstone's product team as a design partner on the workflow builder, with a specific vision: a triage layer that takes unstructured incoming requests and routes them intelligently, regardless of how they're framed or where they arrive from.

The Results

• Eliminated Duplicate Form Submissions: Automated the consulting agreement workflow end-to-end — from HR system email to generated agreement to legal review — removing a two-form, two-system process that burdened both business users and the legal team.
• Unified NDA Operations: Consolidated three separate NDA intake channels into a single Sandstone-managed queue, backed by a consistent playbook and template.
• Visibility Into Non-Contract Work: Brought marketing approvals, Slack-based support queries, and other unstructured legal requests into a tracked system for the first time — replacing email threads that left no record.
• A Credible CLM Alternative: Demonstrated enough CLM-like functionality (template generation, playbooks, document review, intake routing) that Kevin is actively evaluating Sandstone as a replacement for Ironclad rather than a supplement to it.