An AI tool that analyzes legal contracts to identify key clauses, dates, and obligations. It can also flag non-standard language, potential risks, or missing provisions.
Law firms and in-house legal teams review large volumes of contracts that are mostly standard but occasionally contain an unusual indemnity, auto-renewal or liability cap that matters a great deal. Reviewing each document line by line is slow, and key dates and obligations end up recorded in spreadsheets, if at all. Missed renewal dates and forgotten obligations become costly surprises later.
AI contract review software such as Lexis+ AI, Ironclad and Evisort reads contracts, extracts clauses, parties, dates and obligations, and compares terms against your standard positions or playbook. It highlights non-standard language, missing provisions and potential risks so lawyers can focus on what matters. The lawyer still makes the legal judgement; the AI speeds up finding and organising the relevant terms.
The legal team defines a playbook covering preferred positions, acceptable fallbacks and unacceptable terms for common clause types such as liability, indemnity, termination and privacy.
Contracts are uploaded or pulled from a contract repository, and OCR converts scanned documents to text.
NLP and LLM models identify clauses, parties, dates, renewal terms and obligations, and extract them into structured fields.
Each clause is compared with the playbook, and deviations, missing clauses and unusual language are flagged with suggested redlines.
A lawyer reviews flags, accepts or changes redlines, and extracted dates and obligations feed reminders in the contract management system.
A large bank uses an AI platform to review commercial loan agreements. The system reviews large document sets much faster than manual review, with lawyers checking flagged clauses.
Lexis+, Ironclad, Evisort, NLP, LLMs
Solicitors remain bound by their professional conduct rules, including duties of competence and confidentiality, when using AI, and several state law societies and the Law Council of Australia have published guidance on responsible AI use. Client documents often contain confidential and personal information, so check the vendor's data storage, whether data is used for training and whether Australian hosting is available. Playbooks should reflect Australian law, including unfair contract terms provisions in the Australian Consumer Law, which now carry penalties for standard form contracts with small businesses and consumers. Review AI outputs as you would work from a junior lawyer.
This solution requires careful evaluation of cost-benefit ratio. Consider implementation only after thorough analysis and risk assessment.
No. It speeds up finding and extracting terms and highlights deviations, but deciding whether a clause is acceptable given the client's commercial position, negotiating and giving advice remain legal work. Many firms use AI for first-pass review and due diligence while lawyers focus on the flagged issues and strategy.
General AI tools understand common legal language, but the quality of flags depends on your playbook. Configuring the playbook with Australian positions, such as unfair contract terms rules and state-specific requirements, is essential. Some vendors offer Australian content, such as Lexis+ AI with Australian legal materials, which helps with research alongside review.
Enterprise contract platforms are licensed per user or contract volume and require configuration. Setup time goes into building the playbook, migrating existing contracts, testing extraction accuracy on your documents and training lawyers. Smaller teams can start with a lighter review tool and add lifecycle management later.
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