First-pass contract review with AI: cited clauses, verification, and limits

Ask the four questions

Upload the file or paste the text, then send:

Read this contract and answer four questions in plain English:
1. Money: every fee, when it's due, and how it can go up.
2. Time: how long it lasts, whether it renews on its own,
   and how much notice I must give to cancel.
3. Exit: how I get out early, and what it costs.
4. Trouble: who pays if something breaks, goes wrong, or
   someone gets hurt, and how disputes are handled.
For every answer, quote the exact sentence and give the
section number. If the contract doesn't say, write
"not stated." Don't guess.

Check every quote in the real document

This is the step that makes the whole thing safe. Open the contract and search for each quoted sentence (Ctrl+F on a PC, Command+F on a Mac). If you can't find it, the AI made it up or mixed it up. Cross that answer out.

Watch closely for anything marked "not stated." Sometimes it's true. Sometimes the AI missed a section, especially in a scanned or photographed contract.

Ask about the scary parts

For any clause that worries you, ask: "Explain section [number] like I'm not a lawyer. What is the worst realistic case for me?" Then: "What questions should I ask the other side about this?"

Turn your worries into an email

Ask: "Turn my concerns into a short, polite email asking [name] to explain or change these points." Asking questions before you sign is normal. The other side expects it.

When to pay a lawyer

Pay for a real review when:

• It's a long lease or a multi-year deal.
• You're asked to sign a personal guarantee, meaning you're personally on the hook if the business can't pay.
• The money is more than you could comfortably lose.
• You still don't understand a clause after asking.

The AI's summary makes that lawyer's hour cheaper, because you walk in with the right questions.

Under the hood

Contract review has two very different tasks inside it:

• Extraction: finding what the document says about fees, term, renewal, termination, indemnity, and dispute resolution. Models do this reasonably well on clean text.
• Interpretation: what a clause means in your jurisdiction and situation. Models can sound authoritative here and still be wrong.

Requiring verbatim quotes with section numbers turns extraction into something you can audit with a text search. Scanned PDFs are the weak point: if OCR is poor, the model may miss sections and report "not stated." Personal guarantees, auto-renewal notice windows, and indemnity clauses are the provisions worth escalating to counsel.

Short close

Ask the four questions, find every quote in the real contract, and pay a lawyer when the stakes are high. Then sign, or don't.