Contract review AI
Contract review AI is worth having for one reason: it reads every clause of every contract at the same level of attention, which no person does at five in the afternoon on the fourth agreement of the day. It is a second reader with a checklist. It is not a lawyer, it does not carry your risk, and any tool sold as if it does is selling you something else.
At five in the afternoon, on the fourth contract of the day, a person skims. This reads every clause at the same attention — but it is a second reader, not your lawyer, and anything sold as your lawyer is selling you something else.
Every clause read against your checklist; a person still signs
Tell me what your contracts look like
Two lines is plenty. What you sign most, and the clauses you can never accept. I read it myself and answer within one working day.
Sergey Avakyan. You are writing to me, not to an inbox — I am the whole company, and I am the one who builds it. More about me →
It checks every clause against your written checklist and flags what is missing, what deviates from your template, and every date and figure; the judgement calls — and the signature — stay with a person.
Projects go in the order they arrive — the earlier we start, the earlier yours is built.
- Every clause of every contract read at the same attention — what is missing, what deviates from your own template, the dates and money pulled out.
- The one term compared across a hundred agreements at once, which no person does by hand.
- A written line it must never cross — enforceability, what is normal in your market, what was agreed in the room — routed to a person, not guessed.
- The checklist itself as a deliverable: your required clauses, red lines and acceptable ranges, written down so the review starts from a list instead of page one.
The judging-against-written-rules underneath this is not new work: in another business every claim is judged against its written rules the moment it lands, one consistent standard, a batch to sign each morning — one of the thirteen systems of mine live daily, out of sixty-five built.
A quarter of whatever we agree is due at the start, and that quarter is the only money at risk under the two-week promise — nothing else is due until it is running. What puts you at the bottom of that band: a standard agreement you negotiate from, a checklist of required clauses and red lines you can already write down, and contracts that mostly follow one shape. What puts you at the top: many contract types, terms that are fine alone and wrong together, and a house standard nobody has ever written down. It sits in the middle band because reading every clause is the easy half — the work is agreeing the checklist it reads against, and keeping a person on everything that is judgement rather than comparison.
- Two weeks, or the first stage is free. The first stage is one named piece, written down before we start. If it isn't running two weeks after the start, you pay nothing for it. The clock pauses on any day I'm waiting on you for an access or an answer.
- You write the pass mark before I write the code. Before anything is built we agree one sentence that says what working means — for example, "it takes the call, puts the booking in the calendar and never promises a price, on nine of every ten of fifty real calls". If it misses that, you choose: I finish it at my own cost, or you take that stage's money back and the work stays with me.
- Three months of fixes included. For three months after handover I fix whatever breaks in what I built, already paid for. Something you ask for later, or a service someone else changes underneath it, is new work — and I'll tell you which it is before I touch it.
“I” here is the whole company: AVAROPA SLU, one founder and one employee, both of them me. The guarantee is the company's, and I am the person who honours it — you deal with the same one throughout.
Every stage you have paid for is yours the moment it is paid — the code and the accounts, handed over as we go. Nothing here depends on you staying.
Prices exclude VAT — 21% in Spain, reverse charge for an EU business with a valid VAT number, and normally none outside the EU — confirmed on your invoice. The band is a starting point; the exact figure is agreed and fixed before any work begins, and it does not move after that. The two-week first piece is the part I guarantee; the finish windows are what a job this size usually takes.
How it works, what it refuses, and when you don't need it
What it catches reliably
These are the findings that hold up, because they are comparisons against something written down rather than judgements about intent.
- What is missing. The clause your standard requires and this draft does not have. Absence is exactly what a tired human skips, and exactly what a checklist catches.
- Deviation from your own template. Notice period changed from thirty days to ninety, liability cap quietly removed, governing law swapped. AI contract review is genuinely strong here, and this is most of the value.
- Dates and money, extracted. Renewal dates, notice windows, price escalators, penalty triggers — pulled into a list you can actually act on. The auto-renewal nobody diarised is the classic expensive one.
- The same term across a hundred agreements. Which of our contracts have a cap below this, which renew next quarter, which allow assignment. Impossible by hand, straightforward once the text is data.
What it misses, and you have to know this before you rely on it
- The clause that is fine alone and wrong together. Two acceptable provisions in different sections that combine badly. That is reading comprehension across a whole document, and it is where a human still wins clearly.
- What is normal in your market. It compares against your template. It does not know that this term is unusual for your industry, or that this counterparty always concedes it. That knowledge is the reason your lawyer costs what they cost.
- What was agreed in the meeting. It reads the draft. If the draft does not match what was actually promised, it cannot know, and it will pass a document that is internally consistent and wrong.
- Anything about enforceability. Whether a clause holds up in a given jurisdiction is a legal opinion. A system that offers one is generating text, and the confidence is free.
How to use it without creating a new risk
The point is not to skip the review. It is to make the review start from a list instead of from page one.
- Write the checklist first: your required clauses, your red lines, your acceptable ranges. That document is the deliverable, and it is useful even if the software never gets built.
- Every finding cites the clause it came from. A finding without a citation is unverifiable and gets ignored, which is worse than not producing it.
- It flags, a person decides. Nothing gets accepted because the machine had no objection — silence is not approval.
- Track what it missed. Every contract where a human found something the system did not goes back into the checklist. That loop is the whole improvement mechanism.
- For anything above a threshold you set — value, term, unusual counterparty — a lawyer reads it regardless of what the tool said.
Not for you if
- You sign a few contracts a year. Read them properly. This is a volume tool.
- Every agreement is negotiated from scratch with no house standard. Write the standard; that is the project, and it will save more than any software.
- You want it to replace legal review on high-value agreements. It will not, and building it as though it will is how a cheap tool creates an expensive problem.
- Your contracts are scans of scans with handwriting. Extraction quality decides everything downstream, and that has to be tested on your worst documents first.
Judging by written rules, already running
- Returns & defects handler — the same pattern on a different document type: every claim judged against written rules the moment it lands, one consistent standard, and a batch to sign off each morning.
- Promotion guard — the dull half of contract admin, already automated elsewhere: a calendar watched on a schedule so a date cannot pass unnoticed and quietly cost margin.
- New-arrivals radar — the honest counter-example: it makes no judgement at all, it pulls and ranks on a schedule. Telling apart the work that needs judgement from the work that only needs a schedule is most of this decision.
Honest answers
How much does contract review AI cost?
€4,800 to €8,300 as a one-off build, higher across many contract types with a house standard nobody has written down. A quarter is due at the start and is the only money at risk under the two-week promise; nothing else is due until it runs. The first hour is free.
Is contract review AI worth it?
It is a volume tool: it pays when you sign enough contracts that reading every clause at the same attention saves real time. If you sign a few a year, read them properly — a build will not pay back. And it is a second reader, never a substitute for the lawyer who signs.
Can contract review AI replace our lawyer?
No. It is a second reader with a checklist: it catches missing clauses, deviations from your template, and dates and money you would otherwise miss. Whether a term is enforceable, or normal for your market, or worth conceding, is judgement your lawyer is paid for.
What does it catch that a person misses?
Absence and drift. The clause that should be there and is not, the notice period that changed from thirty days to ninety, the auto-renewal nobody diarised. People miss those on the fourth contract of the afternoon; a checklist does not get tired.
What do we need before building it?
A written checklist: required clauses, red lines, acceptable ranges per contract type. Most organisations discover they have never written it down, and producing it is worth the exercise on its own, regardless of whether any software follows.
How do we know it did not miss something?
You do not, on any single contract — which is why every finding cites its clause and why the review still happens. What you can do is track misses: each time a person catches something the system did not, it goes back into the checklist.
Is this the same as contract lifecycle management?
No. CLM software manages the process — drafting, approvals, signature, storage. Review is the reading step inside it. You can do the reading well without buying a platform, and buying the platform does not give you the reading.
Send me your standard agreement and your red lines
I will tell you which of your checks a machine can make reliably, which need a person, and what a first version would actually cost to run each month. If your volume does not justify it, that is a legitimate answer and you will get it in the free hour rather than after a quote.
Book that hour →