Automate Contract Review for Your Law Firm
Law firms use AI to automatically extract key clauses from documents. It flags non-standard terms by comparing them against a firm's approved library.
Building a system for this requires a well-defined process. A firm with a standardized clause library and digital-native contracts can implement a system quickly. A practice dealing with varied, scanned documents with no central library requires more initial data structuring and prompt engineering.
We built a contract review system for an 8-person real estate firm. It processes incoming lease agreements in 90 seconds, a task that previously took a paralegal 45 minutes. The system identifies and flags deviations in 12 key clauses before an attorney ever opens the file.
What Problem Does This Solve?
The standard process for contract review is manual, slow, and prone to human error. A paralegal opens a 50-page PDF, reads it line-by-line, and manually compares clauses against a master template stored in a Word document or shared drive. This tedious work is a primary driver of non-billable administrative time.
Off-the-shelf Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) tools promise a solution but are built for large corporate legal departments, not small firms. They often come with five-figure annual license fees and require a six-month implementation project. Their rigid, template-based approach breaks when they encounter a bespoke contract from a new counterparty, forcing you back to manual review.
Consider a real estate practice that receives a new commercial lease from a tenant. The tenant's counsel has subtly altered the indemnification clause, shifting liability. A basic OCR tool digitizes the text but provides no legal analysis. An overworked paralegal, rushing to meet a deadline, misses this single-word change. The mistake isn't caught until a dispute arises 18 months later, costing the client thousands in litigation.
How Does It Work?
Our process starts with document intake. PDFs arriving via a dedicated email address are automatically routed to an AWS S3 bucket. We run them through an OCR layer to ensure all text is digitized, then classify the document into one of 14 predefined matter types. This entire intake and classification step takes less than 15 seconds.
The core analysis happens in a custom FastAPI service. We use the Claude API with carefully engineered prompts to parse the document structure, identify, and extract specific legal clauses. The system then performs a semantic comparison of each extracted clause against your firm's approved versions, which are stored as vector embeddings in a Supabase database. This is not simple keyword matching; it understands legal meaning.
Any clause deviating by more than a 5% semantic threshold from your standard is flagged. The system generates a concise summary report delivered via email, highlighting non-standard terms with a side-by-side comparison of the contract's language and your firm's approved text. An attorney can see all critical deviations in under 30 seconds without reading the full document. The total processing time from PDF ingestion to summary email is consistently under 90 seconds.
Every AI decision is logged in an audit trail with a confidence score. Any extraction with a score below 95% is automatically flagged for human review. The entire system runs on your firm's cloud infrastructure, ensuring no privileged client documents are ever stored or processed by a third-party AI provider. This provides full data security and control.
What Are the Key Benefits?
Review a 50-Page Lease in 90 Seconds
Reduce paralegal review time from 45 minutes to under two. Free up your team to focus on high-value legal work, not manual document comparison.
One-Time Build, No Per-User Fees
After the initial build, you only pay for cloud hosting, typically under $50/month. No recurring SaaS license fees that punish you for growing your firm.
You Own the Code and Clause Library
We deliver the full Python codebase in your GitHub repository and the structured clause library in your Supabase instance. You have full ownership and control.
Alerts for Any AI Uncertainty
The system flags any clause extraction with a confidence score below 95% for immediate human review, ensuring no AI error goes unchecked.
Connects to Your Existing Systems
The system integrates directly with your email for intake and can push summaries and links to cloud storage like Clio, NetDocuments, or a shared drive.
What Does the Process Look Like?
Discovery & Clause Mapping (Week 1)
You provide examples of your standard contracts and clause libraries. We map your current manual review workflow. You receive a technical specification document outlining the full system.
Core System Build (Weeks 2-3)
We build the FastAPI service, connect to the Claude API, and set up the Supabase clause library. You receive access to a staging environment to test with sample documents.
Integration & Live Testing (Week 4)
We connect the system to your firm's email and document storage. Your team tests the live system with 20-30 real-world contracts. You receive a fully functional production system.
Tuning & Handoff (Weeks 5-8)
We monitor system performance and fine-tune the AI prompts based on attorney feedback. At the end of the period, you receive the full source code and a runbook for maintenance.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What does a custom contract review system cost?
- Pricing depends on the number of contract types and the complexity of the clauses. A system for a single, high-volume document type like a commercial lease agreement with a pre-existing clause library is typically a 4-week engagement. Systems requiring analysis of multiple, highly variable contract types require more extensive development. Book a discovery call at cal.com/syntora/discover for a specific quote.
- What happens if the AI misinterprets a clause?
- The system is built with a human-in-the-loop gate. Every AI extraction includes a confidence score, and anything below a 95% threshold is flagged for mandatory attorney review. The generated summary report is a tool to guide attorney attention to problem areas, not a replacement for final legal sign-off. No contract is executed without a human decision.
- How is this different from using a tool like LawGeex or Luminance?
- Those are powerful but complex SaaS platforms designed for large enterprises and M&A due diligence. They have high annual fees and long implementation cycles. Syntora builds a lightweight, dedicated system for your firm's specific, recurring contract types. You get a tailored solution for a one-time build cost, running on your own infrastructure with no per-seat licenses.
- Where is our confidential client data stored?
- All data stays on infrastructure you control. We deploy the system into your firm's AWS account. Documents are stored in your S3 buckets, and clause data resides in a Supabase instance you own. At no point are your privileged documents stored or logged by Syntora or the underlying LLM provider, ensuring full client confidentiality.
- How does the system handle poorly scanned documents?
- The initial OCR step includes a quality check. If a scanned document's text recognition quality is below an 85% threshold, the system flags it and routes it for manual review instead of attempting automated analysis. The system is designed for digitally generated PDFs and clean scans; heavily marked-up or low-quality documents are automatically routed to your existing manual workflow.
- Can we add new clauses or contract types later?
- Yes. The system is modular. Adding a new clause type to an existing contract template is a small update that typically takes a few days. Adding an entirely new contract type (e.g., adding employment agreements to a system built for leases) is a new, smaller-scope project. The process is documented in the handoff runbook for your team.
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