Independent analysis
Sharp, conflict-free commentary on how law and technology actually collide — for lawyers, legal-ops teams and CLOs.
Picture the scenario: a leveraged buyout closes. The credit agreement's payment waterfall looks exactly as expected — senior secured lenders first, mezzanine second, PIK notes third, equity last. Your AI contract review tool flags no issues. The playbook comparison comes back green. Six months later,...
There is a performance gap in AI contract review that nobody in the legal technology industry is eager to discuss openly. AI tools—including the category leaders—are getting considerably better at finding clauses. They are not getting meaningfully better at understanding what those clauses actually do....
There is a specific failure mode in AI contract review that nobody talks about loudly enough, and it is going to cost someone a serious amount of money if it hasn't already.
There is a specific failure mode in AI contract review that senior in-house counsel and M&A associates are beginning to notice, complain about quietly, and then work around manually — which is precisely the kind of failure that should not require a workaround. The tools...
Open any AI contract review tool today. Upload a SaaS master subscription agreement with a most favored nation clause. Watch the tool surface "MFN clause — present" alongside something that looks reassuringly like a low-risk flag. Close the laptop. Sign the deal.
When an AI contract review tool scans an acquisition agreement and returns "survival clause: present ✓," it has done something worse than nothing. It has generated confidence where the attorney most needs doubt.
There is a specific kind of frustration that accumulates slowly in a transactional practice. It is not the frustration of a bad tool. It is the frustration of a partially good one — a tool that is confident enough to be followed, but wrong in...
The clause is there. The AI found it. Your summary report shows a green tick next to "step-in rights identified." You move on.
There's a clause misclassification problem running through the AI contract review market right now, and it's not a minor formatting quirk. Legal AI tools are systematically conflating covenants not to sue with indemnification provisions — and in some cases, with releases — in ways that...