Legal Innovation

How Legal Generative AI Software Is Transforming Contract Review

By Scott Deatherage · S Deatherage Law, PLLC · June 18, 2025

The legal industry is undergoing a quiet but powerful transformation. At S. Deatherage Law, PLLC, we are integrating generative artificial intelligence (AI) into our contract review processes — enabling us to deliver faster, more consistent, and highly tailored legal services to our clients.

You’ve probably heard of ChatGPT. But within the legal field, more specialized AI platforms are emerging — designed specifically to support legal workflows, contract analysis, and redlining. At our firm, we’ve begun putting these tools to work — starting with non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) and expanding into commercial leases, construction contracts, consulting agreements, and master services agreements (MSAs).

What Is a Legal AI Playbook?

At the heart of AI-powered contract review is the playbook — a digital set of rules that governs how the AI should review each clause in a contract. A playbook reflects the organization’s or client’s preferred language, fallback positions, and redline policies.

At S. Deatherage Law, PLLC, we’ve built playbooks that allow AI to review contracts based on specific provisions such as confidentiality terms, indemnification, limitation of liability, governing law, and other contract terms. The AI applies these rules to automatically redline any clause that doesn’t meet predefined standards.

The software relies on the attorney to determine which changes are implemented and any revisions to these provisions. Thus, these programs can reduce the time attorneys spend on a first review of a contract, but setting up the playbook, applying it, and then completing the review and redline requires expert attorneys to complete the work.

Legal AI technology can reduce attorney time on the first review, but a good attorney with relevant expertise is still critical for a good result for clients.

From NDAs to Sophisticated Agreements

While NDAs are a great starting point, we are developing playbooks for this technology to assist with much more complex contract types:

• Commercial Leases — Identifying risk-heavy clauses and deviations from landlord/tenant standard forms.
• Construction Contracts — Including insurance, indemnity, dispute resolution, scope of work clauses, warranties, and payment provisions.
• Consulting and Engineering Agreements — Including standard of care, IP ownership, confidentiality, non-compete, and payment terms aligned with client expectations.
• Master Services Agreements (MSAs) — Including limitations of liability, warranties, and governing law terms.

These agreements require more advanced and detailed rule sets, and we are invested in building sophisticated playbooks that allow the AI software to make a first pass at these provisions. As we continue to refine and expand these rules, the system becomes more accurate and valuable over time.

Built for Security and Confidentiality

At S. Deatherage Law, PLLC, protecting client confidentiality is non-negotiable. That’s why we only use legal-specific AI platforms that are SOC 2 Type II compliant and do not train on client or law firm data. These tools are designed for professional legal use — unlike public platforms that do not keep client or law firm information private — ensuring that sensitive documents and contract terms remain fully secure and confidential. All data is encrypted, access is controlled, and no information is ever shared across clients or reused for AI training by the generative AI software.

AI Supports, Attorneys Lead

It is important to emphasize: AI does not replace attorneys. It doesn’t draft final documents or offer legal advice. But it significantly reduces initial review time, flags critical issues, and ensures consistency across every contract we review. Expert attorneys are needed to:

• Set up the playbooks,
• Apply the results of running the playbook to a particular contract,
• Finish the review and redlining of the contract for client review and then delivery to the attorney representing the client on the other side of the agreement or transaction,
• Work with the client and negotiate the final agreement with opposing counsel.

Legal AI can be a powerful tool when paired with the experienced legal judgment of an attorney with expertise in the relevant types of contracts.

Why It Matters

At S. Deatherage Law, PLLC, we’re committed to delivering innovative, efficient, and high-quality legal services. Leveraging generative AI and other legal technology such as document automation allows us to streamline repetitive work, reduce turnaround times, and provide deeper, data-informed insights — all while maintaining full legal oversight.

Whether you’re an in-house counsel seeking efficiency or a business looking to strengthen contract risk management, we can help you understand how we use AI-powered legal review of contracts to provide a more efficient result.