Stop 2 of 8 · Daily
The contract review
Your checklist plus the other side's draft, back as a redline memo with a clause reference on every line and an authorities list for Dev.
The review you do twelve times a month
Someone sends Elena a draft. She has a checklist she has carried since her second year: twenty two items covering scope, payment terms, IP, indemnity, limitation of liability, term and termination, assignment, dispute resolution and notices. The work has always been the same shape. Find where each item lives in a document written by someone who did not use her headings, decide whether it is acceptable, and write the memo.
Claude does the finding. Elena does the deciding. The memo is faster because the finding is where the hour went.
What goes into the chat with the contract
Three files, every time. The other side's draft, with the client's name out of the file name. Her checklist, as a plain list. Her own standard form for the same deal type, if she has one, because "compare against ours" produces a sharper memo than "review this".
If the draft is a scan, it still works. Ask for the page number on every row so Dev can jump to the source without rereading the file.
The three passes
Locate. Every checklist item, what the contract says about it, section and page, and an explicit row saying silent where it says nothing. Silence is where the trouble is.
Redline. For each item Elena marks high risk, the exact replacement language she would propose, written in the drafting voice of the document she is editing, plus one line on what the other side gives up by accepting it.
Verify. Everything in the memo that is a claim about law or about the market gets pulled out into its own list. Dev checks each authority in Westlaw or Lexis: that it exists, that it says what the memo says it says, and that it is still good law. Nothing in that list goes to the client until it comes back cleared, and Claude is never the source cited for any of it.
Try this
Attached: the other side's draft and my contract review checklist. For every item on my checklist, give me one row: the checklist item, what this contract actually says about it in one sentence, the section and page, and my exposure rated high, medium or low. Where the contract is silent on an item, say silent and leave the exposure column filled in anyway. Do not propose changes yet and state no conclusion about enforceability. [upload the draft and the checklist]
Take the high risk rows from the table above. For each one, write the replacement language I would propose, in the drafting style and defined terms of this contract, followed by one sentence on what the other side loses by accepting it and one fallback I could live with. Number the items so they match the table.
Read back over the memo you just wrote. List separately, under Authorities to verify, every case, statute, regulation and rule you relied on, with the exact proposition each one is being used for. Then list, under Claims to source, every statement about what is market standard, customary or usual, with the sentence it appears in. Present none of them as confirmed.