How legal AI tools are transforming contract review for solicitors

Contract review is one of the most time-consuming tasks in legal practice. Whether it's a due diligence exercise spanning hundreds of agreements, renegotiating supplier contracts, or checking standard terms against a new counterparty's paper: manually reviewing contracts consumes enormous amounts of billable and non-billable time. Legal AI tools are changing this fundamentally.

The problem with traditional contract review

Every solicitor knows the drill: a stack of contracts that needs reviewing, usually under time pressure. The traditional approach is labour-intensive and error-prone.

Common challenges:

Large volumes of contracts to work through in short timeframes, particularly during M&A due diligence
Inconsistency in risk assessments between different reviewers
Missing clauses after hours of concentrated reading
High costs for clients driven by the labour-intensive approach

From practice: two cases

To illustrate what legal AI tools actually deliver in contract review, two examples from practice.

At LawBeam, a boutique firm in England, contract analysis was central to a dispute over product quality. The firm needed to establish whether quality had ever been formally accepted by the buyer. The evidence was buried in hundreds of meeting transcripts, spanning weekly meetings, monthly updates and ad hoc discussions. Working through them manually would have taken an estimated hundred hours. The AI analysed all transcripts and delivered qualitative output within five minutes, including specific quotes directly usable as evidence. The result was not merely faster but more thorough than a manual review could realistically have been under the same time pressure. Read the LawBeam case study.

On the Dutch side, solicitor Ronald Zwiers used agentic AI to navigate a contractual dispute spanning thousands of pages of correspondence. He mapped the factual matrix, built a timeline of key communications, and identified relevant case law, compressing what would normally take the better part of a week into two days. Read the full story.

How does AI-powered contract review work?

Most legal AI tools answer questions about contracts. Agentic AI works differently. Rather than responding to individual prompts, it performs a complete analysis as one coordinated task:

Document processing: the contract is ingested regardless of format. Advanced language processing ensures the content is correctly interpreted.
Clause identification: the AI recognises and categorises clauses based on legal context, not simple keyword matching.
Comparison against standards: deviations from your standard contract are automatically flagged and classified.
Risk analysis: identified risks are categorised by severity, taking into account the type of agreement.
Reporting: a clear report with findings and recommendations, ready for the solicitor's review.

The difference from a generative chatbot is that you don't need five separate prompts that you stitch together yourself. One instruction, one coordinated output. Why that distinction matters.

What does it actually deliver?

Speed. Tasks that took hours to days are reduced to minutes. The solicitor spends time assessing the AI's output rather than manually reading through documents.

Consistency. AI doesn't get tired. Every contract is assessed against the same criteria, with the same thoroughness. This is particularly valuable on large matters where multiple fee earners are collaborating.

Depth. Legal AI tools find clauses that a human reviewer might miss. Not because the AI is cleverer, but because it processes every word with the same level of attention.

What contract review actions look like in practice

In Andri, an action is a reusable analysis task you can run against any contract. Rather than asking one question at a time, you define what needs checking and the AI works through it systematically. These are the kinds of actions solicitors use for contract review:

Clause enforceability. For each material clause, the AI checks whether comparable provisions have been upheld or struck down in case law. Where a non-compete is too broadly drafted, an indemnity lacks a cap, or a termination clause omits a notice period, the AI flags the issue and finds the authorities that explain why it is problematic.

Enforcement mechanisms. Does the contract have teeth? The AI assesses whether penalty clauses are proportionate, whether there's an escalation procedure for disputes, and whether the remedies actually match the obligations. A contract that promises everything but provides no mechanism for enforcement is a contract that doesn't protect your client.

Conflicting provisions. Contracts drafted over multiple rounds often contain internal contradictions. An exclusion of liability in one clause that's undermined by a warranty three pages later. The AI reads the entire document as a whole and identifies where provisions work against each other.

Comparison against your standard terms. If your firm uses standard contracts or approved positions, the AI compares the draft against your baseline and highlights every deviation, categorised by risk level.

Forensic metadata verification. Beyond the text itself, Andri can extract forensic metadata from contract documents and attachments: when a document was created or modified, which device was used, and where available, the GPS coordinates showing where it was signed. In disputes over authenticity, this kind of evidence can be decisive. Read more about forensic AI metadata analysis.

Each of these can be saved as a reusable action, adapted to your practice area, and run across multiple contracts in one go. That's the difference between a tool that answers questions and a tool that does the work.

What to look for when choosing a legal AI tool

Accuracy over speed. Look for platforms that are transparent about their accuracy and show source citations. How we approach citation verification.
Adaptability. Can the tool work with your own standard contracts and actions? A tool that learns your practice delivers better results than a generic solution.
Jurisdictional coverage. If you practise in England and Wales, you need an AI that understands the common law framework, CPR and SRA requirements, rather than US law repackaged for a different jurisdiction.
Data processing in Europe. Client data is confidential. A proper legal tool processes data within the EEA, with per-document encryption and isolated storage environments per matter. Read how Andri handles document security.

The next step

Contract review is one of the applications where legal AI tools already deliver proven value today. It's a logical starting point for firms that want to experience what AI can do for their practice.

Curious how this works with your own contracts? Try it yourself or get in touch. We would be happy to walk you through it.