Every contract has a prequel

What’s new

Before running a risk review in the LawY Contracts Word Add-in, upload the documents behind the deal: Heads of Agreement, Heads of Terms, term sheets, disclosure statements, file notes and correspondence.

LawY reviews the draft against them, treating them as context in the same way it treats your own instructions. Where the draft departs from what those documents say, LawY flags it. And every risk drawn from an uploaded document names that document in the risk analysis, so you can check the source yourself.

LawY doesn’t replace the cross check. It starts it, by pointing to the places worth looking and showing where each point came from. Every flag drawn from an uploaded document names its source, so you can check it before anything goes to your client.

And every risk drawn from an uploaded document names that document in the risk analysis, so you can check the source yourself before anything goes to your client.

Why it matters

Alongside assessing the clauses, you’re checking the draft against your client’s priorities, the negotiated terms and the background to the deal that shape the contract the parties end up signing.

A clause can look perfectly reasonable and still be wrong, because it isn’t what your client agreed. Read on its own, there may be nothing risky about it. Miss it, and you haven’t missed a risky clause. You’ve missed a client instruction, and negotiating it back in weeks later is not a conversation anyone wants to have.

For example: A 3% fixed annual increase in a retail lease looks unremarkable. Most reviewers would let it through. But three days before the draft arrived, your client emailed to say the agent had talked the landlord down to 2.5%. Miss that, and the clause isn’t just unfavourable. It’s not what your client agreed, and you’re the one who has to explain why it went back unchanged.

The only reliable way to catch it is to read the draft against every agreed term, clause by clause. On a lease with thirty agreed terms, that’s an afternoon.

LawY now helps with your first pass, flagging places worth checking and showing which document informed each finding.

How it works

1. In Word, open the LawY add-in and start a review. Pick your contract type (for example, Lease · NSW) and what you want LawY to do, such as Review and redline.
2. In the “Tell us more about this contract” panel, choose who you’re representing and check the jurisdiction.
3. Under Documents (optional), click Add documents.
4. Add the documents behind the deal under Relevant documents (PDF, Word, text or image). If you have a precedent for this type of contract, add it under Precedent (Word .docx only).
5. Click Done, add any focus points under “Instructions for the review”, and click Review Contract.

LawY lists every section of the draft and marks what it found, red for higher risk and amber for lower. Open a section to see the risks, the analysis behind each one, and proposed redlines you can accept, reject or edit in the document.

Your precedent and your deal, in one review

Now you can also add a trusted precedent when setting up your review. Your precedent and relevant documents serve different purposes.

Your precedent is your firm’s standard position. For each risk LawY finds, your precedent gives LawY a reference for suggesting redlines using wording you already know and trust

Your relevant documents are this deal’s paper trail. LawY treats them like your own instructions and flags where the draft departs from them.

Add both and LawY reviews the draft against two things a standard review can’t see: how your firm drafts, and what your client actually agreed.

Get started

Already using LawY Contracts? Next time you start a review, look for Document upload.

New to LawY? Book a demo here.