AI-powered contract drafting: How DraftWise transforms legal workflows

Innovation at the legal AI demo day

At the recent National Law Review Legal AI Demo Day, DraftWise Chief Customer Officer Will Seaton showcased how DraftWise’s AI-powered drafting and negotiation software is transforming lawyer contract workflows. The presentation highlighted our mission to help lawyers draft, review, and negotiate agreements more effectively to achieve better client outcomes.

AI capabilities create new opportunities for lawyers to leverage their firm's institutional knowledge and internal guidance more efficiently. By integrating AI directly into the contract workflow, DraftWise enables lawyers to apply best practices and standardized positions without leaving their familiar Microsoft Word environment.

Streamlined compliance checks: Identify and fix issues in seconds

The first key workflow demonstrates DraftWise's ability to automatically compare contract language against firm best practices. While reviewing an Investor's Rights Agreement, the DraftWise platform quickly identifies clauses out of compliance with the firm's preferred positions.

DraftWise highlights specific issues, such as inspection rights language that don't require investors to provide reasonable notice - a deviation from the firm's standard position. With just a few clicks, DraftWise provides:

1. A clear explanation of why the clause was out of compliance
2. The firm's preferred position for that clause type
3. A suggested redline with specific language changes

Instead of manually researching internal standards and crafting appropriate language, lawyers can apply suggested changes instantly, bringing documents into compliance with firm best practices in seconds rather than hours.

Knowledge-driven drafting: Accessing firm precedent at the point of need

The second workflow demonstrates how DraftWise helps lawyers enhance even technically "in compliance" clauses by leveraging the firm's expertise to best meet client needs. When reviewing an insurance provision that was particularly important to the client, Will shows how lawyers can access relevant precedent directly within their drafting environment.

By highlighting the current clause and asking DraftWise to find similar language, the system searches the firm's document management system for relevant precedents. Results include:

1. Previously negotiated agreements
2. Firm templates
3. Industry-standard documents (like NVCA templates)
4. Know-how content shared across the firm

Each result includes relevant metadata to help evaluate its applicability, allowing lawyers to quickly identify stronger language that better meets client preferences.

Smart implementation: Beyond simple copy and paste

DraftWise goes beyond just finding precedent by making the process of integrating new language into a contract seamless. Will demonstrates how DraftWise helps lawyers properly integrate new language into existing documents with intelligent assistance:

1. One-click insertion of preferred language into the current document
2. Automatic identification of defined terms in the inserted language
3. Flagging of missing definitions that need to be added
4. Simple insertion of required definitions into the appropriate section

This intelligent implementation process prevents the common errors when lawyers manually copy and paste language between documents, like missing dependent definitions or inconsistent terminology.

Enhanced client service: Data-driven contract analysis

Throughout the demo, Will emphasizes how DraftWise transforms contract drafting from an individual effort into a data-driven process. The platform automatically processes and analyzes agreements by connecting directly to the firm's document management system, breaking them down into component pieces for quick analysis.

This enables lawyers to:

1. Make informed decisions based on firm-wide knowledge rather than just personal experience
2. Quickly identify industry standards and best practices
3. Access enriched metadata about previous deals and their contexts
4. Deliver more consistent, high-quality results to clients

The result is more confident negotiations backed by the collective intelligence of the entire firm.

Standardizing excellence across legal teams

DraftWise is designed to make it as easy as possible for lawyers to work directly with their knowledge and expertise in Microsoft Word, where they already spend much of their day. By bringing firm knowledge directly into the contract drafting environment, the platform enables lawyers to leverage expertise across legal teams and standardize best practices as a firm.

This approach transforms contract drafting from a siloed activity dependent on individual knowledge into a collaborative process that draws on the firm's collective experience. The result is more efficient drafting and better outcomes for clients through consistent, well-crafted agreements that reflect the firm's highest standards of practice.