Legal AI built by lawyers: How the minds behind Markup accelerated contract review by 70%

DraftWise's new tool, Markup, solves the most persistent challenges in contract review. Former practicing attorneys Tony Mauriello (General Counsel) and John Park (Senior Business Development Executive) share insights into the pain points of drafting, review, and negotiation, while Niall Grogan (Head of Product) demonstrates how Markup alleviates these frustrations for transactional lawyers.

As a lawyer, time is one of your most valuable assets. Yet far too much of it gets consumed by repetitive tasks that pull you away from where your expertise truly matters: applying your legal judgment to protect client interests and craft winning strategies.

This week, we're excited to reintroduce Markup, DraftWise's AI-powered assistant that transforms how lawyers review and negotiate contracts. Built on our foundation of precedent-based insights, Markup represents the next evolution in legal technology that works the way you do.

Real benefits for real lawyers

The impact of Markup extends beyond just saving time:

• For law firm partners: Markup ensures associates produce higher-quality work that aligns with your best practice standards and client expectations, reducing review cycles and improving realization rates.
• For in-house legal leaders: Markup helps your team maintain consistent standards across all agreements while reducing turnaround time, enabling your legal department to support business objectives and deadlines.
• For associates and in-house counsel: Markup accelerates your learning curve by providing immediate access to institutional knowledge, helping you deliver high-quality work faster with fewer revisions.
• For knowledge management teams: Markup transforms your carefully curated resources from static documents into dynamic tools that lawyers actually use in their daily workflows.

Studies show that legal teams implementing solutions like Markup can reduce contract review time by up to 70%, enabling lawyers to complete reviews faster, with fewer errors and less time spent on rework—whether you're managing outside counsel spend or improving internal efficiency.

What is Markup?

Markup is a Legal AI Assistant that enables lawyers to automatically mark up contracts based on simple guidelines, sophisticated playbooks, or prior work. Integrating directly into Microsoft Word, Markup helps legal teams review and negotiate contracts more efficiently while maintaining the highest quality standards.

"We built Markup to solve the real problems lawyers face every day," explains Niall Grogan, Head of Product at DraftWise. "When we spoke with legal teams at leading global firms, we heard consistent pain points around applying best standards and language during contract review. Markup bridges that gap by bringing your firm's collective expertise directly into your workflow."

Markup amplifies the abilities of DraftWise’s original tool, Smart Draft, to create a seamless contract workflow—Markup automatically identifies issues and suggests redlines based on your firm's standards during review, while Smart Draft accelerates the initial drafting process by intelligently leveraging your precedent and institutional knowledge to generate high-quality first drafts.

A tool built by lawyers, for lawyers

At DraftWise, our team includes former practicing lawyers who understand the unique challenges of transactional law. This perspective has been instrumental in developing Markup to address real-world pain points rather than theoretical problems.

"Having practiced at some of the largest global firms, we designed Markup to solve the frustrations we experienced firsthand as corporate attorneys," says Tony. "We know what it's like to be under pressure to turn around a contract review quickly while maintaining the highest quality standards with zero mistakes."

This legal DNA is evident throughout Markup's design, from its seamless integration with Microsoft Word to its focus on practical features that enhance—rather than disrupt—existing workflows.

How Markup solves your everyday pain points

The problem: Creating and maintaining firm standards

Developing comprehensive standards for clients, practice areas, and agreement types requires significant investment. As laws and market practices evolve, keeping these resources current becomes increasingly burdensome.

Easily create and apply organization-wide guidelines

Markup allows lawyers to create clear, natural language guidelines that automatically apply to contracts under review. Write once in plain English—"Flag any limitation of liability that doesn't include fraud exceptions"—and Markup automatically identifies these issues across all your agreements. As you develop terms through negotiations, Markup captures evolving knowledge and makes it immediately available to everyone in your organization.

Transform institutional knowledge into actionable insights

With Markup, maintaining firm standards shifts from being a major undertaking to an organic part of your workflow – transforms firm standards from static documents into dynamic tools that evolve alongside your practice, eliminating the need for resource-intensive manual updates. 

"You can write plain English guidelines that specify what needs to be reviewed in each agreement type and which key points must be standardized across your organization," says Niall. 

"Knowledge sharing is critical in firm practice, but it can often be hard to access when you need it. Markup enables knowledge management to be something that integrates into your daily work. As you negotiate better terms and develop improved language, that knowledge gets captured and shared more easily." – John Park

The problem: Efficiently finding and applying client-specific guidance

Even when firms invest in documenting best practices, lawyers struggle to access them at the point of need. Institutional knowledge remains scattered across personal folders, emails, and individual lawyers' memories.

Access your organization's entire knowledge base directly within your document. Simply open a contract in Word, and Markup instantly identifies the agreement type and surfaces relevant precedents, playbooks, and previously negotiated positions—all without leaving your document or disrupting your workflow.

AI document review based on client preferences

Markup eliminates the time-consuming search for precedent by bringing relevant knowledge directly to your document when you need it, effectively turning hours of research into seconds. 

Niall shares, “We designed Markup to act as an AI assistant that enables lawyers to automatically markup contracts based on simple guidelines, sophisticated playbooks, or prior work to review and negotiate contracts more efficiently to deliver higher quality. Markup uses GenAI to present lawyers with an issues list and suggests redlines based on the organization’s best practices and client preferences. The full DraftWise ecosystem allows lawyers to locate and apply client preferences nearly instantaneously.”  

Find the right precedent in seconds, not hours

"This is game-changing for junior associates who often spend hours searching for the right precedent, and it's equally valuable for experienced attorneys who can now instantly access specific language from past deals without relying on memory." - Tony

3. The problem: Applying gold-standard language efficiently

Even when you find relevant precedent, using it effectively is cumbersome—opening documents side-by-side, using CTRL+F to locate provisions, and manually comparing language.

In-document review with automatic suggestions

Make edits directly in your Microsoft Word document with Markup's inline suggestions. See potential issues highlighted as you work, with preferred language from your organization's playbooks or past agreements instantly available. Apply changes with a single click instead of retyping or copying from another document.

‍

Eliminate document-switching for faster contract completion

Markup's seamless integration into Microsoft Word means lawyers can implement best practices without the frustrating task-switching that typically disrupts their workflow and concentration. 

"The interface is designed to work the way lawyers already work," says Niall. "Markup highlights issues directly in the document and presents suggested changes based on your firm's preferred language, all within Word."

“This eliminates the frustrating back-and-forth between documents. You can review, edit, and implement changes without ever leaving your contract. Makes for a much more efficient and seamless process.” - John Park

4. The problem: Reducing time-consuming review cycles

Without efficient tools, each contract review takes the same amount of time, regardless of how many similar agreements you've previously negotiated. Research shows 60-70% of issues encountered are repetitive, yet they consume just as much time with each new contract.

AI-powered pattern recognition for faster reviews

Review contracts in a fraction of the time by letting Markup handle repetitive issues automatically. Upload a contract and immediately see potential problems flagged and categorized—from missing definitions to unfavorable clauses. Focus your expertise on strategic analysis rather than hunting for basic issues that Markup can identify in seconds.

Focus on strategy while AI handles the repetitive tasks

By automating the identification of common issues, Markup dramatically reduces the time spent on repetitive tasks, allowing lawyers to focus their expertise on the unique aspects of each transaction.

"By flagging repetitive issues and providing solutions up front, Markup allows lawyers to focus on the unique aspects of each deal," explains Niall. "Our AI recognizes patterns from your previous work and applies that knowledge to new contracts."

"This is where we see the most dramatic time savings. When you eliminate the need to reinvent the wheel for standard provisions, review time for short to medium-length contracts can drop from many hours to just a fraction of that." – Tony

Transform your practice with Markup

In today's competitive legal landscape, clients expect both expertise and efficiency. Markup empowers you to deliver both by transforming how you approach contract review and negotiation.

By eliminating the repetitive aspects of contract review, Markup allows you to focus your expertise where it matters most: strategic analysis and creative problem-solving that truly benefit your clients.

Ready to see how Markup can transform your contract review process? Contact our team today for a personalized demonstration.

‍