The Belgium document automation company ClauseBase has launched a major expansion of its product to add new capabilities for clause extraction, AI-powered document review, and automated proofreading, all with the goal of providing an all-in-one platform, within Microsoft Word, for contract drafting, reviewing and negotiating.

ClauseBase launched in 2018 as a contract drafting platform that allows lawyers to turn their clauses into intelligent and reusable clauses and manage them in a clause library. It enabled lawyers to use the clauses as building blocks, while ensuring internal consistency in terminology, grammar, style, cross-referencing, and other elements.

It has two core products. Clause9 is the original document automation software it launched in 2018. ClauseBuddy, launched in 2022, is an AI-powered drafting toolbox that works as a plug-in within Microsoft Word and Outlook.

With this new launch of its expanded product set, the company says it now provides a one-stop shop for legal drafting. New features include:

Clause extraction from drafting history. ClauseBase says that its new clause extraction technology enables law firms and legal departments to efficiently search their drafting history, extracting and repurposing clauses with ease. It also integrates with the SEC’s EDGAR database to offer millions of sample clauses out of the box. While other legal tech companies offer similar functionality as their core offering, for ClauseBase, the company says, this is simply another tool in the toolbox.

AI-powered document reviewing. Using generative AI, ClauseBase now allows lawyers to quickly conduct a red flag analysis of any third-party document, identifying potential issues and suggesting improvements. This feature augments ClauseBase’s existing AI drafting support, which allows users to draft and redraft clauses and documents with a short prompt, as well as query documents for important information. For lawyers, this means that, rather than rely solely on LLM-driven reviewing, they can tailor their review preferences.

Automated definitions and proofreading. This feature scans legal documents for typical errors like broken cross-references, inconsistencies between definitions and capitalized terminology, and more. Here again, while ClauseBase says it is not the first to add this functionality, it says the significance is that it incorporates it into a single, comprehensive set of legal drafting tools.

Here is a video showing the new features.

“We are former lawyers at ClauseBase; legal drafting was 90% or more of what we did in our previous lives.” said Maarten Truyens, founder and CEO. “Our goal has always been to bring back joy to this crucial but broken process.

“While we started with document automation in 2018, we quickly realized this was only one piece of the legal drafting puzzle and we have been hard at working developing our Microsoft Word plugin ClauseBuddy into an assistant that helps with all the annoying and time-consuming parts of the work.”

(ClauseBase was a finalist in the 2021 Startup Alley at ABA Techshow, which I oversee.)

Photo of Bob Ambrogi Bob Ambrogi

Bob is a lawyer, veteran legal journalist, and award-winning blogger and podcaster. In 2011, he was named to the inaugural Fastcase 50, honoring “the law’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries and leaders.” Earlier in his career, he was editor-in-chief of several legal publications, including The National Law Journal, and editorial director of ALM’s Litigation Services Division.