Robert Ambrogi Blog
In-house legal departments often struggle with a common challenge: how to efficiently review and negotiate the constant flow of routine contracts without sacrificing quality or consistency.
Aiming to help them tackle that challenge, SimpleDocs, known for its AutoNDA contract automation software, has launched SimpleAI, a Microsoft Word-integrated tool that enables in-house legal teams to create and deploy custom AI-powered contract review playbooks.
The product, which the company says it beta-tested with dozens of legal departments before today’s launch, is designed to streamline routine contract negotiations through automated review and redlining capabilities.
SimpleAI’s defining feature is its playbook builder, which allows legal teams to create and modify their own contract review rules without requiring technical expertise. During a pre-launch demonstration of the product, SimpleDocs CEO Preston Clark emphasized that the system is designed to be immediately intuitive to practicing attorneys.
“My single favorite part about SimpleAI is that our customers understand it implicitly and immediately,” Clark told me during the demonstration. “Even if you’re a senior attorney pushing down work into your organization, from time to time you’re still negotiating an NDA or reviewing a cloud service agreement. You can test this tool and know within a minute and a half how it compares to what you would do.”
While SimpleAI makes it easy for users to build their own playbooks, it also allows them to choose from a library of preloaded expert-developed playbooks developed through a partnership with SimpleDocs’ sibling company Law Insider.
These currently include the standardized templates oneNDA, oneDPA, and oneSaaS (which was launched just yesterday). SimpleDocs plans to substantially build out this library of preloaded templates.
Replacing Manual Review
To understand how this works in practice, consider a common scenario: An in-house legal team receives a vendor’s non-disclosure agreement. Traditionally, an attorney would need to manually review the document, checking various elements against the company’s standard requirements – appropriate confidentiality terms, acceptable governing law, reasonable term length, and so on.
In our demonstration, Clark showed how, with SimpleAI, this process becomes largely automated. It instantly analyzes a contract against a predefined playbook, presenting attorneys with a clear overview of issues it detects.
For instance, if a contract includes a six-year confidentiality term when company policy requires 18 months, the system automatically flags this and suggests appropriate redlines. But rather than lock users into predetermined rules, SimpleAI enables legal teams to create and modify their own playbooks through a straightforward interface.
“We initially weren’t even going to make this builder available because we thought we didn’t want to put this pressure on our customers,” Clark said. “But when they saw it, they just ripped it out of our hands.”
The system approaches contract review in two ways. For clear-cut issues like non-solicitation clauses or specific term lengths, it can automatically implement redlines. For more nuanced matters that require attorney judgment – such as whether a confidentiality definition is appropriately broad – it flags the issue for review.
Using the chat feature in SimpleAI to draft suggested language.
Beyond playbook-based review, the tool includes an AI chat feature that allows users to analyze documents more broadly, generate clause suggestions, and create contract summaries. The company has indicated that future updates will include integration with Law Insider’s contract database for market comparison analysis and the addition of customizable clause libraries.
The product is SOC 2 and GDPR compliant and is available through the Microsoft App Store. SimpleDocs is offering SimpleAI at $150 per user per month, with unlimited playbook creation and usage. A limited guest version is available for free testing.
In an educational initiative, SimpleDocs is partnering with the University of Miami School of Law to provide students with free access to SimpleAI and training in AI-assisted contract negotiation. This partnership includes teaching law students how to develop and test contract review playbooks using the platform.
More Standard Playbooks Coming
The launch of SimpleAI follows the success of SimpleDocs’ AutoNDA product, which it says has been adopted by over 1,000 in-house legal departments since its launch 18 months ago.
The company sees SimpleAI as part of its broader strategy to provide targeted solutions for specific contract management challenges rather than attempting to replace entire contract lifecycle management systems.
Clark emphasized that the product is designed to evolve based on user feedback, noting that many features, including the chat functionality and user-accessible playbook builder, were added or modified in response to beta-testing feedback.
The company plans to continue expanding its library of standard playbooks, with Law Insider aiming to release 20 additional standard playbooks by the end of the year.
“In a crowded market of emerging AI-tools, the SimpleDocs’ commitment to the needs of in-house lawyers will be our biggest differentiator,” Clark said. “This means advanced playbook configurations, enterprise grade security and data polices – backed by a dedicated customer support and implementation team.”
[Note that the How It Works video is a sponsored promotion.]