The Complete Guide to AI Contract Analysis

Contract analysis is one of the highest-value applications of document AI. Legal teams spend thousands of hours each year reviewing contracts — and AI can reduce that time by 60% or more.

But only if you use it correctly. Here's how.

Step 1: Choose the Right Document Format

AI works best with text-based PDFs (not scanned images). If your contracts are scanned, run OCR first. Doc and Tell supports PDF, DOCX, and TXT formats.

Pro tip: DOCX files often produce better results than PDFs because the text structure is preserved more cleanly.

Step 2: Ask Specific Questions

Vague questions get vague answers. Instead of asking "summarize this contract," try:

• "What are the termination clauses and their conditions?"
• "What is the payment schedule and are there late payment penalties?"
• "What non-compete restrictions apply after termination?"
• "What are the indemnification obligations for each party?"

Specific questions let the AI's retrieval system find the exact relevant passages.

Step 3: Verify Every Citation

This is the most important step. When the AI says "The termination clause in Section 4.2 allows either party to terminate with 30 days notice," you should click the citation to see Section 4.2 in the original document.

Doc and Tell's split-pane viewer makes this instant — click the citation chip, and the relevant passage is highlighted in the PDF viewer beside the chat.

Step 4: Use Multi-Document Collections

Real contract review rarely involves a single document. You need to check:

• The master agreement against its amendments
• Standard terms against negotiated changes
• Multiple vendor contracts for consistency

Create a collection in Doc and Tell, add all related documents, and ask cross-document questions like "How do the indemnification terms differ across these three vendor contracts?"

Step 5: Build a Review Workflow

1. Upload and auto-summarize: Let Doc and Tell generate structured summaries for each contract
2. Targeted Q&A: Ask about specific clauses relevant to your review
3. Cross-reference: Compare terms across related documents in a collection
4. Document findings: Export the AI's answers with their citations for your review notes

Common Pitfalls

• Trusting without verifying: Always click citations to confirm
• Asking about information not in the document: The AI will tell you if something isn't found
• Ignoring context: A clause means different things depending on the governing law — use the AI for extraction, apply your legal judgment for interpretation

Getting Started

Upload your first contract to Doc and Tell and try asking about termination clauses, payment terms, or indemnification obligations. Every answer comes with page-level citations you can verify instantly.