What Is a Playbook?

When you review a contract without a Playbook, the AI reads the document and responds to whatever you ask. The output is only as good as your instructions. If you forget to check something, it doesn't get checked.

A Playbook changes that. It is a set of rules you define once that tells the AI exactly how to review a contract: what to look for, what position to take on each issue, and whether to propose a redline or flag something for your attention. Every time you run a Playbook against a contract, it applies those rules consistently, without you having to remember to ask.

What a Playbook does

When you run a Playbook, the AI reads the contract and works through each rule in sequence. For each one it either proposes a redline directly in the document or surfaces a suggestion for you to review. You then go through the output, accept what you agree with, adjust what needs refining, and reject anything that doesn't apply.

The result is a first-pass review that reflects your actual positions, not a generic set of AI suggestions.

Why it matters

Without a Playbook, every contract review starts from scratch. You rely on your own checklist, your memory of what to look for, and however much time you have. Important things get missed. Junior reviewers apply different standards to the same issue. Institutional knowledge about what your organisation will and won't accept lives in people's heads rather than in a repeatable process.

A Playbook solves all of that. Your positions are written down. The review is consistent regardless of who runs it or how busy they are. And the AI does the first pass, so your time goes on judgment and negotiation rather than reading and searching.

Who creates Playbooks and who uses them

Playbooks are typically created by senior lawyers or legal ops who understand the organisation's risk appetite and standard positions. Once created, they can be used by anyone on the team, including people who are less experienced or less familiar with a particular contract type.

A junior lawyer running a Playbook on a supplier NDA will surface the same issues and apply the same positions as a senior lawyer doing the same review manually. That consistency is the point.

What Playbooks work best for

Playbooks are most valuable for contract types you review repeatedly with a consistent set of positions: NDAs, MSAs, DPAs, employment agreements, supplier terms. The more often you review a particular type of contract, the more a Playbook saves you.

They are less useful for one-off or highly bespoke agreements where the issues are specific to the deal rather than the document type. For those, the AI Assistant's Ask, Redline, and Draft actions are the better tools.

How Playbooks and the AI Assistant work together

The AI Assistant and Playbooks are complementary, not alternatives. A Playbook handles the systematic first pass: applying your standard positions to every relevant clause. The AI Assistant handles everything that requires judgment, context, or deal-specific thinking: understanding unusual clauses, drafting positions you haven't pre-defined, or communicating your analysis to stakeholders.

Most contract reviews will use both. Run the Playbook first to get your standard positions applied. Then use Ask, Redline, and Draft to handle what the Playbook doesn't cover.

Next chapter → General Review

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