A Playbook is a set of review rules that tells the AI how to assess 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. Instead of directing the review yourself every time, you define your positions once and the AI applies them consistently across every contract you run it against.

There are three ways to get started with Playbooks, depending on how much time you have and how developed your positions are.

Option 1: General Review

If you don't have a Playbook yet and need to review a contract now, General Review is the fastest starting point. Open your contract, select General Review, tell the AI a bit about your role and anything you're particularly concerned about, and it will build a Playbook for you on the fly based on the agreement in front of you.

The output won't perfectly reflect your preferred positions because the AI is inferring what matters to you from the context you've given it. But it gives you a structured first pass immediately, without any setup. It's also a useful way to get a sense of what a Playbook for a particular contract type might look like before you build one properly.

Option 2: Standard Playbooks

SimpleAI includes 55 Standard Playbooks built by expert lawyers using the Law Insider database. They cover the most common agreement types: NDAs, MSAs, DPAs, SaaS agreements, employment contracts, and more.

You can use a Standard Playbook exactly as it is. You can also go into the individual rules and adjust any that don't reflect your positions. If you want to make more significant changes, you can duplicate the whole Playbook and edit it as heavily as you like. You keep the structure and the starting point, but the result becomes yours.

This is the fastest route to a Playbook that reflects real legal positions. You're not starting from a blank page.

Option 3: Custom Playbooks

If you want a Playbook built around your specific positions, there are two ways to create one from scratch.

Build from a document you trust

Open an agreement you consider a good benchmark, such as your preferred NDA template or a heavily negotiated contract that reflects your standard positions. Ask the AI to build a Playbook based on that document. It will read every provision, identify the principle behind each one, and create a rule for it. You can then review and adjust the rules before saving.

Build rules manually

Write your rules one by one from scratch. A well-structured rule tells the AI what to check for and what to do if the contract doesn't meet that standard. For example:

"Ensure the term is two years. If it is more or less than two years, redline to two years."

If you're not sure how to phrase a rule for the AI, you don't need to worry about it. There is an Improve Instruction button that takes whatever you've written in plain English and turns it into an AI-ready prompt. You write what you mean, and the tool handles the rest.

What you can add to each rule

Whether you're using a Standard Playbook or building your own, each rule can include several additional elements that make it more powerful.

Fallback positions. If your preferred position isn't achievable, a fallback tells the AI what you'd accept instead. You can add as many fallbacks as you need, and when the AI flags an issue during a review, it surfaces all of your fallbacks so you can choose the most appropriate one for the deal.

Comments. These appear in the margins of the document whenever the AI applies a redline or raises a red flag. They're written for the counterparty or reviewer and explain why a change has been made. A redline without explanation can feel adversarial. A comment that frames the change as a standard position is easier for the other side to accept.

Guidance notes. These are internal instructions visible to your team, not to the counterparty. Use them to explain the rationale behind a rule, advise which fallback to choose in different situations, or set escalation instructions. For example: "If the counterparty pushes back on this, escalate to the Head of Legal before conceding." Guidance notes turn a Playbook from a checklist into something that carries institutional knowledge with it.

Running your Playbook

Once you have a Playbook, running it is straightforward.

1. Open a contract in Word and launch the SimpleAI sidebar
2. Select Playbooks from the navigation
3. Choose the Playbook you want to run
4. Hit run
5. Review the output

The AI works through each rule and returns two types of output: proposed redlines for clauses that need changing, and red flags for issues that need your attention. You go through each one and decide whether to apply it, adjust it, or dismiss it. Nothing is applied without your approval.

Where to go from here

Your first Playbook is a starting point. The chapters that follow explain how each element of a Playbook works in more detail: how to write rules that perform consistently, how to use fallbacks effectively, when to use a redline versus a red flag, and how to refine your Playbook over time based on what you see in real reviews.

Next chapter → Anatomy of a Playbook

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