SimpleAI includes 50+ Standard Playbooks built by expert lawyers and informed by the Law Insider database. They cover the most common commercial agreement types: NDAs, MSAs, DPAs, SaaS agreements, employment contracts, and more. Each one gives you a complete set of review rules for that agreement type, ready to run immediately.

Standard Playbooks solve the blank page problem. Instead of working out from scratch what to check in an NDA, you start with a professionally structured set of rules that already covers the standard issues. Your job is to decide whether those rules reflect your positions, and adjust the ones that don't.

How to access Standard Playbooks

1. Open the SimpleAI sidebar in Word
2. Select Playbooks from the navigation
3. Select Standard Playbooks
4. Browse or search for the agreement type you need
5. Select a Playbook and run it directly, or open it to review the rules before running

Running a Standard Playbook as-is

If you need a quick review and don't have time to build your own Playbook, you can run a Standard Playbook directly against your contract. It will apply the standard market positions for that agreement type and flag anything that deviates from them.

This works well for:

• One-off agreements outside your usual contract types
• Quick sanity checks before a call or signing
• Reviewers who are less familiar with a particular agreement type and need a structured starting point

The positions in a Standard Playbook reflect common market practice, not your organisation's specific positions. Treat the output as an informed first pass rather than a definitive review.

Tweaking rules within a Standard Playbook

If a Standard Playbook is close to what you need but a few rules don't reflect your positions, you can edit individual rules before or after running it.

1. Open the Standard Playbook
2. Click into any rule you want to change
3. Edit the instruction to reflect your position
4. Run the Playbook

Changes you make to a Standard Playbook in this way apply to your session. They don't affect the underlying Standard Playbook or anyone else's version of it.

This is useful when:

• A standard position doesn't match your risk appetite on a specific issue
• You want to adjust a threshold, such as a liability cap or a notice period, for a particular deal
• A rule isn't relevant to the contract in front of you and you want to remove it for this run

Duplicating a Standard Playbook

If you want to turn a Standard Playbook into a permanent custom standard for your team, duplicate it. Duplication creates a copy in your organisation's Playbook library that you can edit, save, and share.

1. Open the Standard Playbook you want to use as your starting point
2. Click Duplicate
3. Rename it to reflect your organisation or use case
4. Edit the rules to align with your preferred positions
5. Save it to your library

Your team can then access and run this Playbook just like any other. The original Standard Playbook is unchanged.

Duplication is the fastest way to build a high-quality custom Playbook. You're not writing rules from scratch — you're refining a professionally structured set of rules that already covers the right ground. Most teams find that 20 to 30 percent of the rules need adjusting to reflect their specific positions. The rest are usually fine as-is.

💡 Duplication is the recommended route for any agreement type you review regularly. A duplicated and refined Standard Playbook will outperform a Standard Playbook run as-is, because it reflects your positions rather than generic market practice.

Choosing the right Standard Playbook

Most Standard Playbooks come in more than one version. An NDA Playbook might have separate versions for mutual NDAs, discloser-friendly NDAs, and recipient-friendly NDAs. An MSA might have a buy-side and a sell-side version.

Always select the version that matches your position in the transaction. Running a sell-side Playbook on a contract where you are the buyer will produce misleading output.

If you are unsure which version to use, the names and descriptions of each Playbook explain the scenario they are designed for.

Next chapter → Building a Custom Playbook

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