How to make sense of a contract before you sign it
Twenty pages in small print and it has to be signed tomorrow. Below is a way to see in ten minutes which clauses work against you: with a quotation, an explanation of the risk and a ready replacement. And a schedule of objections that assembles at the press of a button. All shown on video.
Twenty pages in small print and it has to be signed tomorrow. Below is a way to see in ten minutes which clauses work against you: with a quotation, an explanation of the risk and a ready replacement. And a schedule of objections that assembles at the press of a button. All shown on video.
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If there is no time to read: five steps
1. Upload the contract to NotebookLM — the service analyses only your file and shows where each conclusion came from.
2. Say which side you represent, without fail. Without that you get a neutral summary instead of a risk analysis.
3. Ask for three things on every clause: the quotation, the risk, how to reword it.
4. A schedule of objections assembles at the press of a button — a finished document in a table.
5. This is preparation for a conversation with a lawyer rather than a replacement for one. You must not sign on the strength of an analysis like this.
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Why contracts get signed unread
Not because people are careless. Because reading a contract gives you almost nothing.
You open twenty pages. The text is written so that each sentence seems clear and together they are not. Clause 6.1 refers to 5.7, that one to section 4, and in section 4 you discover that part of the obligations is described by reference to an annexe.
And the main thing: you do not know what is normal here and what is not. "A penalty of 0.5% for each day of delay" — is that a lot or a little? It looks like half a percent and sounds harmless.
In fact it is 182.5% a year. But to see that you have to multiply in your head and compare with the market — and you are on page twenty and already tired.
So one of two things happens. Either the contract gets signed after a quick skim. Or it goes to a lawyer — which is right, but takes time and money, and you still have no understanding of what there is to argue about.
There is a way of arriving at a lawyer prepared. Or at least of understanding what is worth asking about.
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Who I am and which contract I worked through
I have been working with AI for five years, since 2019. I am not a lawyer, and that will matter below.
What follows is an analysis of a real short-term lease of commercial premises. I show the screen recording and the resulting document. I do not name the parties — the analysis does not need them.
All the files from the analysis
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Step 1. Upload it and ask properly
Uploading. I open NotebookLM — a free Google service — create a notebook and drag the contract PDF in from the folder with the mouse. The service reads it itself and produces a summary: a lease of commercial premises between two organisations.
And here is the main point of the whole article — how to ask.
I wrote not "analyse this contract" but this:
> "I represent the tenant. Find the clauses that are unfavourable to my side. For each, give the quotation, the risk it creates and how to reword it. At the end, answer the questions the other side will raise."
Let us take that apart.
"I represent the tenant." Without that you get a neutral summary of the content. A contract is always written by somebody and in somebody's favour — an analysis only makes sense from one side.
"Find the clauses that are unfavourable." Not "tell me what the contract is about" but find the problems. Those are different tasks.
"The quotation, the risk and how to reword it." Three things instead of one. The quotation so you can find the clause in the document. The risk so you understand why to change it. The rewording is a ready replacement rather than merely a complaint.
"Answer the questions the other side will raise." A non-obvious point: you get in advance a list of what will be said against you.
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Step 2. What was found
The analysis came back with ten points. Here are four that best show what an analysis like this looks for.
#### A penalty of 0.5% a day
Quotation from the contract: for non-payment the tenant pays a penalty of 0.5% of the overdue amount for each day of delay.
The risk: that is 182.5% a year. Delay a payment by a month and you pay fifteen percent on top.
The replacement: reduce it to 0.1% a day and add a ceiling — no more than 10% of the debt.
Note the second half of the replacement. Capping the total matters more than reducing the rate: with no ceiling the penalty grows without limit.
#### Blocking access to the premises on any delay
Quotation: on breach of the payment terms the landlord is entitled to suspend use of the premises until obligations are fully performed.
The risk: the wording contains no time period. The bank holds up a transfer for a day and you are lawfully shut out of your own office.
The replacement: add one condition — "for a period exceeding 10 calendar days". One insertion, and a technical delay stops being grounds for shutting you out.
#### Utility payments with no mechanism
Quotation: the tenant independently and at its own expense pays all utility charges under the contracts concluded by the landlord with the supply companies.
The risk: physically impossible. The tenant has no direct contracts with the supply organisations — it cannot pay "independently". And since the obligation is unperformable as written, it will be construed in somebody's favour, and not yours.
The replacement: set out a compensation mechanism — the tenant reimburses the cost of what was actually consumed in proportion to the area of its premises within the total area of the building, on the basis of copy invoices the landlord supplies monthly.
#### A deposit that is not in the contract
What was found: one clause mentions a security payment. And the procedure for paying it, its amount and the conditions for its return are not in the contract at all.
The risk: you pay the money, and on what terms it comes back is written nowhere.
The replacement: add a new clause with the sum, the payment deadline and the return conditions — within five working days of signing the handover certificate, provided there is no debt.
That is the most valuable find of all. The analysis found not a bad clause but a missing one. Reading a contract with your eyes, a hole is almost impossible to notice: you check what is written rather than what is not.
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And what was found in the preamble
A separate case worth mentioning.
At the very beginning of the contract one of the parties was named wrongly: the company taking the premises was designated as the landlord.
An ordinary typing error — and at the same time the kind that means proving who is who in a dispute.
The eye passes over things like that, because it reads for sense rather than letter by letter.
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Step 3. Five questions for the other side
At the end of the analysis came what I had asked for separately: five reasoned questions for the landlord.
What that is for. Negotiation is not "I found ten bad clauses, change them". It is a conversation in which you ask and the other side explains. A list of questions turns a confrontational position into a working one.
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Step 4. A schedule of objections at the press of a button
Next comes the most unexpected part.
Below the answer a suggestion appeared: "Prepare a schedule of objections". I pressed it.
A minute later a finished file appeared in the right-hand panel, schedule-of-objections.docx.
Here it is
What is inside. An official document with a heading, the parties' details and a four-column table:
Contract clause number · the landlord's wording — the original text · the tenant's wording — the proposed replacement · the justification.
Eleven disputed clauses, each with the original wording, the new wording and an explanation of why the latter is better.
What that changes. A schedule of objections is a standard document of business practice: you are not refusing to sign, you are proposing amendments in the established form. It used to be drawn up by a lawyer. Here it appeared ready in a minute.
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Step 5. Arguments for a specific dispute
The last part of the video.
I asked a follow-up question: "How do I get the penalty reduced to 0.1%?" — that is, I asked not for an amendment but for a negotiating position.
What came back. A reference to the civil-law principle that a penalty disproportionate to the breach may be reduced. The mirroring principle — if the tenant's liability is set at that level, symmetrical liability should apply to the other side. And a third argument tied to that particular landlord's circumstances.
That is the difference between "change this clause" and a prepared position. The first gets refused. The second gets discussed.
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Important: this does not replace a lawyer
Here I have to be direct, and this is not a formal caveat.
What an analysis like this does well. Finds what you would have missed. Translates the wording into comprehensible language. Does the arithmetic for you — that 182.5% a year. Notices missing clauses. Prepares a document and a position.
What it does not do. It is not answerable for the consequences. It does not know your situation as a whole — what your relationship with the other side is, what was in the correspondence, what you are willing to concede. It does not take account of recent case law.
The rule worth holding to:
For everyday contracts — a flat rental, a building contract, services — an analysis like this is often enough to see the obvious imbalances and ask for them to be corrected.
For anything where serious money or a business is at stake, this is preparation for a conversation with a lawyer rather than a replacement. You arrive not with twenty pages and "could you have a look" but with a list of ten points and a ready schedule. That saves his time and your money.
And what cannot change: the decision whether to sign is made by a person rather than a program.
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What to black out before uploading
A practical point.
An analysis of structure and wording does not need your personal data. Cover before uploading:
Identity document details · account and card numbers · addresses and telephone numbers of individuals · tax identification numbers and details of the other side's representatives, if they are individuals rather than organisations.
Leave the clause numbers, the sums and the deadlines — without them the analysis is impossible.
How to black things out on a phone: open the scan in the standard editor, take the pencil or the fill tool, paint over it. Thirty seconds.
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What to do if the contract breakdown came out wrong
The analysis is general, with no specifics. You did not state your side. Say directly: "I am the tenant", "I am the client", "I am the contractor".
No quotations. Ask explicitly: "for each point give the quotation from the contract and the clause number".
Too many points, unclear where to start. "Sort them by seriousness of consequences, most dangerous first."
A phrase in the answer is unclear. Copy it and ask for a simpler explanation — that works with any legal text.
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What else can be analysed the same way
The mechanics are the same for any document where the wording matters.
A flat rental agreement — what the deposit can be withheld for, who pays for repairing the appliances, how to terminate it.
A building contract — deadlines, what counts as completed work, who buys the materials.
An employment contract — the probation period, what the duties include, the bonus conditions.
A contract with a developer — completion dates, what counts as a material defect.
An invoice-offer or a user agreement — the thing everybody accepts unread.
In every case the scheme is the same: name your side, ask for the quotation, the consequences and the replacement.
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Where to start today
One action, ten minutes.
Take a contract you have already signed. Not the one to be signed tomorrow — an old one you are already living under.
Upload it and ask what in it is unfavourable to your side.
Why start with an old one. First, nothing is urgent and you can work out the tool itself calmly. Second, you will almost certainly learn something about your own contract that you did not know — and that is the best demonstration of why to do this before signing.
Did it work? Take the next one. Most people have three or four contracts at home that nobody has read carefully.
Who to ask if the contract is not simple. In the assistant catalogue the lawyers are sorted by subject, and that noticeably changes the answer:
- Property lawyer — sale and purchase, leases, mortgages
- Family lawyer — prenuptial agreements, division of property, maintenance
- Employment lawyer — employment contracts and everything connected with them
- Corporate lawyer — if you are signing as a business
- Paralegal — when it is unclear which subject the document falls under
Each opens with a link, and the question is asked in ordinary words.
Registration is free and opens three days of full access to the assistant catalogue — including the ones that help phrase requests.
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What to read next
[How to make sense of a book or a textbook](/en/blog/book-summary-in-ten-minutes) — the same service, a different task: audio, video, a test and flashcards from one file.
[How to make sense of an appliance manual](/en/blog/understand-manual) — the everyday version of the same approach.
[AI for lawyers](/en/blog/ai-for-lawyer) — if you work with contracts professionally.
[Where does what I write to an AI go](/en/blog/is-it-safe-to-use-ai) — what can be uploaded and what cannot.
[The shop did not deliver](/en/blog/store-didnt-deliver-what-to-do) — what to do once the contract is already broken.
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