Building a Legal Document Review Agent with Claude

The Use Case

Contract review is pattern-matching at scale: identify risk clauses, extract key dates and obligations, flag unusual terms. Claude 200K token context processes entire contracts without chunking. Its analytical capabilities handle nuanced clause interpretation.

Three-Stage Pipeline

1. Ingest: PDF to clean text (PyMuPDF)
2. Classify: Contract type detection via Claude Haiku (cheap, fast)
3. Review: Claude Opus deep risk analysis and structured data extraction

What to Extract

Parties and roles, key dates and deadlines, financial terms and conditions, risk clauses with severity rating (critical/high/medium/low), missing provisions (what should be there but is not), and prioritized recommended actions.

Risk Clause Categories

• Limitation of liability: Is the cap appropriate? Does it exclude consequential damages?
• Indemnification: Is it mutual? Are gross negligence carve-outs present?
• IP ownership: Who owns work product? Are background IP rights protected?
• Termination: For cause vs convenience? Effect of termination on licenses?
• Governing law: Favorable jurisdiction? Mandatory arbitration?

Critical Disclaimer

AI-assisted review requires attorney sign-off before acting on any conclusion. AI identifies patterns; attorneys apply judgment. Teams report 60-70% reduction in initial review time but legal accuracy requires human oversight on every significant conclusion.