Legal practice encompasses a wide array of tasks, many of which are time-consuming. Contract drafting is one of the most significant time sinks, representing hours that could be better spent elsewhere as digital tools reshape modern workflows.
Artificial intelligence is already helping lawyers work more efficiently, with reports indicating that it can reduce document drafting time by nearly 40%. Additionally, it can review contracts up to 80% faster than human reviewers while maintaining high levels of accuracy and providing instantaneous analysis.
If you’re considering AI adoption but need more clarity on its value, this article outlines the key advantages of AI-assisted legal drafting, explores implementation approaches, and highlights leading tools that can streamline your team’s workflow.
The Rise of AI in Contract Drafting
The growing use of AI in legal document drafting reflects major shifts in how business agreements are managed. Historically, preparing contracts was time-consuming and error-prone, involving extensive back-and-forth revisions and drawn-out approval processes.
Traditional methods—such as using text editors, spreadsheets, and paper documents—slowed down workflows considerably. These inefficiencies affected not only legal teams but also broader organizational performance. These prolonged administrative processes delayed mission-critical business functions.
Today, the landscape is changing. More companies are adopting AI to manage increasing documentation volumes and accelerate their response to market demands. AI is becoming a core component of the contract creation process.
“As a lawyer, I have the power to make things easier. Legal AI can help in divorce cases, from answering questions and creating divorce documents and filings up to researching and analyzing cases,” said Nicole Duncan, Divorce Attorney and Founder of Duncan Family Law. “AI doesn’t fully replace human lawyers, but it does their work faster and more efficiently, with fewer hiccups and headaches.”
This shift reflects a broader transformation toward automation and digitalization, where technology plays an essential role in improving legal workflows and team productivity.
Benefits of AI in Legal Drafting
1. Efficiency and Speed
AI enables law offices to begin drafting more quickly by offering pre-made, recommendation-based templates tailored to the agreement type and corporate standards. This dramatically reduces drafting time and allows lawyers to focus on unique terms and strategically important details, accelerating the overall contract preparation process.
2. Consistency and Accuracy
Custom AI solutions apply corporate standards, formatting rules, and structural requirements automatically. This ensures compliance across documents and reduces the risk of errors that may occur during manual preparation.
3. Data Accessibility
AI simplifies the search for relevant information within historical company data. Lawyers can easily locate provisions from past agreements, saving time and reducing the risk of oversight.
4. Cost Optimization
Automating standard, repetitive workflows minimizes labor expenses and reduces overhead associated with manual review. Legal professionals can then prioritize more strategic, high-value tasks.
5. Effective Risk Mitigation
AI can detect potential vulnerabilities, flag ambiguous or outdated language, and monitor compliance with corporate guidelines and legal regulations. This strengthens risk management and contributes to more reliable contract oversight.
6. Analytics and Decision-Making Support
Modern AI systems can review large volumes of contract data to identify recurring issues, advantageous clauses, and patterns for improvement. This empowers legal teams to make informed decisions about contract management and portfolio oversight.
Best Practices for Leveraging AI in Legal Contract Drafting
Here are several effective AI-powered approaches to improve contract drafting.
1. Select the Right Tools for Contract Creation
To evaluate contract automation tools, determine whether the technology supports a predictable, transparent, and manageable workflow—from initial drafting to final sign-off. Many legal teams also rely on advanced SaaS tools to support broader digital operations and ensure seamless integration across platforms.
Assessing internal processes is essential for identifying bottlenecks, coordination needs, and areas of risk.
Selection Criteria for Contract Drafting Software
- Usability: Rapid, self-service access to core features enables non-legal teams to operate efficiently and reduces reliance on legal specialists for routine tasks.
- Template Availability: Sector-specific templates ensure compliance with standard practices and address common business risks.
- Automation: Look for automation beyond basic auto-fill—such as term validation, deadline tracking, and integration with CRM or ERP systems.
- Legal Compliance and Security: Systems should include data protection controls, audit trails, version management, access permissions, and digital signatures.
- Document Archiving and Search: A structured repository with advanced filtering (e.g., by status, counterparty, contract type, or key terms) is essential for efficiency.
Juro
Juro is an AI-enabled platform built for end-to-end contract automation. It unites legal and business teams within a single workspace, eliminating the need for fragmented tools.
The platform supports robust integrations with CRM, ERP, communication systems, and email platforms such as Salesforce, Slack, and HubSpot. Its user-friendly interface and audit-ready structure make it accessible to teams with varying levels of experience.
Luminance
Luminance is an AI platform designed for analyzing and reviewing legal documentation. It uses advanced ML and NLP techniques to understand contractual content in depth.
Its proprietary Legal-Grade™ AI large language model automates the reading, analysis, sorting, and classification of large volumes of legal documents. Its newest feature, “Agent Lumi,” can autonomously amend contracts and negotiate specific terms without human intervention.
Spellbook
Spellbook is a widely used AI copilot developed primarily for transactional attorneys. It operates as a native add-in within Microsoft Word, integrating into the environment where many lawyers already work.
Spellbook compares contract language against industry standards and legislative requirements, suggesting relevant edits. Its integrated chatbot provides instant answers on content and legal questions—complete with sources—directly inside Word.
2. Educate Employees to Use AI Effectively
AI adoption in legal departments should begin with incremental, role-specific training. Rather than focusing solely on tool functionality, training should empower lawyers to enhance their drafting skills and enable operations teams to automate routine tasks.
As legal expert Brian White from Attorney Brian White Personal Injury Lawyers noted, systematic hands-on workshops and evergreen courses help employees quickly master new features, stay current with evolving capabilities, and integrate AI into their daily routines. Training also builds the ability to critically assess AI outputs, verify information, and apply insights to process improvement.
This approach promotes continuous improvement and experimentation, helping teams identify patterns and nuances within agreements that might otherwise go unnoticed.
3. Integrate AI Into Existing Workflows
Integrating AI into current processes enhances every stage of document preparation while preserving established workflows. AI can automate tasks such as data structuring, clause extraction, and document classification while generating unified metrics for more advanced analytics.
AI solutions can also connect to internal repositories and document management systems to verify details, identify missing information, and propose corrections. In this role, AI acts as a force multiplier—not a replacement.
4. Build Clear Guidelines for AI-Generated Contracts
Effective AI implementation requires detailed guidelines that outline the scope, limits, and expectations for AI involvement in drafting and review processes. These guidelines must address all compliance considerations, including the permissible extent of automated text generation.
Jeff Benton from Benton Accident & Injury Lawyers noted that identifying which contract terms require attorney oversight—and which can be managed by AI without quality loss—is essential. Transparency benchmarks are also important: every AI-generated recommendation should be understandable in terms of algorithmic logic, data sources, and context to allow for quick evaluation.
Clear policies help maintain high standards while enabling scalable, reproducible outcomes. They also ensure that AI adoption evolves from experimentation into a structured capability that enhances contract governance.
Conclusion
Artificial intelligence is making many business processes more convenient and efficient, and legal practitioners now have powerful opportunities to streamline repetitive work. The key is selecting tools that fit seamlessly into your ecosystem and truly elevate productivity.
⸻ Author Bio ⸻
Irina Weber is a brand manager at LawRank. She helps startups and enterprises create, promote, and distribute content and increase brand awareness. With over nine years of experience in content marketing, she regularly contributes to media outlets such as SEW, Adweek, SME, MarketingProfs, and CMI.
