Survey launched to improve ContrAI: the app which will transform contract management and drafting

The ContrAI app is currently in research and development, with many companies already scheduled or having received a technology preview. It will have a number of separate modules, each with a specific purpose, but all working together to help make the contracting process efficient, pain free and consistent. With an AI module developed in conjunction with Oxford Brookes University, the app adopts cutting-edge technology.

The survey aims to discover how useful professionals find the ContrAI app in its current form, by being presented with a number of features that are either in development or the development roadmap for the future. The survey also provides the opportunity for professionals to share their ideas and experiences on additional features they feel would be useful within the app.

Andrew Katz, Moorcrofts Joint Managing Partner and Head of the Technology Team, said: “There is a better way to draft, negotiate and manage contracts and we strongly believe it can be achieved through ContrAI. To ensure the app is as effective as possible, we want to hear from all businesses who manage commercial contracts. This includes law firms, in-house legal teams, procurement, contract management teams and directors of owner managed companies.”

The survey can be accessed here: ContrAI Survey and will take approximately five minutes to complete. All respondents will have the opportunity to opt into a prize draw to win a pair of Apple Airpods. The survey closes on Friday 18 December and T&Cs to enter the prize draw apply, please see here for details.

For more information about ContrAI or to book a demo of the application, please get in touch with Moorcrofts by emailing contact@contrai.io.

Details about the ContrAI main features

Integrated contract database
Businesses typically have a wide range of contracts: supply contracts, client contracts and sales contracts.

This database holds information on executed contracts, as well as contracts that are required (but not started) or in negotiation. Initially the database will have to be populated manually (for both historic and newly executed contracts), but the team are working on technology which will enable it to self-populate, extracting the relevant information automatically from executed contracts. So, what will it do? As well as holding useful information about the contract such as, how much it is worth, invoicing period, renewal, products/services to be delivered, unique terms and expiry date, it will also ensure that the people in the organisation that need this information will have easy at-a-glance access to it. For example, when a contract is executed, the database will inform the billing team how much needs to be billed and when; the service delivery team what needs to be delivered; and when the time comes, the account manager and renewals team when a contract is expiring. In addition to this, there will be a rich suite of reporting tools to make it easy to extract and present the information held in the database. The database will make the process of recording the important information held in a contract easier, more consistent and less prone to error.

The team is also working on an integration with popular CRM software, initially Salesforce. Many of Moorcrofts clients use Salesforce to track opportunities and ultimately contracts entered into with client contracts. The integration will allow the database to automatically extract the contract details from Salesforce, and give management an overview of where each contract is in its lifecycle, including the progress of negotiations.

Intelligent Drafting Environment (IDE)
Anyone that has tried to draft contracts using Word, or any other word processing application will undoubtedly know it can be a frustrating process. Numbering tends not to work very well, formatting can be tricky and easily broken, and cross-referencing and definitions can be awkward. The editor in ContrAI is built from the ground up, with one purpose – working on contracts. Everything will just work. Numbering will always be correct, formatting will be as it should, and cross referencing will work and update correctly. Definitions are something that can take up time when drafting. In ContrAI, if clients have a defined term that is not used, it will let you know. If you are using a term that has not been defined, then ContrAI will let clients know. Using the editor will mean clients will be using less time wrestling with a word processor and more time doing what they trained to do.

If you’ve been involved with software development, you’ll be familiar with the concept of an “Integrated Development Environment”. An IDE is a super-smart text editor for writing software, which understands the syntax of the language you are writing the software in, and can save time and minimise errors by keeping track of variables, making sure you don’t use functions that haven’t been defined, and keeping track of punctuation and formatting. The ContrAI Editor takes the same approach: we see it as an IDE for contract drafting.

Approvals and Negotiations Tool
Connected to the editor, ContraAI will also assist with approvals and negotiations. A client may request 90-day payment terms, for example, and someone in sales might be tempted to give way on that to close the sale quickly. The approvals mechanism allows you to set different categories of changes which can be approved by different people: for example, the sales executive may be able to approve terms up to 30 days, the sales manager 45 days, and any extension over that would have to be approved by the CFO. These approvals can be set for any number of criteria within the contract, and will ensure that you record and control all decisions on contract concessions, and don’t develop a race to the bottom where over time your standard contract becomes very easy to get signed, but extremely risky, as it gathers all of the clauses favourable to the customer which have been conceded to get the contract over the line.

Approvals will be very granular, and can be set for the entire contract, down to individual clauses, and will handle multiple approvers for the same, or different, sections, if required. It will be possible to complete the entire negotiating process within ContrAI. Each “side” will be able to view the draft contract, propose amendments and accept them, all without exchanging multiple copies of documents by email. Once the contract is agreed and approved, it can be rendered and distributed as a PDF, or sent straight for e-signing. The approvals and negotiating modules will reduce the overhead of negotiating and approving contracts. Everyone will be working on the correct version, and you will be confident that the approvals are made and recorded.

AI and IA features/strong>
The most cutting-edge feature we are developing is the automatic contract review. The team are working with the Ethical AI Institute in Oxford Brookes University to develop an algorithm that will be able to review a contract, and give you an overview of the riskiest sections. You will tell ContrAI what you risk appetite is; how much liability will you accept, will you offer an indemnity, what clauses are essential, what clauses are not acceptable, etc. ContrAI will then analyse the contract and give you a RAG status. Green will be the sections which fall within your acceptable limits. Amber will be the sections you need to review either because they might not quite fit with your requirements, or ContrAI thinks you should revisit because they may have unintended risk consequences. Red will be the showstoppers. These are the sections that mean you won’t sign this contract. We call this Intelligent Augmentation: using AI to augment and assist humans and believe it will dramatically reduce the time need to re