Contract Review as an Operating Line, Not a Chat Window
Elena Volkov · · 10 min read
Legal teams did not ask us for a better chat. They asked us to take a stack of NDAs, MSAs, and vendor addenda and move them through review without losing the named attorney on the matter.
We treated that as an operating line. A queue. An SLA. A handoff. The model is inside the line. The line is not the model.
The line
A contract review run is a workflow template, not a prompt pasted into a box.
- Intake: file hash, matter ID, desk, jurisdiction tags
- Extract: clause spans with structured JSON, PII redacted before the provider call
- Classify: risk tags mapped to the institution's playbook, not a generic taxonomy
- Map: obligations against the named policy pack (PDPL, GDPR, internal outsourcing standard)
- Redline draft: suggested markup, still not sent
- Human gate: named counsel accepts, edits, or rejects per clause
- Dual control: publish to the matter file, or return to extract
Step 6 is not optional on production legal projects. We have a sandbox mode for training associates. It is labeled sandbox in the record.
Throughput we actually measured
On one asset-manager legal desk (anonymized, NDA), the line processed 1,140 vendor NDAs in Q1 2025. Median time to first attorney touch dropped from 1.8 days to 4.6 hours. Attorney time per NDA did not go to zero. It moved to exceptions and non-standard indemnity language, which is the work that was always the job.
Cache helped the repetitive NDAs. It did nothing for a first-of-kind cloud addendum. We do not sell the second fact as the first.
What broke when we treated it like chat
Early tenants tried to skip the queue and "just ask the model about this PDF." Three failures showed up immediately:
- No matter ID, so the record could not join the contract file
- RAG over the wrong playbook version
- Redlines shipped to a counterparty without dual control because the associate thought the draft was the product
We removed the ungated PDF ask from production legal projects. If you want Q&A, it is a node that still writes a record and still cannot send.
Product rule
If a lawyer cannot see the source span, the policy version, and their own name on the gate, the feature is not legal product. It is a demo. We ship the former.
Elena Volkov
Head of Product
Elena Volkov is Head of Product at Eridian. She translates supervisory and operating requirements into workflows that legal, operations, and risk teams can execute, review, and stand behind on the same system. Her work is to keep the product aligned to institutional standards rather than to novelty, with one operating surface, one review path, and one record.
