Contract Review and Clause Management

Contract review isn’t just reading through — you need to extract key clauses, identify risks, compare versions, and produce an actionable fulfillment checklist. This case shows how to use LanMate to turn contract review from “read and done” into a structured process, so risks aren’t missed and deadlines aren’t missed.

Skills Used

• Built-in skills (installed with LanMate, ready out of the box): Word documents (lanmate-docx), PDF handling (lanmate-pdf), OCR (lanmate-ocr)
• Skill Store: Contract Review Helper — scan common risk points and output a review report with risk levels and revision suggestions; Document Diff Tool — line-by-line comparison of two contract versions, highlighting changes

Pain Points

• Key information buried in boilerplate: parties, amounts, terms, and payment milestones must be hunted page by page — manual extraction is slow and error-prone
• Risk clause identification depends on experience: excessive penalties, unilateral termination, auto-renewal, IP ownership — inexperienced reviewers can’t spot the issues
• Multi-version comparison relies on the naked eye: what changed and whether it’s correct is all from memory — missing one change can plant hidden risks
• No one tracks fulfillment after signing: payment milestones, delivery dates, and acceptance criteria are scattered, and people only remember when deadlines hit

Recommended Workflow

Prompt Examples

Key Clause Extraction

Please read the "purchase-contract.pdf" file I uploaded — do not modify the original file.
Extract the following key information and organize it into a table:
- Contract name, number, signing date
- Party A (name, legal representative, contact info)
- Party B (name, legal representative, contact info)
- Contract amount (including currency, whether tax-inclusive)
- Contract term (start and end dates)
- Payment method (milestone stages, amount per stage, payment conditions)
- Deliverables list and acceptance criteria
- Liability for breach (penalty calculation method, cap)
- Dispute resolution (arbitration / litigation, jurisdiction)

For scanned documents, run OCR first — mark fields where recognition is uncertain as "unverified."
Output a Word review summary.

Risk Clause Identification

Please scan "purchase-contract.pdf" for risk clauses, focusing on the following categories:
1. Penalty clauses: whether the amount is excessive (over 30% of contract value), whether they are reciprocal
2. Unilateral termination: which party holds it, whether trigger conditions are reasonable
3. Auto-renewal: whether it exists, renewal term, advance termination notice period
4. IP ownership: which party owns the deliverables, whether there are exclusivity clauses
5. Confidentiality: term, consequences of breach
6. Force majeure: whether the scope is too narrow or too broad

For each risk, output:
- Original clause text
- Risk level (High / Medium / Low)
- Risk explanation
- Revision suggestion

For risks that cannot be determined from the contract text, mark "requires legal review" — do not assess on your own.
Output a Word risk review report.

Multi-Version Contract Comparison

Please compare "contract-v1.docx" and "contract-v2.docx" line by line and output a diff report:
- Flag all changes (added, deleted, modified)
- Annotate the clause number for each difference
- Categorize and summarize: substantive changes (amount, term, rights and obligations) vs non-substantive changes (wording, formatting)

Focus on amount changes, term adjustments, rights and obligation clause changes, and added or deleted clauses.
Non-substantive changes can be summarized collectively without listing each one.
Output an HTML diff report.

Fulfillment Checklist

Please generate a fulfillment checklist based on "purchase-contract.pdf," including:
- Key milestones (signing, down payment, delivery, acceptance, final payment)
- Date or trigger condition for each milestone
- Payment amount and currency
- Deliverable name and acceptance criteria
- Responsible party (Party A / Party B)
- Risk reminders (e.g., late payment penalties, consequences of failed acceptance)

For dates or conditions not specified in the contract, mark "TBC" — do not fabricate.
Output an Excel fulfillment checklist, sorted by date in ascending order.

Acceptance Criteria

• Extracted key clauses can be traced back to the corresponding clause numbers in the original contract
• Each risk clause includes the original text, risk level, and revision suggestion; indeterminate items are marked “requires legal review”
• Multi-version comparison covers all substantive changes; non-substantive changes are summarized
• The fulfillment checklist has complete milestones, amounts, and responsible parties; missing items are marked “TBC”
• The review report Word and fulfillment checklist Excel are properly formatted and ready for distribution

Common Mistakes