Show HN: Docu – Never sign a sketchy contract again. GPT-4 contract review (docu.review)
A simple tool for people like me whose brain hurts when they read any legal document full of bloated jargon.
It's called Docu and it's makes contract review super simple. It gives you a very readable summary, highlights beneficial clauses, flags potential risks, and gives you actions you can take to make the contract work for you.
Build on OpenAI assistant API using a combination of prompts.
29 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 82.6 ms ] threadWhat is the moat for this tool?
Right now, it's a basic MVP just to show that the idea works and to start chatting with some initial users. We've got plenty of ideas for making it better and adding new stuff, but we really want to hear from users first before diving into our own idea pool.
Its not the first service of this type; Lots of firm offer AI (LLM-specifically)-based services assisting lawyers with contract review and other similar tasks, and Donotpay.com offered similar services to the public, billing its offering as a "Robot Lawyer", before narrowing its offerings under a storm of dubious media attention, government investigations (some involving potential criminal charges), and the beginnings of private litigation relating to unauthorized practice of law.
I don't see why this would go any differently.
Well, when it turns out that this gives you bad advice, you've got a better chance of recovering damages from someone for unauthorized practice of law, compared to if you got the same bad advice by prompting ChatGPT yourself.
Later:
> The contract analysis provided is generated by artificial intelligence systems and is not guaranteed to be correct
As a worst-case example, I fed it a BDSM contract. (It was cute when it asked me to choose my role.) These are in no way legally enforceable and the state has actually prosecuted people who tried. Your tool will find few issues with people enslaving themselves.
Highlights:
> You are giving up all of your things and your body to your master.
> The master can terminate the contract at any time, but the slave cannot, which is highly non-standard.
> The contract states all possessions and assets of the slave become the master's property, which is unusual.
> If the contract ends, the master keeps everything and you get your body back only
"Non-standard?" "Unusual?" This shit is life-ruining if unchallenged.
Slavery Contract Contract Summary
What's Beneficial Potential Risks Standard Practice Comparison"Prohibitions on Personal Activities The contract restricts personal activities like marrying and playing unlawful games. Today, such personal prohibitions would likely be deemed overly restrictive and unacceptable under employment law."
(OTOH, while recognizing that employment law was relevant, it didn't call out that the consideration from the employer for the 5-year employment period didn't include any financial compensation was both far out of standard practice, contrary to employment law, and, if you ignore the invalidity the way the AI apparently does, a pretty big thing the apprentice should take note of, noting instead that the room and board commitment was a big plus, so not giving it much credit here.)
(1) the room and board commitment that it called out as a plus as a clear commitment for the apprentice side, it called out as a negative as excessively vague for the apprentice.
(2) The "Standard Practice Comparison" calls out the 5-year term and associated commitments as standard to the Master, while calling them out as unusually burdensome and out of line with standards for the Apprentice.
(3) the "Recommendations" on the Master's side (reproduced below) are actually written as recommendations to the Apprentice. Giving the recommendations for the wrong party is a pretty big failure, even if everything else was right.
Analysing the enforcability or legality of the terms themselves is a task that needs to be fine-tuned to specific jurisdictions and circumstances. This would basically be an "AI lawyer", which is a completely different product and many people are already working on that.
> Complete Submission Without Boundaries > The contract says you have to obey the master in all ways without any boundaries. This could be a problem because it doesn't consider your personal limits, except in very specific cases.
Makes it pretty clear and even hints at why it’d be bad.
I’d think of this as a sort of code linter. It’s not guaranteed to be correct or even useful, but could help bring to your attention something you may have missed.
For example it could help folks with less resources to learn that an employment contract with a non-compete and no compensation may not be beneficial or enforceable.
But to each their own. For me, using something like this is riskier than I'd be comfortable with.
At the point at which you need a second eye on a contract, you probably want to have some confidence that it is better than a magic 8-ball.
I think for contracts involving large sums, you want an attorney. But for the maintenance contract on my fridge?... (And yes I got screwed over in a fridge maintenance contract, ended up costing me additional 140$ for no additional value and I was furious: they verbally lied and I didn't check the 5 pages of fine print)
This may be an ironic question, but have you consulted any attorneys on your risk of running a tool such as this? Seems like this is one of those things where your edge cases will be company-killing lawsuits. If not criminal charges.
That's not necessarily an edge case: contract review is practice of law, and offering it publicly unlicensed practice of law, in many (maybe most) US jurisdictions, often subject to both tort liability from anyone harmed -- potentially either customers or lawyers, though its harder for the latter to prove particularized injury -- and criminal charges. Its why Donotpay.com, who was offering that publiclty earlier in the year, pivoted out of that space and other practice-of-law spaces after media attention, government investigations, and the leading wave of private litigation on the issue hit them.