Document Automation
Product features
By practice area
By company size
Contract Review
PRODUCT FEATURES
Resources
LearN
Case Studies
Pricing
%20(1).avif)
The best contract playbook software compared: where each tool runs, how it builds playbooks, how it reports results and what it costs.
Gavel Exec reviews, redlines and drafts contracts inside Microsoft Word, checked against your own playbooks. Start with 25 free queries, no credit card required.
The best contract playbook software uses artificial intelligence (AI) to check each draft against your negotiating positions and propose fixes. For lawyers who negotiate in Microsoft Word, our pick is Gavel Exec: it builds playbooks three ways, reports pass or fail for every rule with the reason, and publishes its price. LegalOn suits in-house teams that want 135+ pre-built playbooks.
Last updated October 29, 2026. We checked every product detail on each vendor's own website on October 28-29, 2026. Gavel makes Gavel Exec.
Contract playbook software stores the positions your team takes on each clause and checks every new draft against them. It flags the clauses that miss a position, explains why and proposes language that fixes the gap. Most tools also insert those fixes into the draft as Word tracked changes or comments.
A playbook usually covers, for each issue, a preferred position, one or more fallbacks, a walk-away point, the person who approves exceptions and guidance notes for the reviewer. A template holds the language you send on your own paper, and a clause library holds approved language to reuse. The playbook is what a reviewer uses on the other side's paper. For how to write one, see contract playbook best practices.
Of the four tools with a published price, Gavel Exec, GC AI and goHeather can build playbooks from your own documents, and Gavel Exec returns pass or fail with a reason for every rule. LegalOn offers 135+ pre-built playbooks, and Ivo builds playbooks from signed agreements with a citation for each position. The two tables compare all ten tools.
| Tool | Where it runs | Pre-built playbooks | Builds playbooks from | How results are reported |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gavel Exec | Word add-in and web app; playbooks are created in the Word add-in | Yes, developed with corporate and real estate attorneys, in market-standard and client-favorable versions | Rules you write; .docx, Portable Document Format (PDF) or comma-separated values (CSV) files such as checklists, spreadsheet playbooks and signed agreements | Pass or fail for every rule, with the reason, proposed changes and a link to the supporting language |
| LegalOn | Web platform and Word add-in | Yes, 135+ attorney-built playbooks | Positions written in plain English; Excel uploads; templates, guidelines and prior redlines (Playbook Agent) | Guidance and sample clauses for each issue; pass/fail format not stated on the vendor's site |
| Spellbook | Microsoft Word | Not stated on the vendor's site | Rules and fallbacks you write; a Playbook Build Service on in-house plans | Not stated on the vendor's site; selected rules can be re-run in Word |
| Ivo | Add-in for Word and Google Docs | Not stated on the vendor's site | Executed agreements (Playbook Builder), with each position citing its source contract | One recommendation per topic with reasoning and source; downloadable issues list |
| GC AI | Web app and Word add-in | Yes | Positions and fallback rules you write; Easy Playbooks drafts checks from templates, previously negotiated agreements and uploaded documents | Pass, fallback or flag for each check |
| CoCounsel for Microsoft Word | Word add-in | Yes, Practical Law playbooks | Custom playbooks | Missing, has issues or acceptable; issues grouped as high risk, major or minor |
| Harvey for Word | Word add-in | Not stated on the vendor's site | Rules with a standard position and fallbacks, maintained by Playbook managers | Acceptable, needs review or not acceptable, each with an explanation; export to .xlsx |
| Microsoft Copilot for Legal | Word desktop and Cowork | Not yet documented by Microsoft | A set of precedents, per Microsoft; LawNext reports it can draw on approved precedents stored in SharePoint | Not yet documented by Microsoft |
| Law Insider SimpleAI | Word add-in | Yes, oneNDA, oneSaaS and oneDPA standards plus expert templates | Review instructions you write; AI Review generates a playbook you edit under Rules | Recommended redlines issue by issue, based on best practices and the Law Insider Index |
| goHeather | Web app (PDF) and Word add-in | Not stated on the vendor's site | Customizable self-serve playbooks; playbooks created from preferred contracts | Red light, green light insights; every finding ranked by risk and explained in plain English |
| Tool | Applies fixes as tracked changes | Sharing and permissions | Published price | Free trial | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gavel Exec | Yes, as tracked changes or as negotiation comments | Organization-wide or named people, with Read-Only or Edit Access | $160 per user per month, or $1,740 per user per year | 25 free queries per user, no credit card | Law firms and in-house teams that negotiate in Word |
| LegalOn | Yes, AI Revise works with Word's track changes | Not stated on the vendor's site | Not published; custom playbooks start at the Contracting Suite plan | Not stated on the vendor's site | In-house teams that want a large pre-built library |
| Spellbook | Adds redlines in your name; Spellbook says every suggestion is tracked | Shared playbooks mentioned; permissions not stated | Not published | 7 days | Transactional lawyers who draft and review in Word |
| Ivo | Not stated on the vendor's site | Not stated on the vendor's site | Not published | Demo only | Enterprise in-house legal teams |
| GC AI | Not stated in text; a product image shows tracked redlines in Word | Not stated on the vendor's site | $500 per month for one user; Team on request | Yes; length not stated | In-house lawyers, from solo GCs up |
| CoCounsel for Microsoft Word | Suggested revisions can be inserted or accepted; whether each lands as a tracked change is not stated | Not stated on the vendor's site | Online pricing for firms up to 10 attorneys (amount not shown) | Trials and demos listed on its site | Firms and legal departments on Thomson Reuters products |
| Harvey for Word | Edits applied as redlines with a justification comment; tracked-change format not stated | Playbook managers maintain each playbook | Not published | Demo only | Large law firms and corporate legal teams |
| Microsoft Copilot for Legal | Yes, Microsoft says it proposes tracked edits | Not yet documented | Included with a Microsoft 365 Copilot commercial license | Not stated | Organizations already licensed for Microsoft 365 Copilot |
| Law Insider SimpleAI | Applied issue by issue; tracked-change format not stated | Not stated on the vendor's site | $1,790 per user per year | 7 days | Lawyers who want reviews built on standard forms such as oneNDA |
| goHeather | Yes | Team plan adds team playbooks | $400 per month, or $200 per month billed annually (1 seat) | 7 days, no credit card | Small businesses and small law firms |
The right tool depends on where your lawyers review contracts, whose paper you see most often and whether you need a published price to start. Each section below gives one tool's best fit and links to the vendor's own page.
Gavel Exec is AI contract review and drafting software that runs inside Microsoft Word as an add-in and on the web. Playbooks are created in the Word add-in and run in Word and in the web app.
We pick Gavel Exec because it covers the three ways teams start a playbook (a library, a blank page and their own documents), returns a reason with every result and lets you test it on live contracts without a sales call. Read more about Gavel Exec's contract playbook software or how to build playbooks in Gavel Exec.
LegalOn runs on a web platform and in a Word add-in. It offers 135+ expert playbooks built by attorneys, sorted by contract type and negotiating position. With My Playbooks, teams write positions, fallbacks and risk tolerances in plain English or upload them from Excel, and the Playbook Agent turns templates, guidelines or prior redlines into playbooks. Results give guidance and sample clauses for each issue, and AI Revise works with Word's track changes. Pricing is not published; pre-built playbooks come with every plan, and custom playbooks start at the Contracting Suite plan. Sources: LegalOn contract playbooks, LegalOn pricing. See LegalOn vs. Gavel Exec.
Spellbook works inside Word. You build a playbook with detailed rules and fallbacks, and Spellbook adds redlines to the contract in your name; its homepage says every suggestion is tracked. Since September 2026 you can select specific rules and re-run them in Word, and Comprehensive Reviews (playbook, risk check and proofread in one click) are in early access. In-house plans include a Playbook Build Service. How rules are generated and how results display are not stated on the vendor's site. Pricing is not published, and there is a 7-day free trial. Sources: Spellbook Playbooks, Spellbook September 2026 update, Spellbook pricing. See Spellbook vs. Gavel Exec.
Ivo is an add-in for Word and Google Docs aimed at in-house legal teams. Its Playbook Builder drafts a playbook from your executed agreements, and each position cites the contract it came from. You can run up to three playbooks in one review; results show one recommendation per topic with reasoning and a source, and you can download an issues list. Ivo says onboarding is minimal, and its solutions attorneys can help with playbooks. Pricing is not published, and the site offers a demo. Source: Ivo Review. See Ivo vs. Gavel Exec.
GC AI runs as a web app and a Word add-in for in-house lawyers, from a solo GC up to larger legal departments. You can use GC AI's prebuilt playbooks, write your own positions and fallback rules, or have Easy Playbooks draft checks from your templates and previously negotiated agreements. Each run reports pass, fallback or flag for every check. A product image shows tracked redlines in Word, though the text does not say so outright. The Individual plan costs $500 per month, Team pricing is on request and billed yearly, and GC AI offers a free trial, though its site does not state the length. Sources: GC AI playbooks, GC AI on building playbooks, GC AI pricing. See GC AI vs. Gavel Exec.
CoCounsel for Microsoft Word lets you pick a custom playbook or a Practical Law pre-built playbook. It flags each clause as missing, having issues or acceptable, groups issues as high risk, major or minor, and gives negotiation guidance with preferred clause examples and escalation guidance. You can insert a suggested revision at the cursor or accept it, and use Word's Track Changes to accept or reject edits; Thomson Reuters does not say whether every suggestion lands as a tracked change. Online pricing covers new customers at firms of up to 10 attorneys, larger firms contact sales, and Thomson Reuters lists free trials and demos on its site. Source: CoCounsel for Microsoft Word contract review guide. See CoCounsel vs. Gavel Exec.
Harvey's playbooks run in its Word add-in and are maintained by designated Playbook managers. Each rule has a standard position and may have fallbacks, and each result is acceptable, needs review (it matches a fallback) or not acceptable, with an explanation. You apply suggested edits as redlines with an editable justification comment and can export results to .xlsx. The tracked-change format is not stated on the page we checked. Pricing is not published. Sources: Harvey Word add-in playbooks guide, Harvey for Word. See Harvey vs. Gavel Exec.
Microsoft announced general availability of Copilot for Legal on October 15, 2026, with rollout worldwide through mid-December 2026 for users with Microsoft 365 Copilot commercial licenses. Its legal skills assess contracts against a playbook in Word desktop, propose tracked edits and can use approved precedents stored in SharePoint. Microsoft says you can create a playbook from a set of precedents; it has not documented how playbooks are stored or shared, or how results display. The legal skills have no separate price; the Microsoft 365 Copilot enterprise add-on costs $30 per user per month paid yearly. Sources: Microsoft 365 message center notice MC1509799, Microsoft transparency documentation, LawNext on Copilot for Legal, Microsoft 365 Copilot pricing. See Microsoft Copilot vs. Gavel Exec.
Law Insider's Word add-in lets you review against a Standard (oneNDA, oneSaaS or oneDPA), an expert template such as a contractor agreement, end-user license agreement or vendor agreement, or a custom playbook with your own review instructions. AI Review generates a playbook for the agreement, which you edit under Rules, and it recommends redlines based on best practices and the Law Insider Index that you apply issue by issue. SimpleAI costs $1,790 per user per year after a 7-day trial; the Enterprise plan adds advanced custom playbooks. Sources: Law Insider AI guide, Law Insider pricing.
goHeather runs as a web app for PDF files and as a Word add-in. Its self-serve playbooks are customizable, it gives red light, green light insights based on those playbooks, and it redlines in Word with tracked changes and a short note beside each edit. The Team plan adds shared team playbooks. Starter costs $400 per month, or $200 per month billed annually, for one seat, with a 7-day free trial and no credit card. Sources: goHeather, goHeather pricing. See goHeather vs. Gavel Exec.
Also considered: DocJuris (Playbook OS in a Word add-in, priced as an annual platform fee for mid-market and enterprise legal departments), BlackBoiler (turns a playbook and approved language into first-pass tracked changes in Word; see BlackBoiler vs. Gavel Exec), Juro (auto-redlines against custom playbooks inside its contract platform), Legora (set playbook standards in Legora and run them in Word; see Legora vs. Gavel Exec), Legartis (builds a playbook from sample contracts, with servers in Switzerland and Europe) and Ironclad's Contract Review Agent (playbook-driven review in Word for Ironclad customers; see Ironclad vs. Gavel Exec).
Gavel Exec, LegalOn, GC AI, CoCounsel and Law Insider ship with pre-built playbooks. LegalOn offers 135+, CoCounsel draws on Practical Law, and Law Insider uses the oneNDA, oneSaaS and oneDPA standards.
Gavel Exec's built-in playbooks come in a market-standard version and a client-favorable version. Most teams edit a pre-built playbook to match their own positions, so check that the tool lets you change and share the rules.
Yes, with several of the tools here. Gavel Exec generates rules from signed agreements, checklists and spreadsheet playbooks; Ivo's Playbook Builder drafts positions from executed agreements and cites the source for each; GC AI's Easy Playbooks drafts checks from templates and previously negotiated agreements; and goHeather creates playbooks from preferred contracts. LegalOn's Playbook Agent works from templates, guidelines and prior redlines, and Microsoft says Copilot for Legal can create a playbook from a set of precedents.
Signed agreements show what the team has accepted, which is a useful starting point when nobody has written the positions down. They don't show what the team would have preferred, so have the lawyer who owns the contract type set the preferred position and walk-away point before the playbook goes into use.
Gavel Exec reports pass or fail for every rule, with the reason and a link to the supporting language. GC AI adds a middle result for clauses that match a fallback, and Harvey uses acceptable, needs review and not acceptable; CoCounsel sorts issues into high risk, major and minor.
A three-level result separates clauses that need a lawyer's call from clauses that fail outright, and a pass result with its supporting language lets the reviewer confirm the tool read the clause correctly. Before you buy, run the same contract through each tool and see which result you could act on fastest.
Gavel Exec, LegalOn, goHeather and Microsoft Copilot for Legal state that they put fixes into Word as tracked changes. Spellbook says every suggestion is tracked, and Harvey, CoCounsel and Law Insider apply edits in Word without stating the tracked-change format on the pages we checked.
With tracked changes, the counterparty sees an ordinary Word redline and can accept or reject each edit. Gavel Exec can also insert a fix as a negotiation comment when you want to explain a position before proposing language. For more on redlining tools, see best AI contract redlining software.
Published prices run from about $145 per user per month (Gavel Exec billed annually) to $500 per month (GC AI, one user). Gavel Exec costs $160 per user per month or $1,740 per user per year, Law Insider SimpleAI costs $1,790 per user per year, and goHeather costs $400 per month, or $200 per month billed annually.
LegalOn, Spellbook, Ivo and Harvey quote prices through sales. CoCounsel offers online pricing for firms of up to 10 attorneys, but the page we checked did not show the amount. Microsoft includes its legal skills with a Microsoft 365 Copilot commercial license; the enterprise add-on costs $30 per user per month paid yearly, on top of the Microsoft 365 plan. Some prices are per user and some are per seat, and some tools count playbook runs against a monthly allowance. Gavel Exec includes 1,000 queries per user per month, and one playbook run counts as one query.
Start with one contract type the team reviews often, give it an owner, test it on agreements you have already negotiated and then share it. A typical rollout looks like this:
Playbooks tell you whether a clause meets your own standards. To see how a clause compares with what other parties accept, use one of the contract benchmarking tools alongside it.
We included tools that let a lawyer store positions as rules and check a contract against them, and we compared them on where they run, how playbooks are built, how results are reported, whether fixes arrive as tracked changes, sharing and published price. Every product detail comes from the vendor's own website, checked on October 28-29, 2026. Where a vendor's site does not state something, the tables say so, and we did not use third-party price estimates. Gavel makes Gavel Exec.
For lawyers who negotiate in Microsoft Word and want a published price, our pick is Gavel Exec at $160 per user per month, with 25 free queries per user to start. In-house teams that want a large pre-built library should look at LegalOn, and firms already on Harvey or Thomson Reuters can use the playbooks in those platforms.
On vendor websites in October 2026, Gavel Exec costs $160 per user per month or $1,740 per user per year, Law Insider SimpleAI costs $1,790 per user per year, goHeather costs $400 per month or $200 per month billed annually, and GC AI costs $500 per month for one user. Microsoft includes its legal skills with a Microsoft 365 Copilot commercial license. LegalOn, Spellbook, Ivo and Harvey quote prices through sales.
CLM software tracks a contract from request through approval, signature, storage and renewal. Contract playbook software checks the terms of a draft against your positions and proposes edits. Some vendors sell both, including LegalOn, Ivo, Juro and Spellbook.
Yes. Gavel Exec generates rules from signed agreements, checklists and spreadsheet playbooks, Ivo's Playbook Builder drafts positions from executed agreements and cites the source contract for each one, and GC AI's Easy Playbooks drafts checks from previously negotiated agreements. LegalOn's Playbook Agent works from templates, guidelines and prior redlines. A lawyer should review every generated rule before the team relies on it.
Gavel Exec gives each user 25 free queries with no credit card, and one playbook run counts as one query. Spellbook, goHeather and Law Insider offer 7-day trials, GC AI offers a free trial, and Thomson Reuters lists free trials and demos on its site.
Give each playbook an owner: a lawyer who negotiates that contract type and approves changes to its rules. Everyone else can have read-only access, and the owner updates the rules when a negotiation changes what the team will accept.
Related: best AI contract review tools for lawyers, best AI contract redlining software, contract benchmarking tools and contract playbook best practices. Try Gavel Exec free with 25 queries and no credit card.
The best AI contract redlining software for lawyers, compared on Word tracked changes, playbooks, explanations and published prices.
Ten contract benchmarking tools compared on where their market data comes from, which contracts they cover, where they run and what they cost.
Guides to AI contract review by practice area, covering data privacy, IT managed services, IP licensing, construction, music, investment funds, procurement, and private equity.
