Commercial contract review at a glance
- Agreements
- MSAs, NDAs, SOWs, DPAs, SaaS, vendor and customer agreements, and any other contract you open in Word
- Checks against
- Your playbook rules, your precedent, a term sheet you upload in Chat, and market norms for MSAs, SaaS agreements and NDAs
- Output
- Priority-ranked redlines with reasoning that you apply as tracked changes, comments, or a pass or fail for each playbook rule
- Works in
- The Microsoft Word add-in, plus the web app at exec.gavel.io for Batch Analysis and Market Benchmarking
- Price
- 25 free queries per user, then $160 per user per month
What is commercial contract review software?
Commercial contract review software reads a business agreement, finds the terms that create risk and proposes changes. Gavel Exec uses artificial intelligence (AI) to do this in Microsoft Word: it checks the agreement against your contract playbooks, flags missing protections with contract risk analysis, and writes priority-ranked redlines with contract redlining, with the reasoning for each one. It does not store signed contracts or route approvals, which is the job of a contract lifecycle management (CLM) system.
Which clauses carry the most risk in commercial contracts?
Limitation of liability, indemnification, intellectual property (IP) and data protection carry most of the risk in commercial agreements, followed by renewal, payment, assignment and governing law terms. Write playbook rules for these first:
- Limitation of liability: caps, carve-outs and whether indirect damages are excluded
- Indemnification: who indemnifies for what, and whether the indemnity sits outside the cap
- IP: ownership of deliverables, licenses and background IP
- Confidentiality and data protection: scope, duration and security obligations
- Term, renewal and termination: auto-renewal, notice periods and termination for convenience
- Payment: fees, price increases and late-payment terms
- Assignment and change of control
- Governing law and dispute resolution
In a 2025 World Commerce & Contracting (WorldCC) whitepaper, only 39% of commercial practitioners believe their contracts are effective in delivering the desired outcome, and only 16% of those practitioners believe that contract negotiations focus on the right topics.
How should review differ by commercial agreement type?
An MSA needs the deepest review because it sets liability, indemnities and IP for the whole relationship, while each SOW mostly needs checking against its MSA. NDAs, DPAs and SaaS agreements each turn on a short list of clause-specific issues, shown below.
Commercial agreements, what to check and the Gavel Exec tool to use| Agreement | Issues to check | Gavel Exec tool |
|---|
| Master services agreement (MSA) | Liability cap and carve-outs, indemnities, IP ownership, termination, order of precedence with SOWs | Redline Document; Use a Playbook; Market Benchmarking in the web app |
|---|
| Statement of work (SOW) | Deliverables, acceptance criteria, change orders, fees, conflicts with the MSA | Chat, with the MSA attached |
|---|
| Nondisclosure agreement (NDA) | Definition of confidential information, term and survival, affiliates, residuals, return or destruction | Use a Playbook; Find Missing Terms; Market Benchmarking |
|---|
| Data processing agreement (DPA) | Processing scope, subprocessors, security measures, breach notice periods, cross-border transfers | Use a Playbook with your privacy positions |
|---|
| SaaS agreement | Service levels and credits, data return and deletion, auto-renewal, price increases | Redline Document; Market Benchmarking |
|---|
| Vendor or supply agreement | Warranties, delivery and acceptance, liability cap, termination | Redline Document; Use a Playbook |
|---|
How do you check commercial agreements against your playbook?
Write a playbook for each agreement type you see often. Generate from Files drafts the rules from your checklists, spreadsheet playbooks or signed agreements, and you edit them. Each time you run the playbook, every rule passes or fails, and a failed rule shows the reason and proposed changes for you to accept, edit or reject.
For a worked example, see how one attorney runs an in-licensing playbook of close to 80 rules. To share playbooks and instructions across a team, see standardizing contract review.
How do you know if a commercial term is market?
Market Benchmarking in the web app answers this for MSAs, SaaS agreements and NDAs. Choose the jurisdiction, industry and company size, upload the agreement as a PDF, .docx or .txt file, and read the result for each clause: on-market, off-market or missing, with suggested language where a change would bring it in line. Practicing deal attorneys help benchmark the software.
Market Benchmarking is not available in the Word add-in. In Word, the market setting of the negotiation style in Redline Document redlines toward common market standards.
How do you review the other side's paper and their markup?
Open their draft in Word and run Redline Document with your side as the party you represent. The redlines come back in the Gavel Exec panel ranked by priority, with reasoning; click Apply All to insert them as tracked changes, and reject or edit any you don't want. When they return a markup, Summarize Redlines lists each change they proposed, and redlining over their changes keeps their authorship intact.
Can Gavel Exec review a whole set of commercial contracts?
Yes, in the web app. Batch Analysis pulls terms such as renewal date, liability cap and governing law from a set of agreements into a grid you can export as a comma-separated values (CSV) file. AI for corporate lawyers walks through the full Batch Analysis workflow.
Do you need contract review software or a CLM?
Gavel Exec works on the draft: review, redlining and drafting before signature. A CLM manages the contract around it: intake, approvals, signature, storage and obligation tracking. Gavel Exec has no approval routing, e-signature or contract repository, so teams that need those keep a CLM and use Gavel Exec in Word for the negotiation.
What should a lawyer still check?
Redlines appear in the Gavel Exec panel first, each with its priority and reasoning, and go into the document only when you apply them. Each applied change appears in the draft as a tracked change you can keep, edit or reject. Read each flagged clause against the deal and your client's goals before you rely on it, and check each SOW's order-of-precedence clause against the MSA.
The American Bar Association's Formal Opinion 512 (July 29, 2024) applies the duties of competence, confidentiality and client communication to lawyers' use of generative AI and expects lawyers to review AI output for accuracy.
Is contract data secure in Gavel Exec?
Gavel Exec is SOC 2 (System and Organization Controls 2) Type II certified. Gavel has Zero Data Retention agreements with the AI model providers it uses, including OpenAI, and does not use customer data, prompts or documents to train AI models. Details are on the Gavel security page.
Over 2,000 legal organizations in 28 countries use Gavel, which is part of Relativity.
How much does Gavel Exec cost?
Each user starts with 25 free queries, with no credit card. Paid plans cost $160 per user per month, or $1,740 per user per year, and include 1,000 queries per user per month. Teams of 10 or more seats get discounted pricing. See Gavel Exec pricing, start free or request a demo.
Frequently asked questions
What's the difference between reviewing an MSA and a SOW?
An MSA sets the legal terms for the whole relationship, such as liability, indemnities and IP. A SOW sets the commercial details of one project, such as deliverables, timing and fees. Review the MSA against your playbook, and check each SOW for conflicts with the MSA, including which document controls under the order-of-precedence clause, by attaching the MSA in Chat.
What should I check first in a vendor agreement?
Start with the limitation of liability and its carve-outs, indemnities, data protection and security obligations, auto-renewal and termination rights, and price increases. Write those as playbook rules so every vendor agreement gets the same check.
Can Gavel Exec check how we handled similar terms in past deals?
Yes. Add signed agreements to a Project or attach them to a request, and generate a playbook from them with Generate from Files. To compare terms across many signed agreements, use Batch Analysis in the web app.
How accurate is AI contract review?
Gavel does not publish an accuracy rate for Gavel Exec, and no AI review should be relied on without a lawyer checking it. Each redline shows its reasoning so a lawyer can check it before applying it, and practicing deal attorneys help benchmark the software.
Last updated October 29, 2026.
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