The library for non-lawyers who sign things.
Plain-English guides, sample playbooks yours to customise and reuse across all of your contracts, a glossary that explains the words your counterparty’s lawyer keeps using, and a changelog of everything we ship.
How to read a contract without going to law school.
The four clauses that actually matter in a vendor SaaS.
Skip the boilerplate. Learn the four clauses that decide every vendor relationship — liability cap, indemnity, auto-renew, exit — and exactly what to push back on, with example markup.
§ 8 · Limitation of Liability
Vendor’s aggregate liability under this Agreement shall not exceed the greater of one hundred dollars ($100) twelve (12) months of fees paid hereunder.
This limitation shall not apply to indemnification obligations under Section 7, Vendor’s gross negligence, willful misconduct, or breach of confidentiality.
“The first version capped Vendor’s exposure at $100 — pure boilerplate. The redline anchors it to your actual annual spend, with carve-outs that survive a bad-faith breach.”
Auto-renewal: the silent budget killer
Why evergreen clauses are the most common contract bug and the three-line redline that disarms them.
Indemnity, in plain English
What “you'll indemnify us against third-party claims” actually means — and what to push back on.
The 5-minute NDA review
A checklist for non-lawyers: the seven things to look for in a mutual NDA, in the order to look for them.
DPAs: GDPR for people who ship product
Sub-processors, SCCs, controllers, processors — the minimum vocabulary, and the four red flags in every DPA.
When to actually call outside counsel
The five situations where £450/hour is a bargain. And the dozen where it isn't.
Six playbooks. Yours to customise and reuse across all of your contracts.
SaaS Vendor v.2026.2
For when you're buying SaaS. Liability, IP, security, sub-processors, exit.
Customer MSA v.1.4
For when you're selling SaaS. Cap your exposure, define the work, get paid on time.
Mutual NDA v.3.0
For partner conversations and pitches. Seven rules, two pages, signed in an hour.
Contractor / SOW v.2.1
For agencies, freelancers, fractional execs. IP assignment, scope, milestones, kill-switch.
Data Processing (DPA) v.1.2
GDPR, sub-processors, audit rights, breach notification. Defaults that pass a security review.
Employment Offer (UK) v.2.0
Salary, bonus, equity vesting, IP assignment, restrictive covenants. Defaults for English law.
Words their lawyer keeps using. Defined.
- Boilerplate noun · drafting
- The standard "back of the contract" provisions — governing law, notices, severability, entire agreement. Often copied verbatim between contracts; rarely negotiated; occasionally hides something material.See also: entire agreement, severability
- Consequential damages noun · liability
- Indirect losses that flow from a breach — lost profits, lost data, reputational harm. Almost always excluded from a vendor's liability. If your contract doesn't exclude them, you're carrying tail risk you didn't price.
- Evergreen clause noun · renewal
- A clause that automatically renews the contract unless one party gives notice within a specific window. The notice window is the trap. Default to manual renewal whenever possible.
- Force majeure French · excuse
- Literally "superior force." A clause excusing performance because of an event neither party could control — war, pandemic, the supplier's data centre catching fire. Carefully read what events qualify.See also: act of god
- Indemnification noun · liability
- One party's promise to cover the other's losses if a specified bad thing happens (a third-party IP claim, a data breach, a contractor injury). Asymmetric by default; negotiate to be mutual where you can.
- Material breach noun · termination
- A breach serious enough to justify ending the contract. The threshold of "serious enough" is usually fought about. Define it in the contract if you can.
- Sub-processor noun · GDPR
- A third party your vendor hires to process your data — AWS, Stripe, a transcription API. Under GDPR you typically have a right to be informed and a right to object. Read the schedule, every time.
What we shipped this quarter.
Bulk redlines & cross-contract search
- Bulk redline. Redline 50 NDAs at once against a playbook. New “queue mode” turns 4 hours into 8 minutes.
- Cross-contract search. Ask “find every contract with a 12-month auto-renew.” Get answers grounded in clause text.
- Slack thread on findings. Each high-risk finding can now spawn a Slack thread for async resolution.
- Fixed a parser bug where two-column scanned PDFs sometimes interleaved text in clause extraction.
DPA playbook + obligation calendar
- DPA playbook (v.1.2). 16 rules covering sub-processors, SCCs, audit, breach notification.
- Obligation calendar. Push every recurring obligation to Google Calendar with one click.
- Auto-renew detection now correctly handles split notice periods (e.g. "60 days for renewal, 30 days for termination").
Microsoft Word round-trip
- Word export. Tracked-changes redlines now export as native Word documents — your counterparty’s firm can accept/reject in Word.
- Comment threads. Inline comments support replies and resolution states.
- Improved OCR for scanned signatures in handwriting-only execution pages.
Playbooks v2 · ideal/fallback/walk-away
- Three-position rules. Every rule now has Ideal · Fallback · Walk-away — Our platform maps a clause to the closest position automatically.
- Test mode. Run a draft playbook against your last 30 contracts before publishing.
- Audit log. Every playbook change is versioned and rollback-able.