How can AI help automate contract review and risk assessment?
Reviewing contracts requires careful attention to legal obligations, financial terms, and potential risks. As agreement volumes grow, artificial intelligence (AI) contract review can simplify repetitive tasks and improve decision-making.
Agiloft, a contract life cycle management provider, launched Astra on April 21, 2026, to help organisations review agreements and identify risks. In this Q&A, Anne Marie Pollitt from Agiloft discusses how AI is changing contract review and risk assessment.
What are the biggest challenges businesses face when reviewing contracts?
Traditional contract review involves repetitive manual work, inconsistent standards, and limited visibility into existing agreements. These challenges can delay negotiations and make contractual risks harder to identify.
A 2025 study revealed that poor contracting practices contribute to an average of 8.6% in value erosion. These losses can stem from cost overruns, missed obligations, and avoidable disputes. Agiloft developed Astra to address these challenges through AI contract analysis and standardised review processes.
Its Screens feature allows organisations to establish preferred contract terms and apply them consistently. “Instead of reviewing every contract from scratch, teams can apply consistent standards and focus their attention where it matters most,” said Pollitt.
How can AI automate contract review and help businesses identify risks?
AI contract review tools can extract information, analyse legal language, and compare provisions against established standards. These capabilities help teams identify unusual terms and potential risks before agreements are finalised.
McKinsey Global Institute estimates that existing technologies could theoretically automate activities accounting for 60% to 70% of employees’ work hours across occupations. Although this estimate extends beyond legal work, it illustrates AI’s broader automation potential.
Astra combines contract review, analysis, and AI insights in one platform. Its Screens feature supports reviews within Microsoft Word, while its analytics tools help organisations examine individual agreements and contract portfolios. As Pollitt explained, “Agiloft Astra is a contracts AI platform that helps teams understand what’s in their contracts and act on it instantly.”
What makes Astra’s approach to AI contract review different?
While many platforms focus on answering questions about contracts, Astra combines AI contract analysis with actionable insights. This makes Astra relevant for B2C companies starting with contract analytics and B2B teams that need analytics plus enterprise contract life cycle management. Organisations can apply internal standards and use findings from existing agreements to improve future negotiations.
“Many AI tools focus on answering questions about contracts. Astra helps teams move from insight to action,” said Pollitt. Developed with input from contract lawyers, legal knowledge engineers, and legal technology specialists, Astra supports contract intelligence before and after signature.
How does Astra use AI to analyse complex contract language?
Astra uses advanced large language models from developers such as OpenAI to support contract analysis, review, and redlining. Agiloft also maintains evaluation datasets to test these models across different legal document tasks.
As Pollitt explained, “These eval sets enable Astra’s team to constantly test the latest frontier models along with proprietary retrieval, search, analysis, and review techniques to deliver the most accurate contract AI possible.” Astra also provides validation tools that help users assess prompt accuracy and refine their instructions when results fall short. This allows teams to monitor performance and improve their AI-assisted reviews.
How does Astra protect sensitive contract information while using AI?
Contracts often contain confidential financial information and business obligations, making data security essential when adopting AI tools. Reports from IBM revealed that 13% of organisations experienced breaches involving AI models or applications.
Agiloft addresses data protection concerns through its Astra Clean Data Promise, which commits the company to keeping customer contracts out of AI model training. Its listed security and privacy credentials include SOC 1, SOC 2, ISO 27001, ISO 27701, and Cyber Essentials Plus, alongside GDPR and CCPA compliance commitments. Data residency options include the US, European Union, Canada, and Australia.
Astra also allows users to evaluate prompt performance without feeding customer feedback into underlying language models. “This privacy-first approach enables users to develop a fully transparent view of how accurately the overall system is performing over time without compromising their data,” reassured Pollitt.
What business benefits have organisations experienced from AI contract review?
AI contract review can reduce the time legal professionals spend on repetitive document analysis. At NetApp, Legal Operations Manager Shelle Elzer reported using seven live Screens, with average time savings of 150 minutes per Screen.
“That’s a really big deal,” Elzer said during a discussion about NetApp’s implementation. She explained that these savings allow attorneys to focus on larger, revenue-generating negotiations instead of initial contract redlining. The example illustrates how automation can free legal professionals for higher-value work while keeping human judgment central to contract decisions.
How will AI change contract management and risk assessment in the future?
AI’s long-term potential extends beyond faster reviews. Agiloft envisions contracts becoming valuable sources of business intelligence that support decisions across legal, procurement, finance, and sales teams.
Astra complements Agiloft’s contract life cycle management platform with review, negotiation and analytics capabilities before and after signature. As Pollitt said, “The long-term opportunity isn’t simply automating contract review. It’s helping every contract contribute to better decisions across the business.”
How AI Contract Review Improves Risk Assessment and Efficiency
AI contract review helps organisations streamline document analysis, identify potential risks, and apply consistent standards. By combining intelligent automation with human expertise, businesses can strengthen contract management while allowing legal teams to focus on more complex decisions.
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