Engine · Award · LIVE

Find the risky language before you sign.

Reviews subcontracts, POs, and master agreements against your firm's preferred terms. Flags indemnity overreach, missing waivers, payment-term drift — with severity-tagged findings and recommended counter-language. Built for PMs and estimators, not lawyers.

200+
AIA clauses parsed
3-tier
severity tagging
~30s
per contract
Per-firm
term library
01 · What it catches

The clauses that cost you later.

Six categories cover ~80% of what real subcontracts go sideways on. Every flag carries a severity tag, the exact clause language, and the counter-language we'd recommend — ready to paste into your redline.

CRITICAL · Indemnity overreach

Sub indemnifies GC for sole negligence

The contract obligates the sub to defend you even when you're the only party at fault. Most state anti-indemnity statutes void this, but the courtroom fight still costs you months. Flagged with the statute that voids it in your jurisdiction.

CRITICAL · Consequential damages

Mutual waiver missing — you're exposed to lost profits

Standard AIA A201 §15.1.7 waives consequential damages mutually. Custom owner contracts strip this and the sub contract inherits the gap. We surface it and inject the canonical AIA waiver as a counter.

DEVIATION · Payment terms

60-day net silently extended to 90

Your firm's standard is net 30 from pay-app approval. The contract says "net 90 from owner payment to GC" — effectively net 120+ on most jobs. The vendor's cash-flow math will catch this before yours does.

DEVIATION · Lien waiver scope

Unconditional waiver required before payment

The contract demands an unconditional waiver in exchange for a check that hasn't cleared. Industry standard is conditional waivers before, unconditional after funds clear. We flag the swap and point to the §11 lien waiver language we'd accept.

DEVIATION · Limit-of-liability cap

LOL cap below your firm's threshold

Your firm requires sub LOL caps at no less than 100% of subcontract value. The contract caps liability at insurance proceeds (often $1M general aggregate — shared across all your subs' claims on the year). Flagged with your standard cap stipulation.

NOTE · Insurance certificates

COI requirements mismatch the trade

The contract pulls forward a generic $2M/$4M GL package onto a small painting sub doing $80K of work. Sub will likely push back at signing. We flag the over-spec and propose a tier appropriate to the contract value.

02 · Side-by-side review

The contract and your standard, on one screen.

Upload the subcontract. We render it next to your firm's preferred terms profile and surface every divergence. Severity-tagged, line-cited, with counter-language ready to paste into your redline tool.

§3.2CRITICALIndemnity · Contract: "Sub shall indemnify GC against any and all claims, regardless of fault." Your firm: "comparative fault" only. Counter ready
§7.1CRITICALConsequential damages · No mutual waiver clause. Your firm requires AIA A201 §15.1.7 language verbatim. Counter ready
§5.4DEVIATIONPayment terms · "Net 90 from owner payment." Your firm: "Net 30 from pay-app approval." Effective delta: ~60 days. Counter ready
§11.2DEVIATIONLien waivers · Unconditional pre-payment. Your firm: conditional pre, unconditional after funds clear. Counter ready
§12.1DEVIATIONLOL cap · Liability capped at insurance proceeds ($1M agg). Your firm: cap at 100% of subcontract value ($340K). Counter ready
§9.3NOTECOI requirements · $2M/$4M GL on $80K paint sub. Likely pushback. Tier-appropriate package suggested. Counter ready
§14.2NOTEChange order markup · Capped at 5%. Your firm typically negotiates 8–10%. Inform vendor before signing. Counter ready
§18.1NOTEDispute resolution · Mandatory mediation before arbitration. Aligns with your firm's standard. OK as-is
Output

A risk register + a redline-ready Word document with track changes pre-applied. Hand it to your sub. Or hand it to your counsel for final review — with the findings already triaged.

03 · Per-firm clause library

Your standard. Not someone else's.

The engine doesn't review against a generic "industry-standard" rulebook. It reviews against your firm's preferred terms — the patterns that show up in every contract you've actually signed.

Onboarding

Upload your last 5 executed subs

We extract the clause patterns: how you indemnify, how you pay, what you cap, what you waive. Ten minutes. No template-building.

Drift detection

Your firm's terms evolve. The library tracks it.

When your legal counsel updates a standard mid-year, the engine notices the new pattern after 2–3 executed contracts and asks if you want to make it canonical.

Per-trade overrides

Different trades, different defaults

What you accept on a $40K paint package isn't what you accept on a $4M steel package. The library carries trade-specific overrides — LOL caps that scale with contract value, insurance tiers, lien-waiver windows.

04 · AIA format awareness

Trained on the forms your industry actually uses.

Most contract-review tools were trained on commercial leases and SaaS MSAs. Ours was trained on the documents construction actually signs — AIA, ConsensusDocs, EJCDC, and the bespoke owner contracts that mash them together.

AIA

A101 / A102 / A104

Owner–contractor agreements. Stipulated sum, cost-plus, fixed-price-with-GMP. We map all three back to a common clause skeleton.

AIA

A201 General Conditions

The 50-page master that most owner contracts cross-reference. Parsed clause-by-clause, change tracking against the 2017 and 2007 editions.

AIA

A401 / A441 Subcontracts

The sub-side documents. Standard form vs the modified version your owner pushed downstream — we surface every modification.

ConsensusDocs

200 / 750 series

Industry alternative to AIA. Same coverage: owner agreement, GC–sub, design-build variants.

EJCDC

C-700 / C-800

Civil and infrastructure-leaning. Engineer-administered work. Common on DOT, water-treatment, and public-bid jobs.

Bespoke

Non-form contracts

Owner-drafted Word docs that don't follow any standard. We map them back to comparable AIA / ConsensusDocs clauses and flag what's missing.

05 · Faster than legal review, deeper than spell-check

Three ways to read a contract.

Method 1

Counsel review

Time: 4–10 business days · Cost: $1,500–$5,000 per contract

Highest quality, deepest analysis. But you can't run every $80K subcontract through outside counsel — the math doesn't work. So most firms cap legal review at contracts above some threshold ($500K? $1M?) and sign the rest blind.

Method 2

Generic AI / contract-tool

Time: minutes · Cost: $0.10–$5 per scan

Fast, but trained on commercial leases. Catches grammar issues and undefined terms. Misses construction-specific patterns: lien-waiver timing, retainage drift, AIA cross-references, anti-indemnity statute conflicts.

Method 3

Trueleveler Contract Review

Time: ~30 seconds · Cost: 1 engine run from your plan

Construction-trained. Reviews against your firm's terms, not generic standards. Counsel still owns the high-risk contracts. The other 80% get a competent first pass before signing.

To be clear. This doesn't replace counsel. For master agreements, large GMP contracts, and anything novel, you still want a lawyer. What this replaces is the unreviewed-because-too-small contract that signs on autopilot — and then bleeds margin for 18 months.

06 · Owner-language tricks we catch

The clauses that look standard. Aren't.

Owner counsel knows you scan, not read. These patterns slip past most review — including most attorneys reviewing 80 pages on a deadline.

Pay-when-paid → pay-if-paid

One word shift, all the cash-flow risk

Pay-when-paid is a timing mechanism — the GC eventually pays. Pay-if-paid is a condition precedent — the sub bears the risk of owner non-payment entirely. Many state courts now require explicit "condition precedent" language to enforce the latter; we flag the swap and surface the controlling case law for your jurisdiction.

Time-of-the-essence creep

"Time is of the essence" in a milestone schedule

Standard AIA treats time as recoverable through schedule adjustments. Owner counsel inserts "time is of the essence" alongside fixed milestones — any delay becomes a material breach. Flagged with the AIA §8.3 language we'd substitute.

Liquidated damages without cap

$5,000/day stacks fast on a 280-day job

LDs without an aggregate cap mean a 90-day delay = $450K exposure. Industry-standard cap is 5–10% of contract value. We surface the LD provision, calculate worst-case exposure against the schedule, and propose a cap that fits your firm's tolerance.

Implied warranty trap

"Workmanlike quality" without definition

Without a defined standard (e.g., "industry-accepted practices for the trade"), "workmanlike" becomes whatever the owner argues it should be. Punch-list disputes turn into warranty claims. We propose ANSI / ICC reference language as the floor.

Backdoor scope grab

"All work reasonably inferable from the drawings"

Open-ended scope language that pulls in any work the owner argues should have been inferred. Different from the AIA standard ("indicated by or reasonably inferable from"). Flagged with the AIA §3.1.1 phrasing that bounds inferable work to what's indicated.

No-damages-for-delay

You can extend time. But you can't recover money.

Common in public-bid work but increasingly creeping into private contracts. Owner-caused delay extends the schedule but bars your delay-cost claim. Most states carve exceptions (active interference, fraud, etc.) — we flag the clause with the state-specific carveouts that survive it.

★ · Pairs with

It works alone. It's better in a chain.

Contract Review reads cleanly on its own, but its output feeds the rest of the project memory.

06 · FAQ

Things everyone asks first.

Does this replace my construction attorney?

No. It replaces the unreviewed contract — the small sub that signs on autopilot because routing it through counsel would cost more than the contract is worth. For master agreements, large GMP contracts, or anything materially novel, counsel still owns the review. We make sure they're not the bottleneck on contracts where the math doesn't justify a full review.

How long does a review take?

Typically 20–45 seconds for a standard subcontract. Custom owner agreements with 80+ pages of exhibits land closer to 60–90 seconds. You get back a risk register, a severity-tagged findings list, and an optional redline-ready Word document with track changes pre-applied.

Which contract formats are supported?

AIA (A101, A102, A104, A201, A401, A441), ConsensusDocs (200 and 750 series), EJCDC (C-700, C-800), plus arbitrary bespoke contracts in PDF or Word. For non-standard forms, we map clauses back to the closest AIA equivalent and flag what's missing.

How do I customize my firm's preferred terms?

Two options. Onboarding: upload your last 5 executed contracts and we extract patterns automatically. Manual: walk through a 12-clause questionnaire (indemnity, LOL caps, payment terms, lien waivers, etc.) and set your standards explicitly. Most firms do both — the upload populates defaults, the questionnaire overrides where it matters.

Where does the contract data go? Is it confidential?

Documents are processed against your project's private storage, encrypted at rest, never used to train shared models. Your firm's preferred-terms library stays in your tenancy. Optional: turn on aggregate-anonymized benchmarking and your data contributes to market-rate comparisons (LOL caps, retainage tiers, payment terms) — nothing is ever tied back to your firm or a specific contract. Off by default.

Can the engine handle redlined or marked-up contracts?

Yes — both the clean executed version and an in-flight version with track changes. We surface what changed, who proposed it (when the metadata is intact), and whether each change moves toward or away from your firm's preferred terms. Useful when you're three rounds deep into negotiation and trying to remember what you already agreed to.

Does it work for owner-side contracts, not just sub-side?

Yes. Reviewing the owner agreement is the same flow with the perspective flipped — we compare against your firm's GC-side preferred terms (cap structures, retainage acceptance, schedule float ownership, etc.). Most firms run both: owner contracts review-only, sub contracts review + redline.

Drop a sub agreement. See what your lawyer would catch — in 30 seconds.

Bring a real subcontract to a 15-minute call. We'll review it on screen against your firm's preferred terms. You keep the output.

Start free — 14 days, no card →