How to summarize a contract with AI before your client signs it

Most advice on AI contract summaries is written for the person signing: paste the contract into a chatbot and ask what it means. This guide is for the other side. If you send contracts to clients, a short summary on top helps them sign sooner and ask better questions. It also puts your name on what the summary says, so it has to be right.

What a good contract summary includes

What a summary doesn't do

• It doesn't say whether a clause is fair, common, risky or enforceable. That's an opinion, and from an AI it's a guess.
• It isn't legal advice for either side, and it doesn't replace the document. What the client signs is the full contract.
• It doesn't point out what's missing. A summary of a contract with no liability cap won't warn you about it; the limitation of liability clause guide does.
• It can't fix a vague contract. If the summary comes out vague, the clause probably is too.

Steps: summarize, check, show

1. Start from the final PDF, the exact version the client will sign. A summary of a draft goes stale with the next edit.
2. Ask for 3 to 7 points in the order of the table above, each with the clause or section number it comes from.
3. Check every point against its clause: names, amounts, percentages, dates and notice periods, word for word.
4. Fix the wording where the AI paraphrased a defined term (“the Client” becoming “you”) or merged two clauses into one.
5. Delete anything that sounds like advice (“make sure”, “you should”, “standard”).
6. Show it above the document, labeled as a summary written with AI that doesn't replace the contract.
7. Keep a copy of the exact summary the client saw, in case a point is disputed later.

Summarize the attached contract for the person who will sign it.
Write 3 to 7 short points in plain English, in this order, only when the contract covers them:
1. What the document is and who the parties are, with their names as written.
2. What each party must do, deliver or pay.
3. Every amount, currency, payment schedule, deposit, late fee or interest, exactly as written.
4. Dates and deadlines exactly as written: start, delivery, payment dates, length of the term.
5. How it ends: term, renewal, termination, notice periods, refunds.
6. Anything a careful reader would want to notice: penalties, automatic renewal, exclusivity, transfer or license of intellectual property, non-compete, confidentiality after the end, limits of liability, indemnities, where disputes are decided.
Rules: copy amounts, dates, names and defined terms exactly. Don't add up totals, convert currencies or turn relative dates into calendar dates. Put the section number after each point. Describe, don't judge: never say a term is fair, standard, risky or enforceable, and don't give advice.

Mistakes to check for

• A relative date (“within 30 days of delivery”) rewritten as a calendar date that the contract never states.
• Two payments added into one total, or a currency converted.
• “Plus tax” or “plus expenses” dropped from an amount.
• The wrong party doing something, which happens when both parties are described as “the company”.
• A clause that's in an attached schedule or exhibit left out because the model didn't treat it as part of the contract.

Contract summaries in SoloWOS

In E-Signatures, open the signature request and click Summarize with AI, in English or Spanish (the workspace language by default). Claude reads the PDF itself, up to 10 MB and 100 pages, and writes 3 to 7 points in the order above, with the clause number when there is one. The prompt forbids inventing anything, judging terms or giving advice. The summary is saved hidden. You read it, edit it (up to 7 points of 400 characters), and turn on Show to signers when it's right.

Signers see it above the document with the note “Summary written with AI by {your business} to help you read this document. It isn't legal advice and doesn't replace the document: what you sign is the full document below.” While the request is a draft you can write it again or remove it; once sent, you can edit or hide it until the first person signs, and then it's locked. The signed event stores the exact summary text and its fingerprint in the evidence package, and the signed PDF and certificate don't change. SoloWOS uses Claude models from Anthropic. Under Anthropic's commercial terms, the data sent for a request isn't used to train their models, and the SoloWOS privacy policy lists what each AI feature sends.

To send the contract itself, send PDFs for e-signature from the same request. Start from the freelance contract template or the independent contractor agreement guide if you don't have one, and see what an e-signature audit trail contains for the record you keep. The SoloWOS AI assistant covers the other AI drafting tools. Prices and plan details of other companies checked on October 24, 2026 on their own sites.