Legal playbook · AI Employee: Lex

Contract Status Lookup

Sales + CS + finance get status in seconds

Install this playbookBack to marketplace
The problem

"Is our MSA with Acme still active?" "When does the Google Cloud contract renew?" "Do we have a signed NDA with Beta Labs?" Every legal team spends hours answering variants of these in Slack, DM, email. The answers are all in the CLM (Ironclad, Ironclad, DocuSign CLM), but the CLM has 6-license seats reserved for legal staff, so nobody else can look. Legal becomes a lookup service for contract state.

At a glance
Trigger
Chat
Approvals
None
What it does
Read-only
Systems
Ironclad · DocuSign
How it feels in production

An hour-by-hour walkthrough.

Sarah asks Lex in Slack: "Do we have a signed DPA with Snowflake?" Lex queries the CLM, finds one signed DPA with Snowflake dated 2025-03-14 under the master agreement (MSA-8842). Replies: "Signed DPA with Snowflake: yes. Signed 2025-03-14, tied to MSA-8842 (renewed 2026-01, in effect until 2027-01). Data-processing terms: EU SCCs + UK addendum. Subprocessors: Snowflake's Q4 2025 list (updated 2025-11). Ironclad link." Sarah asks a follow-up: "can they store customer data in EU only?" Lex looks at the DPA text: "Section 4.3 — the customer may specify data-residency region; our contract selects EU-Central for production data. Confirmed via the deployment config (last verified 2026-08-20)." Same mechanism for any contract state question: renewal dates, signed/unsigned status, jurisdiction, notice periods, indemnity caps, active amendments. Every answer grounded in the CLM record, sourced with the document link. Legal team stops being a lookup service — they respond only when the question requires legal reasoning, not retrieval.
How it works

Step by step.

  1. 01

    Parse the question + identify the contract(s)

    Recognise counterparty references ("Snowflake", "our AWS contract"), contract types (MSA, DPA, NDA, order form, amendment), and question type (status, renewal, term, clause).

    Reasoning · Vendor directory · Contract type registry
  2. 02

    Query the CLM with correct scope

    Query CLM (Ironclad, DocuSign CLM, Concord, LinkSquares) for matching contracts. Respect access — sensitive contracts (financing docs, sealed acquisitions) restricted to legal + finance.

    Ironclad · DocuSign CLM · Concord · LinkSquares · Access control
  3. 03

    Extract relevant clauses + surface with citations

    For clause-specific questions ("what's our indemnity cap"), extract the exact clause text with paragraph reference. Never paraphrases material terms; quotes verbatim + cites.

    Contract text extraction · Clause library
  4. 04

    Present answer with deep links + follow-up options

    Answer in the requester's tool (Slack / Teams / web). Deep link to CLM. Follow-up options: "see amendment history," "see similar clauses in other contracts," "draft a variation."

    Slack · Teams · Web UI
  5. 05

    Log lookups + surface unmet demand

    Every lookup logged. Frequently asked patterns feed the FAQ. Contracts that receive lookup traffic feed the "important contracts" set for legal to prioritise on renewal.

    Analytics · Query log · Legal-team dashboard
Systems and wiring

What you connect to make this run.

Ironclad · DocuSign CLM · Concord · LinkSquares

read

Contract vault as source of truth. Read contract metadata (parties, dates, type), extracted terms (renewal, notice period, indemnity cap), and full text for clause queries.

Vendor directory · Company registry

read

Counterparty resolution: "AWS" → "Amazon Web Services, Inc." → matching contracts. Handles multi-entity contracts (parent + subsidiaries) and ambiguous references.

Access control · Role-based permissions

read

Sensitive contract classes (financing, M&A, employment) restricted to legal + specified roles. Public contracts (standard vendor MSAs) available to legal + procurement + finance + relevant stakeholders.

Slack · Teams · Web UI

read+write

Primary surface. Ask in DM or channel; answers threaded with deep links. Follow-up questions chained. Reduces legal-team DMs by an order of magnitude.

What changes

Before and after, honestly.

Time to answer contract-status questions
Before
1-4 business days
After
Under 30 seconds
Legal team hours per week on lookup requests
Before
10-25 hours
After
2-4 hours (only complex or sensitive)
% of contract questions self-served
Before
5-15%
After
75-90%
CLM license spend on non-legal users
Before
$15-40K/year (procurement / finance seats)
After
Reduced (they query via Lex instead of clicking through CLM)
Related

Playbooks that pair with this one.

Legal

Counterparty Redline Tracking

Redline history for a contract queried through the same lookup path.

Legal

MSA & SOW From Templates

New-contract requests use the same counterparty + template resolution.

Finance

License Cost & Renewal Tracking

Contract renewals coordinated between finance's spend view and legal's contract state.

Frequently asked

Answers about this playbook.

What about confidential contracts (M&A, key employment)?

Restricted per access control. Lex refuses lookup + surfaces a note: "This contract exists but requires legal-team access." Asker knows the contract exists; content stays confidential.

Can it interpret contract clauses ("does this cover X scenario")?

Lex quotes clauses verbatim + surfaces relevant provisions, but interpretation stays with legal. Complex applicability questions ("does our indemnity cover indirect damages") route to a lawyer.

How does it handle draft contracts (not yet signed)?

Draft contracts marked as such in the answer. "Draft dated 2026-09-01, currently in redlines" rather than "active contract." Prevents confusion about legal status.

What if the CLM is missing contracts we know we have?

Lex flags CLM-missing contracts on the response ("no matching contract found — please check with legal for legacy contracts outside CLM"). Feeds legal ops for CLM completeness improvement.

Does it handle multi-jurisdiction contracts?

Yes — multi-entity, multi-jurisdiction contracts resolved by the specific entity + jurisdiction requested. "Do we have a contract with Acme Deutschland GmbH?" answered separately from the parent.

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