Legal playbook · AI Employee: Lex

NDA Generation

NDAs out within 1 hour

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The problem

NDAs are the most-common legal-team ask and the least-interesting to actually work on. Every day: sales needs one for a prospect, HR needs one for a candidate, engineering needs one for a contractor. Every one is 90% template + 10% specifics. Handled manually, each takes a lawyer 20 minutes; sent in batches, they wait days. Manual work at the scale of hundreds a month is a real cost.

At a glance
Trigger
Form
Approvals
None (template-based; legal reviews non-template)
What it does
Writes to your systems
Systems
Ironclad · DocuSign
How it feels in production

An hour-by-hour walkthrough.

Wednesday 2:14pm. Priya (sales) DMs Lex: "NDA for Acme, mutual, 3 years, US governing law." 2:14pm + 3 sec. Lex opens the approved mutual-NDA template (US governing law variant), fills in: Acme's legal name (verified via corporate registry lookup), Priya as the internal signer, standard 3-year term. Generates the doc, uploads to DocuSign, sends signature request to Acme's designated signer (which Priya provided). 2:14pm + 10 sec. Priya gets a confirmation in Slack: "NDA sent to [email protected]. Envelope link. Expected turnaround: same-day." Some hours later, Acme signs. DocuSign webhook fires; Lex closes the loop with counter-signature from Priya (auto-triggered because it's the standard template), then archives the signed NDA to Ironclad with metadata (counterparty, effective date, term, signer). Priya gets the final PDF. When someone requests a non-standard NDA (unusual term, custom governing law, one-way vs mutual mismatch), Lex declines to auto-draft and routes to the attorney-on-call with the request context. Never silently ships a non-standard doc.
How it works

Step by step.

  1. 01

    Collect party + purpose + one-way / mutual

    Requester specifies: counterparty name, contact for signature, mutual or one-way, term (default 3 years), governing law (default matches company jurisdiction). Lex asks clarifying questions only when needed.

    Slack · Portal
  2. 02

    Draft from template

    Lex uses the approved template matching the request pattern (US mutual 3y, EU one-way 5y, etc.). Fills merge fields; counterparty entity name verified via corporate registry API (Companies House, Delaware Division of Corporations, etc.) to prevent typos becoming legal issues.

    Ironclad · Corporate registry APIs
  3. 03

    Send via DocuSign

    Envelope created with the correct signers, routing order (external first, internal counter-sign after), and template reminders. Envelope link back to requester in Slack.

    DocuSign · Adobe Sign
  4. 04

    Log

    On countersign, Lex archives the executed NDA to Ironclad with metadata (counterparty, effective date, term, purpose). Discoverable in contract search.

    Ironclad
Systems and wiring

What you connect to make this run.

Ironclad · Adobe Sign · PandaDoc

read+write

Approved NDA templates live in the CLM. Lex reads template, generates document with merged fields, writes signed doc back to CLM on completion.

DocuSign

write

OAuth with envelope-create scope. Standard signer routing; auto-reminder cadence per policy.

Corporate registry APIs (Companies House · Delaware Division · state SoS)

read

Counterparty name verification. Prevents "Acme Inc" vs "Acme Inc." vs "Acme Incorporated" ambiguity in the signed document.

Salesforce

read

Link NDA to opportunity for sales-driven requests. Enables reporting on deal-to-NDA ratio.

What changes

Before and after, honestly.

Time from request to NDA sent
Before
1-3 business days (legal queue)
After
Under 5 minutes for standard-template requests
Lawyer time per NDA
Before
20-30 min per document
After
Zero for template-fit requests; attorney time on non-standard only
NDA cycle time (send to countersign)
Before
5-10 business days
After
Under 2 business days (auto-reminders + auto-countersign)
Rate of non-template NDA requests
Before
Unknown; buried in the queue
After
Real-time visibility; drives template-library improvements
Related

Playbooks that pair with this one.

Legal

Contract Intake & Routing

The general intake pattern; NDA generation is the drafting counterpart.

Legal

MSA & SOW From Templates

Same auto-generation pattern for MSAs + SOWs.

Legal

Contract Status Lookup

Downstream — anyone can look up NDA status without asking legal.

Legal

DPA Handling

Adjacent pattern for data-processing addenda.

Frequently asked

Answers about this playbook.

What if the counterparty requests changes to the standard template?

Redlines from the counterparty trigger the redline-tracking playbook. Lex detects the changes, diffs against your template, and routes to the attorney-on-call with the diff highlighted. Never accepts changes silently.

Can we customise templates by geography?

Yes — approved template library organised by jurisdiction. US mutual 3y, EU one-way 5y, UK mutual 3y with data-processing clause, APAC variants. Lex selects based on requester + counterparty geography.

What about internal NDAs (employee onboarding, contractor)?

Separate template family — Employment NDAs handled by the IP-assignment playbook (part of new-hire onboarding). Contractor NDAs handled here.

How does Lex handle rush requests?

Standard NDAs are already same-day; no rush needed. For non-standard NDAs, Lex offers the option to send the standard-template version now (usable for immediate contact) with a note that final terms are being worked on in parallel.

Can we track NDA analytics?

Yes — NDA volume by requester, by counterparty geography, by turnaround time. Feeds legal-team capacity planning and identifies template-improvement opportunities.

See it run on your data.

Free plan, no credit card. Connect the systems this playbook needs and run it against a past event first.

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