How to review a contract in 15 minutes

Why 15 minutes is enough

Most contracts you'll encounter as a founder, freelancer, or operator are not bespoke instruments drafted by a magic-circle firm — they're templates lightly edited from a previous deal. That means 80 percent of the document is boilerplate you've seen before, and the 20 percent that matters can be found and triaged in roughly 15 minutes if you know where to look. The trick is reading for risk allocation, not for prose.

Step 1 — Map the obligations (3 min)

Open the contract and write down, on one line each, who is paying whom, what is being delivered, and when. If you cannot do this in three sentences, the contract is hiding something or the deal is genuinely unclear — either way, that is your first red flag. Look at the recitals ("WHEREAS" section) and the section labelled "Services", "Scope", or "Deliverables". For SaaS deals, read the Order Form first; for services, read the Statement of Work.

Step 2 — Find the money clauses (3 min)

Search the document for the words fee, payment, invoice, late, interest, price, renewal, and increase. Tools like ContractScan AI do this automatically, but a Ctrl+F works too. You're looking for: who pays, how much, when, what happens on late payment, and crucially — can the other side raise the price unilaterally at renewal? A 10% annual price increase capped at CPI is normal. "At Provider's then-current rates" is a license to print money.

Step 3 — Find the exit clauses (3 min)

Search for term, termination, renewal, notice, and cure. The questions: How long am I locked in? Can I get out for convenience, or only "for cause"? Does this thing auto-renew, and if so how many days' notice do I need to give? A 60-day notice on a 12-month auto-renewal is the single most common trap in SaaS contracts. The U.S. FTC has warned about this exact pattern since 2023.

Step 4 — Find the blast-radius clauses (3 min)

Search for indemnify, liability, damages, cap, insurance, and consequential. These are the clauses that decide who gets bankrupted if something goes wrong. The two numbers that matter: the liability cap (often "12 months of fees paid" — anything less than 1× annual fees is aggressive) and the carve-outs to that cap. Common carve-outs are confidentiality breach, IP infringement, and gross negligence — these are usually unlimited. If you see uncapped liability for any breach, push back immediately.

Step 5 — Find the data and IP clauses (3 min)

Search for data, confidential, intellectual property, work product, and license. Two questions: Who owns what you create together? And what happens to your data when the contract ends? Healthy contracts give you a 30–90 day export window in a machine-readable format. The European Data Protection Board has specific guidance on data-portability clauses worth borrowing language from.

What to do with what you find

After 15 minutes you should have a one-page summary: parties, money, exits, liability, data. If three or more of those have unresolved red flags, the contract is not yet ready to sign. Send a short email back with your top three asks ranked by importance — never more than five — and a one-line rationale for each. Negotiation works best when the other side can see what is non-negotiable and what is preference.

Where AI fits in

An AI review tool — including ours — is best used as a first-pass triage, not as a substitute for legal judgement on a high-value deal. It reads faster than you do, catches things you'd miss on the fourth contract of the day, and lets you spend your human attention on the two or three clauses that actually matter. For deals above your personal "never-bet-the-company" threshold, always loop in a real lawyer. For everything else, start with the free tier and a 15-minute timer.