Claude Code for Lawyers, Part 2: From WeChat Contracts to a Daily Review Workflow

AI-assisted English translation of the original Chinese article, retaining its historical context. Use the language switch to read the Chinese source. Client identifiers have been anonymized.

The second article in the "Claude Code for Lawyers" series describes a real contract-review workflow for a client to whom I provide ongoing legal counsel.

The client has contracts to review every day: procurement, construction, leasing, and platform services. The business department is in a hurry and materials come and go. In the past, the process was that the business staff would send the contract to the lawyer individually, and the lawyer would download it, create a folder, read the full text, annotate it one by one, fill out the legal review form, and then send it back. A contract goes through one cycle and is gone in half a day; five contracts come in a day, and the lawyer spends the whole day working on it.

The current process has become like this: I set up a contract review WeChat group, and each business department of the client directly sends the contract to be reviewed into the group. Every day at five o'clock in the afternoon, a scheduled task runs automatically, and no one needs to keep an eye on the rest.

1. What does the entire assembly line look like?

Every day at five o'clock in the afternoon, the scheduled task automatically completes four things:

1. Collection: Capture all contract documents issued by the WeChat group on the same day, including docx, pdf, and scanned copies;

2. Filing: Save the documents in the client's contract directory in Nutstore, creating a separate folder for each contract and keeping the original, the annotated version and the legal review form together. This avoids having to search through chat histories for contracts;

3. Review: Automatically trigger the "Client Contract Review" workflow for each contract to generate a reviewed copy with comments;

4. Fill in the form: Automatically write the contract name, submission time, and review time into the legal review form, which is the review opinion letter of the client.

The next morning, the lawyer opens Nutstore to find annotated contracts and review forms with their basic fields completed. The remaining tasks are to check the work, revise it and sign the review documents.

2. How to make comments: It’s not about talking in general terms, but according to the rules of the client.

The core of this review workflow is a contract review skill specially customized for clients. When it starts, it reads two files: the lawyer's practice file, and the client's profile. Customer profiles contain preferences and red lines formed over years of cooperation between the two parties, and the rules in the profile take precedence over any universal defaults.

When specifically reviewed, its actions are:

1. Rename the legal review form according to the naming rules of the client, so that the file name directly reflects the month and day of submission, number and contact person;

2. Read the full text of the contract in parallel; if the contract comes from a bidding project, read the bidding documents together;

3. Prepare 10 to 20 comments in the order of the contract clauses, focusing on substantive provisions;

4. Add comments one by one in the corresponding positions of the original contract, output "Contract Name_Reviewed Version.docx", and save it in the original folder;

5. The signature of the annotation must be that of the attorney in charge.

The way comments are written is also particular: only write the "Modification Opinion" column in each article, and directly provide specific actionable changes, such as "Since the settlement objection clause is subject to Party B's platform data, it is recommended that both parties reconcile and confirm, and the objection is submitted in writing within the period." If you don’t pile up problem descriptions or write correct nonsense, the business department will be able to talk about it after they get it.

3. What should and should not receive comments

The coverage of annotations is clearly written in the customization skills.

Comments should address substantive provisions:

1. Dispute resolution: The client prioritizes local court jurisdiction or arbitration. Any clause selecting the courts at the other party's location must receive a comment;

2. Liability for breach of contract: whether the two parties are equal, the amount of liquidated damages, and whether the losses include reasonable rights protection fees;

3. Payment terms: prepayment ratio, payment node, collection guarantee;

4. Cooperation period: Be wary of long-term contracts of more than five years and automatic renewal terms, and reserve the right to terminate early without reason;

5. Exclusivity clauses: antitrust risks of long-term exclusive lock-in;

6. Key time limits: settlement cycle, system failure recovery, customer complaint response, and refund review;

7. Quality and acceptance standards, intellectual property rights and confidentiality, and data compliance;

8. Departures from the tender: Any contract provision that materially departs from the tender documents must receive a comment.

Purely administrative blanks do not receive comments: Party A's registration details, the parties' bank accounts, contact persons and signing dates can be completed by the business team before signing. Commenting on these blanks would obscure the substantive risks.

The value of this list lies in its stability: no matter whether it is an elevator purchase contract or a platform service agreement that comes to the group that day, the review criteria will be the same and will not be tightened or loosened just because "the AI is in a different mood today."

4. Automatically fill in the review opinion letter

Each contract submitted for review by the client is equipped with a legal review form. In the past, filling out forms was a purely manual job: copying the name of the contract, writing the date, and correcting the format. Now after the review is completed, the script writes the three fields directly into the table:

1. Document title: the official title read from the contract;

2. Submission time: The default is the same as the review time, or it can be specified separately;

3. Review time: Today’s date, the format is strictly consistent with the existing writing method of the template.

Only fill in these three basic fields. Content fields such as modification suggestions and review conclusions are still written manually by lawyers, because these parts vary from case to case and are precisely where the lawyer’s judgment falls, and are not left to AI ghostwriting.

5. Customer files are the real moat

There are already many general-purpose AI contract review systems on the market. What is really difficult to copy in this assembly line is the client customer file.

The preference for local jurisdiction, review-form naming rules, the tax concern about issuing invoices across calendar years, and the requirement to flag departures from tender documents are not knowledge a language model inherently possesses. The lawyer accumulates them through years of advisory work. Recording them in the client profile and having the AI read it before every review brings that experience to each contract.

In other words, AI is responsible for implementing experience into every contract, and lawyers are responsible for allowing the experience itself to continue to grow. The thicker the file, the more accurate the pipeline.

6. Boundaries must be clearly stated

1. Contracts collected by scheduled tasks must be manually counted the next day to prevent group messages from being missed;

2. Every comment is a draft. The lawyer must review each one before the contract is returned to the client;

3. The review conclusions and modification suggestions on the review form are filled in manually by lawyers, and AI only fills in basic information;

4. The contracts circulated in the group involve commercial information, and the permissions of the Nutstore directory must be strictly controlled within the team handling the matter;

5. The responsibility for the final review opinion lies with the lawyer, not with the workflow.

Conclusion: From "being able to work" to "going to work on time"

In the first article, CC is like a hands-on assistant: you send it a court text message, and it puts the response package in front of you.

Here it goes a step further, acting like an assistant who starts work on schedule: at 5 p.m. each day, it collects and files the day's contracts, adds review comments and completes the forms, leaving the results neatly organized in Nutstore for the following morning.

The role of lawyers has not been replaced, but has become clearer: it is the lawyer who sets the review rules, it is the lawyer who writes the client file, and it is the lawyer who reviews each comment and signs the opinion letter.

AI handles the repetitive work of moving and processing documents; the lawyer retains professional judgment and responsibility. The client receives feedback the morning after submitting the contract. Together, these changes show what practical AI adoption in legal services can look like.