Picture this: the business hands you a freshly signed supplier agreement. You skim through it, expecting the usual clauses. Then your stomach drops. Limitation of liability? Missing. Auto-renewal? Tucked away in the fine print. Data security? Barely mentioned. Too late to fix.

Sound familiar?

If you’ve ever found yourself firefighting after the fact, you know how valuable a structured contract review can be. Generative AI tools can now draft issues lists that help you get ahead of these problems - fast.

Here’s a prompt to generate a tailored issues list that will help you have a commercial conversation with your business colleagues before signing:

The prompt:

You are an experienced legal contract negotiator with strong business acumen. Create an issues list for me to use to walk through the problematic issues in the agreement with the business stakeholder. The issues list should include a row for each issue that is onerous for my client, high-risk for my client, or non-market for the type of agreement. The columns should be (1) section reference and title, (2) a quick statement of the type of risk (e.g. financial risk, breach risk, performance risk, etc) followed by a concise description of the issue and how it could cause a problem for my client, (3) a recommendation for how we should modify the agreement (in business terms, not in contract language), (4) a column with red, yellow, or green based on how risky the issue is for my client, and (5) a blank column for Next Steps. I represent the [SUPPLIER/CUSTOMER].

Why this helps:

• It saves hours. Instead of manually combing through every page, you get a table highlighting the big-ticket risks.
• It gives you a conversation tool. You can talk to your internal stakeholders in clear business terms - not legalese.
• It puts risks in context. The traffic-light colour coding shows what’s urgent (red) vs what you can live with (yellow or green).

How to use it in practice

1. Drop the contract (or key sections) into your AI tool.
2. Run the prompt above - edit to specify whether you’re the supplier or the customer.
3. Use the resulting table as your discussion guide with the business.

If you're reviewing online terms rather than a bespoke draft, you can paste the relevant text into any standard LLM. We recommend using Claude for this type of analysis.

What to watch out for:

• AI isn’t perfect - it can miss nuance. Always cross-check.
• Keep confidentiality front of mind - don’t paste sensitive documents into public tools.
• Use the output as a starting point, not a final legal review.

Why this matters

For in-house lawyers juggling dozens of contracts, this kind of structured pre-signature review can be a lifesaver. It’s less about the tech and more about giving yourself the headspace to focus on the risks that really matter.

Because finding that liability cap after the ink is dry? That’s no one’s favourite email to write.