In the past month, two potential clients called me with the same request: review a contract they had already drafted with AI. Both callers asked a version of the question I now hear every week: “I already did the work. Can you just look it over?”
It is a fair question, and it deserves an honest answer. Here is what I tell business owners about having a lawyer review an AI-drafted contract, and why the “quick review” most people are picturing does not really exist.
Why an AI-Drafted Contract Looks Better Than It Is
AI tools are good at producing language that reads like a contract: defined terms, numbered sections, confident boilerplate. If you have used one, you know the output looks professional.
That polish is exactly what makes these documents risky. A bad contract that looks bad gets a second look. A bad contract that looks finished gets signed.
Because the problem with an AI-drafted agreement is almost never what is on the page. It is what is not.
The Real Risk Is What the AI Left Out
When I review a contract, whoever drafted it, I read it against the disputes I have spent more than 25 years watching business owners actually have. Most of those disputes are decided by provisions AI drafts routinely leave out. I am not going to publish that list here, and the reason is the point: if the tool knew what belonged in your agreement, it would have put it there.
There is a second layer. An AI tool does not know your deal. It does not know how your business actually runs, who contributed what, what your relationships look like, or where you want to be in five years. Those facts should drive the drafting, and a general-purpose tool never asks about them.
Here is the uncomfortable part: a missing clause is invisible. You cannot see what is not there, and neither can the AI that left it out. The gap surfaces on the day you need the provision, which is the most expensive possible moment to discover it.
What a Lawyer’s Review of an AI Contract Actually Involves
When people ask for a “quick review,” they are picturing proofreading. Reviewing a contract nobody with a license drafted is closer to re-underwriting it.
I have to read every provision as if opposing counsel wrote it, because in a sense, no one wrote it. I check whether the document holds together as a whole and whether its provisions actually work under California law. Then I do the harder job: I figure out everything the document should say and does not.
And when I finish, my name stands behind the result. If the agreement fails, no AI company shares that responsibility. That is why a genuine review of an AI draft often takes as long as drafting the agreement myself from scratch. The reading is the small part. The judgment is the work.
What Should It Cost to Have an AI-Drafted Contract Reviewed?
Expectations here are all over the map, and I understand why. There are online services advertising “attorney review” of AI documents for the price of a streaming subscription. What you get at that price is what the price suggests.
What a real review costs depends on the document, the deal behind it, and what you actually need. I structure these engagements more than one way, and I will tell you up front what the work will cost before you commit to anything.
The right starting point is a short conversation. Call or email, tell me what the document is and what it is for, and I will tell you how I would approach it and what it would cost.
Use AI as a First Draft, Not a Final Document
I am not going to tell you AI has no place in legal work. Used well, it can genuinely lower your legal costs, and a decent AI draft plus a real review can cost less than starting from a blank page.
But treat the output as what it is: a first draft written by something that has never seen a business dispute, does not know your business, and will not be there when the agreement is tested. The most expensive contract you will ever sign is the one that fails the day you need it.
If you have an AI-drafted contract you want reviewed before you sign it, contact the Law Offices of Scott D. Wu at (626) 799-1858 for a consultation.