Contract Analysis

Extract key terms, identify risks, and compare clauses across contracts

What You’ll Build

A contract analysis pipeline that:

1. Uploads contracts to a searchable vault
2. Extracts key terms (parties, dates, amounts, obligations)
3. Identifies risky clauses with severity ratings
4. Compares similar clauses across multiple contracts
5. Generates a formatted risk report

Time to complete: 25 minutes

Architecture

Prerequisites

• Case.dev API key (get one here)
• Contract documents (PDF, DOCX, or images)

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Step 1: Create a Contract Vault

Set up a vault to store and index your contracts:

CLI

casedev vault create --name "Contracts — Q1 2024"

Step 2: Upload and Index a Contract

Upload a contract, run OCR if needed, and index it for search:

CLI

casedev vault upload \
  --id $VAULT_ID \
  --filename "document.pdf" \
  --content-type "application/pdf"

Ingestion handles everything. Vault ingestion automatically runs OCR on scanned PDFs, chunks the text, and generates embeddings. You don’t need to call OCR separately.

Step 3: Extract Key Terms

Use vault search to retrieve the contract text and extract structured terms:

CLI

# Search vault for key contract sections
casedev vault search --id $VAULT_ID \
  --query "parties effective date termination payment obligations" \
  --method hybrid --limit 15

# Then extract terms via LLM (pipe contract text as content)
casedev llm:v1:chat create-completion \
  --model anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5 \
  --message '{role: system, content: "You are a contract analyst. Extract key terms and return as JSON."}' \
  --message '{role: user, content: "<contract text from search results>"}' \
  --temperature 0

Example Output

{
  "parties": [
    {"name": "Acme Corp", "role": "Vendor"},
    {"name": "BigCo Inc", "role": "Client"}
  ],
  "effective_date": "2024-01-01",
  "termination_date": "2026-12-31",
  "value": {"amount": 500000, "currency": "USD"},
  "governing_law": "Delaware",
  "key_obligations": [
    "Vendor shall deliver software by Q2 2024",
    "Client shall provide access to systems within 30 days"
  ],
  "termination_clauses": [
    "Either party may terminate with 90 days notice",
    "Immediate termination for material breach"
  ],
  "renewal": {"type": "auto", "notice_period": "60 days"},
  "risk_flags": [
    {
      "clause": "Unlimited liability",
      "section": "Section 8.2",
      "severity": "high",
      "reason": "No cap on liability exposes vendor to unlimited damages"
    },
    {
      "clause": "Non-compete — 5 years",
      "section": "Section 12.1",
      "severity": "high",
      "reason": "Non-compete extends 5 years post-termination, unusually long"
    },
    {
      "clause": "Auto-renewal with price escalation",
      "section": "Section 3.4",
      "severity": "medium",
      "reason": "Annual 8% price increase on auto-renewal without cap"
    }
  ]
}

Step 4: Compare Clauses Across Contracts

Search your vault to find and compare similar clauses across multiple contracts:

CLI

# Search for liability clauses across contracts
casedev vault search --id $VAULT_ID \
  --query "liability clause terms conditions" \
  --method hybrid --limit 20

# Compare via LLM
casedev llm:v1:chat create-completion \
  --model anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5 \
  --message '{role: system, content: "You are a senior contract attorney. Compare liability clauses."}' \
  --message '{role: user, content: "Compare these liability clauses: <clause text from search>"}' \
  --temperature 0.3

Step 5: Generate a Risk Report

Combine all analysis into a formatted PDF report:

CLI

# Generate a formatted PDF report from markdown
casedev format:v1 document \
  --content "$(cat report.md)" \
  --input-format md \
  --output-format pdf \
  --header "CONFIDENTIAL — Contract Risk Report" \
  --footer "Page {{page}} of {{pages}}"

---

Production Tips

Error Handling

CLI

# CLI displays errors to stderr with status codes
casedev vault search --id $VAULT_ID --query "key terms"
# Error: 404 Not Found — Contract not found in vault
# Error: 429 Too Many Requests — retry after a delay

Use Webhooks for Production Pipelines

Instead of polling for ingestion status, subscribe to vault events:

CLI

casedev vault:events:subscriptions create \
  --id $VAULT_ID \
  --callback-url "https://your-app.com/webhooks/vault" \
  --event-type object.ingested \
  --event-type object.failed

Use temperature: 0 for key term extraction and risk identification. The lower temperature ensures more deterministic, factual outputs.

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Next Steps

• Vault Search Reference — Advanced search methods and filtering
• Chat Completions — Streaming, structured output, and more
• Format Service — PDF and DOCX generation
• Discovery Pipeline — Batch document processing