Is it allowed to use AI for contract review in Australia?
Yes, as a playbook assistant, if the firm’s approved tool is used and a lawyer reviews the draft. The conduct duties of competence and confidentiality are unchanged.
Guide
How to use AI for contract review in Australia
How to run a playbook review of a contract with an approved tool, then have a lawyer read both the flags and the clauses the tool did not flag.
Steps
Use an approved tool that does not train on the file
Use a tenancy the firm has approved, and read the clause that says customer content is not used to train the vendor’s models. The joint law societies’ 2026 selection checklist is the list of questions to ask before the first upload. A personal chatbot account is not that tenancy.
Load the firm playbook or the standard positions
Give the tool the positions the firm actually uses: liability cap, indemnity, governing law, assignment, privacy and termination. An empty “review this contract” prompt produces a generic essay. The Law Society of New South Wales solicitor’s guide expects the lawyer to understand what the tool was asked to do.
Run the review clause by clause
Ask for each playbook position, the clause number, and whether the draft matches, misses or contradicts it. Keep the tool on the document you uploaded. Queensland Guidance Statement No. 37’s confidentiality questions apply to the whole file, not only to the clauses the tool marks as risky.
The lawyer reads flagged and unflagged clauses
Read the clauses the tool flagged and a sample of the ones it did not. A missed indemnity is the usual failure, not a false alarm. The Uniform Law regulators’ statement does not let the firm delegate that reading to the product.
Keep a record of the review
Save the playbook version, the tool, the date, and the lawyer who accepted or changed the draft. If the client will be told that AI was used, the Queensland Law Society warning template is the place to start, not a sentence invented at the end.
Record the checks: Commercial and corporate tasks · Open the court note for the forum · Read the Harvey profile before you upload a file
On a small screen, scroll the table sideways.
| Tool | Australian data hosting | Profile region | Pricing model | Capabilities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Harvey | Offered | yes | Enterprise quote · Pricing | Legal research, Contract drafting, Contract review and redlining, Clause libraries and playbooks, Due-diligence document review, Chronology building, Document summarisation, Knowledge search |
| Robin Legal Intelligence Platform | See the comparison that lists it | unknown | Enterprise quote | Contract review and redlining, Contract drafting, Clause libraries and playbooks, Knowledge search, Document summarisation, Due-diligence document review, Legal research, Agentic workflows |
| Contract Review tool | Offered | yes | Not established · Pricing | Contract review and redlining, Due-diligence document review, Document summarisation, Data extraction, Deadline calculation and docketing, Document classification |
Sources
Commercial and corporate tasks · Contract review tools · Australian data hosting · Law firm AI policy · All guides
Questions
What tools are used for contract review?
The catalogue includes Harvey, Robin AI and InfoTrack contract review, among others. Read the profile and the pricing page before you treat a figure as a quote.
Does the tool’s “no issues” result end the review?
No. Read clauses the tool did not flag. A silent clause is not a pass.