Legal-specific · Document management and knowledge · Medium confidence
NetDocuments ndMAX Studio (with the ndMAX Legal AI App Builder)
NetDocuments Software, Inc. · The ndMAX Studio app catalogue and the ndMAX Legal AI App Builder on a NetDocuments cloud repository. The prompt step itself is profiled as PatternBuilder MAX; the ndMAX Legal AI Assistant, AI Search and Tabular Review need separate review.
Catalogue of vendor-built generative-AI apps that run over documents held in NetDocuments, with a low-code builder that produces and customises those apps inside PatternBuilder, for law firms and in-house teams.
Opens a private software assessment of NetDocuments ndMAX Studio (with the ndMAX Legal AI App Builder) for one task, with this profile’s questions to hand.
Document automationCorrespondence and document draftingClause libraries and playbooksContract review and redliningDocument comparisonDocument classificationDocument summarisationData extractionTranslationElectronic signing and execution
Published facts
Deployment
SaaS
Hosting regions
Australia, United States, United Kingdom, European Union / EEA, Canada
Australian region
Yes
Model providers
Azure OpenAI (Microsoft), Microsoft Cognitive Services
Assurance
SOC 2 Type 2 (Exhibit B of the service agreement commits NetDocuments to an annual Type 2 SOC 2 audit for security, availability and privacy), ISO 27001 (Exhibit B commits NetDocuments to maintain certification to ISO 27001 or a comparable successor standard, with data centres inside the audit scope), Independent penetration testing at least twice per twelve-month period and monthly vulnerability scans (Exhibit B), Scope note: no document read states that ndMAX Studio or the App Builder is named in the SOC 2 or ISO 27001 scope, and no report was read - the Due Diligence Response documents sit on the trust website, which was not fetched
Training on customer content
No
Retention summary
Exhibit B of the service agreement says logging lets the customer review document-level events and administrative changes for the previous 90 days and that NetDocuments keeps its own log information for at least one year. Clause 7.4 lets NetDocuments delete repository data remaining on its network 30 days after the end of the term or transition period, or charge for continued storage. Outside the agreement, the ndMAX FAQ says prompt inputs and outputs 'are not maintained beyond the exchange of information to produce the output' and the ndMAX Studio hub says 'NetDocuments does not retain query data'; neither statement appears in the agreement read.
Integrations
NetDocuments PatternBuilder (the App Builder adds generative-AI calls to it), Microsoft 365 including Word and Outlook, NetDocuments platform integrations (the vendor's Australia and New Zealand page states 150-plus integrations including Microsoft 365, DocuSign and legal practice management systems; it does not say which are available to ndMAX apps)
Pricing summary
No published price. The support article states that token usage is metered against a monthly allotment that resets at the beginning of each month, that 'additional charges will apply' above the allotment, that prompts stop generating output once the allotment is exceeded, and that the feature must be enabled by a NetDocuments employee. Subscription fees are set in the Order Form. Whether ndMAX Studio apps and the App Builder are separately licensed is not published.
Australian presence
Yes — The Australian contracting entity comes from the binding 2025 service agreement: where the customer's principal place of business is 'in Australia, New Zealand, or Asia, NetDocuments refers to NetDocuments Australia Pty Limited, with offices at Parkline Place, Level 25, 252 Pitt Street, Sydney NSW 2000', and for those customers 'governing law is the law of Australia'. No ACN or ABN is published in the agreement or the privacy notice; a firm should take it from the Order Form. The privacy notice uses two different Australian names on the same page: 'NetDocuments Australia Pty Services Limited' in the controller section and 'NetDocuments Australia Pty Limited' in the contact block. Its Australian Privacy Act section says NetDocuments 'complies with the Australian Privacy Act, to the extent applicable to NetDocuments'. The agreement also carries Australia-only clauses preserving the Corporations Act stay provisions (7.6) and the Australian Consumer Law (10.5). An Australian region login exists at au.netdocuments.com, recorded here as a URL in the vendor's navigation and not as proof of residency; residency rests on the Order Form's Services Region under clause 2.4, and the support article's model list names an AU region for the generative step. Where the inference call itself runs is not stated in any document read.
Product and intended use
Define the configuration, people, information and tasks being assessed.
Product, plan and what is covered
Public claim only
Two named vendor things are in scope. The solutions page states ndMAX includes the Legal AI Assistant, AI Search, Tabular Review, 'an App Builder for building and customizing apps, and 39+ ready-to-use Legal Apps in the ndMAX Studio'. The App Builder FAQ says it 'adds the ability to incorporate generative AI calls and functionality into PatternBuilder', so the prompt mechanics are the same ones already profiled under PatternBuilder MAX, and the support article states the feature must be enabled by a NetDocuments employee (all read 2026-09-27). Whether Studio apps are separately licensed is not published.
Ask: Which Order Form line items cover ndMAX Studio apps, the App Builder and PatternBuilder MAX, and which of the 39-plus apps are included at no extra charge?
The service agreement defines 'Services Region' as 'the geographic location(s) specified in the relevant Order Form in which NetDocuments hosts the Services to which Customer subscribes', and clause 2.4 commits NetDocuments to store Customer Repository Data in that region. Exhibit B adds that data is stored 'in highly available storage located at two or more geographically separate data centers'. The support article's model list names AU, CAN, US, UK and DE regions, and the vendor's site navigation carries an Australian region login at au.netdocuments.com (all read 2026-09-27). No document read states where the model inference call itself is executed.
Ask: For our Order Form, which Services Region applies, and in which country does the generative-AI inference call for a Studio app execute?
The vendor names and describes each app: Playbook Generator - 'Create a contract playbook based on your examples or precedent documents'; Issues List Generator - 'Apply a contract playbook to an agreement and generate a structured list of potential issues'; Contract Risk Analysis - 'Assess contracts for risk based on user-defined criteria and generate a structured risk report'; Compare - 'Identify key differences between legal documents'; Deposition Prep - 'Generate structured deposition topics and questions'; HR Onboarding - 'Offer letter creation, e-signatures, and tax form completion'; and AI Profiling, a background app that runs automatically based on the user's actions in NetDocuments. The solutions page also names translation, summarisation and playbook analysis among Studio app uses (all read 2026-09-27).
Ask: Which of the 39-plus Studio apps are available to an Australian tenant, and which are built by NetDocuments as against contributed by third parties?
The apps run over the firm's own documents rather than a published law library; the App Builder FAQ says apps can be built for 'different legal practices, jurisdictions, clients, and individual lawyers'. No Australian legal content, citator or jurisdiction-specific validation is described, and the named apps use United States terminology - 'Deposition Prep', 'tax form completion' - which a firm should map to Australian procedure itself (read 2026-09-27).
Ask: Which Studio apps have been built or tested against Australian procedure and document conventions, and which assume United States practice?
Vendor content directing how AI describes the product
Not confirmed
A deliberate check was made on 2026-09-27 and nothing was found. The App Builder page, the ndMAX Studio hub and the Australia and New Zealand page contain no block addressed to AI models, assistants, crawlers or 'LLMs', no 'Instructions for AI Assistants' heading and no equivalent. The cached NetDocuments site map of 43 URLs holds no /llms.txt, /ai-info, /ai-instructions or /for-ai path, so no credit was spent guessing one. Distinguished deliberately: the App Builder page header carries an assistant chat widget offered to site visitors, which is a product surface rather than content directing how AI should describe the product. No robots.txt or crawler directives were examined, and those are access control rather than narrative control in any case.
Ask: Does NetDocuments publish any file or page instructing AI models how to describe ndMAX or the Studio apps, and if so at which URL?
Record the practical work needed to introduce and maintain the software.
Licence, use limits and AI restrictions
Public claim only
The agreement's AI Restrictions clause 3.5 bars use of 'any AI Services made available by NetDocuments or by Third-Party AI Services Providers' in a way that circumvents a contractual use limit, and prohibits scraping, prompt-based extraction, output harvesting, behavioural cloning, specification mining, agentic replication, persistent querying and indirect automation aimed at replicating the Services. Clause 5.1.1 reserves to NetDocuments all intellectual property in the Services 'even if based on Customer feedback or data', while clause 5.2.1 disclaims NetDocuments' ownership of Customer Repository Data (read 2026-09-27).
Ask: Do the AI Restrictions limit our own internal benchmarking or quality testing of Studio app outputs, and what contractual use limit applies to app runs?
The App Builder FAQ states it 'is seamlessly built into the NetDocuments platform and also integrates with Microsoft 365 tools like Word and Outlook'. The vendor's Australia and New Zealand page states the platform has '150+ integrations, including Microsoft 365, DocuSign, and legal practice management systems'; that page does not say which of those are available to ndMAX apps. The agreement states the Services do not include API access, which is granted on request and registration (all read 2026-09-27).
Ask: Which of the platform's integrations can a Studio app read from or write to, and does an app that calls an integration need API access under clause 4.4?
Exhibit A states Help Desk Support is available to the customer's nominated contacts '24 hours/day, 7 days/week, 52 weeks/year on an as-available basis', sets priority definitions and target responses, commits to 99.9 per cent Services Availability with service outage credits below that threshold, and provides 10 days' notice of maintenance windows other than emergency maintenance. Clause 4.2 states 'Help Desk Support may be provided by NetDocuments' personnel or subcontractors in regions other than Customer's Service Region' (read 2026-09-27).
Ask: For an Australian tenant, which country handles a Studio app support ticket in Australian business hours, and what is the escalation path for an app producing wrong output?
Compare complete work at the required quality, including checking and correction.
Published quality evidence
Not confirmed
No accuracy measure, error rate, test corpus or independent evaluation is published for any Studio app. The figures the vendor does publish are time and return-on-investment claims attributed to customers, including a statement that some teams report document preparation being ten times faster and a customer quotation about saving over 1,500 hours a year; those are not measures of output quality. The trust website's Due Diligence Response documents were not read (checked 2026-09-27).
Ask: Provide measured accuracy and failure rates for the Playbook Generator, Issues List Generator and Contract Risk Analysis apps, with the test corpus used.
The vendor's own training hub states of the Legal AI Assistant that 'Every response includes inline citations to the source documents', that a user can 'expand the thinking trace to see how the Assistant arrived at its answer', and 'As a rule, always review the response against the source before relying on it'. Those statements are made about the Assistant; nothing read states whether a Studio app's structured output, such as an issues list or a risk report, carries citations back to the source clause (read 2026-09-27).
Ask: Does the output of each Studio app cite the specific clause it relies on, and can citation be made mandatory in an app we build?
Compare the actual configuration with firm, client and jurisdiction requirements, supported by evidence.
Client authority and professional use
Not confirmed
A Studio app sends client documents selected by the user to a Microsoft-hosted model, and AI Profiling is described as running automatically in the background based on the user's actions in NetDocuments. Nothing in the documents read addresses client notice or consent for that processing, and the agreement places responsibility on the customer: clause 4.2 states the customer 'is responsible for any and all Customer Repository Data shared as a result of its initiation of Help Desk Support' and must ensure sharing conforms to client policies and applicable law (read 2026-09-27).
Ask: What client notice does NetDocuments consider appropriate before a Studio app or AI Profiling processes client documents, and can nominated clients or cabinets be excluded?
The ndMAX FAQ states 'ndMAX is powered by Microsoft Cognitive Services and Azure OpenAI, and their suite of OpenAI models', that NetDocuments tests new models internally as they become available, and that 'our solutions are designed to be model agnostic, so if better models are developed, they may be used'. The Studio hub adds 'ndMAX runs on Microsoft Azure OpenAI'. The support article lists the selectable models for the prompt step - GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1-mini, GPT-5-mini and GPT-5-nano in the US, UK and DE regions only, and GPT-5.1 in the AU and CAN regions only - so model choice sits with the app builder within that list (all read 2026-09-27). No Microsoft contracting entity is named.
Ask: Which models are selectable for Studio apps in the AU region today, and will you give written notice before a model is withdrawn or substituted?
No subprocessor list or register was found published anywhere. The agreement instead permits subcontracting generally: clause 12.2 says NetDocuments 'may change or appoint new Common Subcontractors from time to time during the Term', will give Digital Notice of material changes or additions, and represents that subcontractors processing Customer Repository Data have measures 'at least as protective as those found in Exhibit B'. Microsoft is named only in marketing text as the model host. The trust website's Due Diligence Response documents and the standard data processing addendum, which the privacy notice supplies by email on request, were not read (checked 2026-09-27).
Ask: Provide the current list of Common Subcontractors that can process our repository data, including every Microsoft entity in the ndMAX inference path and its country.
Clause 5.2.2 of the agreement states that NetDocuments 'shall not use, disclose or access Customer Repository Data other than' to provide the Services, to facilitate Third-Party Applications, as requested or volunteered in connection with Help Desk Support, or to comply with a legal demand. Separately, and not in the agreement, three vendor pages claim no model training: the Studio hub says 'Your documents stay in your NetDocuments environment. ndMAX never trains on your content' and 'Your data is never used to train AI models'; the ndMAX FAQ says inputs and outputs 'are not used to train the LLM'; and the App Builder FAQ says 'our agreement with Microsoft ensures that your data is not used to train the Microsoft Azure OpenAI LLM and also not subject to human or machine sensitive content monitoring'. That last is a claim about a contract between NetDocuments and a third party, which the customer cannot enforce (all read 2026-09-27).
Ask: Will you warrant in our agreement that neither NetDocuments nor Microsoft uses our prompts or outputs for training or abuse monitoring, and provide the Microsoft terms that support it?
Clause 5.1.1 states that NetDocuments retains all intellectual property in anything it develops in connection with the Services, 'including without limitation any enhancements, modifications, or derivative works to the Services, even if based on Customer feedback or data'. Clause 5.1 also asserts NetDocuments ownership of 'Platform Data'. The agreement read does not define what Platform Data includes for a generative-AI app run, and no telemetry list was found (checked 2026-09-27).
Ask: Define Platform Data for a Studio app run, list what telemetry leaves our tenant, and confirm prompt and output text is excluded from it.
Exhibit B states NetDocuments will log document-level events and administrative changes for customer review 'for the previous 90 days' and 'maintains its log information for at least 1 year'. Clause 7.4 allows NetDocuments to delete repository data remaining on its network 30 days after the end of the term or transition period. Two vendor statements outside the agreement claim shorter retention for AI traffic: the ndMAX FAQ says inputs and outputs 'are not maintained beyond the exchange of information to produce the output', and the Studio hub says 'NetDocuments does not retain query data'. Neither statement appears in the agreement read (all read 2026-09-27).
Ask: Put the no-retention statement for prompts and outputs into our agreement, and state what remains in logs about an app run and for how long.
Clause 7.4 places the removal obligation on the customer: the customer 'shall ensure that all Customer Repository Data is removed from the ND Network before the end of the Term', free download tools are provided for mass export, 'NetDocuments shall provide confirmation to Customer that the Customer's repository is empty', and after 30 days NetDocuments may 'delete and permanently destroy all Customer Repository Data' or, at the customer's request, charge for continued storage. Nothing states whether app definitions, prompt histories or app-generated metadata are covered by that confirmation (read 2026-09-27).
Ask: Does the empty-repository confirmation cover app definitions, prompt history and app-generated metadata, and will you certify their destruction?
Clause 5.2.2 permits NetDocuments to access Customer Repository Data 'as requested or volunteered by Customer or a Service User in connection with Help Desk Support', and clause 4.2 states that Help Desk Support 'may be provided by NetDocuments' personnel or subcontractors in regions other than Customer's Service Region'. Exhibit B adds least-privilege internal access controls and removal of access on termination of employment. No approval workflow or customer-visible log of vendor access is described (all read 2026-09-27).
Ask: What approval is required before a support engineer opens a document or a prompt log in our tenant, from which countries can they do it, and is each access visible to us?
Exhibit B states NetDocuments manages internal access through directory user groups on a least-privilege principle, assigns rights by job function, removes access when no longer required, requires two-factor authentication for the separated development and test environments, and reviews source-repository access quarterly. Customer-side auditing is the Consolidated Activity Log and Administrative Activity Log, reviewable for 90 days. Whether app runs and prompts appear in those logs is not stated (read 2026-09-27).
Ask: Do the activity logs record every Studio app run, the prompt sent and the documents selected, and can we restrict which users may run a given app?
Exhibit B commits NetDocuments to 'encrypt Customer Repository Data in transit and at rest using industry-standard encryption protocols', alongside a managed firewall and intrusion detection system with monitoring for unauthorised access. No algorithm, protocol version, key-management model or customer-managed key option is named in the agreement read, and nothing is said about the encryption of data in transit to the model host (checked 2026-09-27).
Ask: Name the encryption in transit and at rest for the call from NetDocuments to Azure OpenAI, and state who holds the keys.
Exhibit B commits NetDocuments to have 'a Type 2 SOC 2 audit for security, availability, and privacy undertaken annually' and to 'maintain its certification to ISO 27001 or a comparable successor standard', states that all controls in the exhibit are verified in those reports, that data centres are audited internally each year and 'included in the scope of NetDocuments annual ISO 27001 certification audit', and that independent penetration tests are performed at least twice per twelve-month period with monthly vulnerability scans. Due Diligence Response documents are said to sit on the trust website, which was not read. No IRAP assessment is mentioned in any document read (checked 2026-09-27).
Ask: Are ndMAX Studio and the App Builder inside the current SOC 2 and ISO 27001 scope, is there a penetration-test report for them, and is any IRAP assessment held for the AU region?
The agreement states that where the customer's principal place of business is 'in Australia, New Zealand, or Asia, NetDocuments refers to NetDocuments Australia Pty Limited, with offices at Parkline Place, Level 25, 252 Pitt Street, Sydney NSW 2000', and that for those customers 'governing law is the law of Australia'. Liability is limited to direct damages with a cap set in the agreement, excepting indemnification obligations and breach of the AI Restrictions clause. Clauses 7.6 and 10.5 preserve the operation of the Australian Corporations Act stay provisions and the Australian Consumer Law. No ACN or ABN is published in the agreement or the privacy notice (all read 2026-09-27).
Ask: Confirm the ACN or ABN of the Australian contracting entity, the negotiated liability cap for ndMAX, and that the AI Restrictions carve-out from the cap is mutual.
Clause 2.4 states NetDocuments 'will store Customer Repository Data in the Services Region specified in Section 1.2. of the Order Form and will not transfer or access Customer Repository Data, except at Customer's or a Service User's direction, unless required by applicable law', with carve-outs for user-directed sharing and for users working outside the region. Against that, Help Desk Support may come from outside the region under clause 4.2. The privacy notice says the standard data processing addendum incorporating Model Clauses 'is available by emailing' the vendor, and states compliance with the Australian Privacy Act 'to the extent applicable' (all read 2026-09-27).
Ask: Does the Services Region commitment cover the generative-AI call and the model host, and will you name every country data can reach during a Studio app run?
Exhibit B states NetDocuments 'will continuously monitor the ND Network for Unauthorized Access' and 'will report any confirmed Unauthorized Access to Customer without unreasonable delay, not to exceed 24 hours', then use commercially reasonable efforts to remedy it promptly, perform a root cause analysis and develop a mitigation plan for any unauthorised access affecting customer repository data (read 2026-09-27). No published incident history was found, and the clause is silent on incidents arising at the model host.
Ask: Does the 24-hour notification obligation extend to an incident at Azure OpenAI affecting our prompts, and how would you learn of one?
Clause 2.7 commits NetDocuments to 'at least 6 months' Digital Notice of material changes to or retirement of Services or features', clause 12.2 requires Digital Notice of material changes or additions to Common Subcontractors, and clause 12.8 requires a written instrument signed by both parties to amend the agreement. Digital Notice is defined as information posted on the support webpage, which customers may register to receive by email. The support article shows the model list changing over time and the regional limits on newer models; no notice period is stated for a model change (all read 2026-09-27).
Ask: Is a change of underlying model a material change attracting six months' notice, and can we pin a model version for a validated app?
Clause 7.3 allows the customer to elect a transition period of up to six months from the notified end date, on prepayment of the subscription fee for that period. Clause 7.4 states the customer must download the free tools NetDocuments provides to conduct a mass export, and that NetDocuments will confirm when the repository is empty. Nothing read states whether Studio app definitions, prompts built in the App Builder or app-generated structured output are exportable in a usable form (checked 2026-09-27).
Ask: On exit, can we export the apps we built and their prompt configurations, and in what format?
Clause 4.3 states NetDocuments 'enables select third parties to provide a service or software' that integrates with the Services, disclaims all warranties for those Third-Party Applications, and says some are offered as additional Services on an Order Form while others require a separate contract with the third party for which NetDocuments has no responsibility. Clause 4.4 states the Services do not include API access, which is granted on request after registering an application. The AI Restrictions clause separately contemplates 'Third-Party AI Services Providers' without naming any (read 2026-09-27).
Ask: Which third-party applications and AI services providers can a Studio app call, and confirm in writing that each is disabled until we approve it.
The ndMAX Studio FAQ states of the Legal AI Assistant that it is 'a document-based AI that generates responses from content stored in your NetDocuments cabinet, not from general internet knowledge'. That statement is made about the Assistant rather than about Studio apps or the App Builder, and no document read states whether an app can be built to make an outbound web call, or whether such a call can be blocked at tenant level (checked 2026-09-27).
Ask: Can a Studio app or an app we build in the App Builder retrieve anything from the open web, and can outbound calls be blocked for our tenant?
The App Builder page states that some apps "run automatically in the background based on your actions within NetDocuments, delivering value like AI Profiling", which writes metadata. Other apps are described as producing documents and structured reports, and the HR Onboarding app includes 'e-signatures' and 'tax form completion', so an app can trigger execution steps. No confirmation step before an app writes, files or sends is described in the documents read, and the support article says the feature is switched on by a NetDocuments employee rather than by the firm (read 2026-09-27).
Ask: For each app we enable, what can it write, file, send or sign without a human pressing a button, and how do we require confirmation?
The vendor's training hub tells users 'always review the response against the source before relying on it' and states that responses carry inline citations and an expandable thinking trace. That is guidance to the user, not a control: nothing read describes a setting that requires review or sign-off before an app's output is saved to the repository, sent, or used in a downstream workflow step (read 2026-09-27).
Ask: Is there a configuration that forces human approval of a Studio app's output before it is filed or sent, and can it be enforced per app?
