Business idea vetting - Contract Scanner

[Serket-Securit]

Our most recent business idea is to help smaller and medium enterprises, or individual users, go through contracts quicker. A contract scanner that takes the documents as a PDF and returns any notable clauses, pros and cons and highlights things you should maybe be worried about or seek legal advice on.

Obviously the main question we're receiving is why don't I just put it into ChatGPT? We trialed multiple contracts (employment, tenancy agreement, supplier agreement) with this and it seems to struggle with the size and generating a full report and would often crash out, plus there are the limits. It doesn't give a good breakdown of insights either. On top of that we can access more advanced models than the standard consumer giving better reasoned analysis. It's a full product designed to be used in a business setting.

Looking for feedback on the idea, so please feel free to be as harsh as you'd like, we're more interested in the negative comments.

We've mocked up an MVP in a short space of time but don't want to blatantly self promote so feel free to message us if you'd be interested in seeing it.

 

[fisicx]

Is it free? I’d give it a go if this is a free service but would be interested if I have to pay. Unless it’s stupidly cheap and you will stand by the summary. In other words if you get it wrong there will be compensation.

 

[Serket-Securit]

Is it free? I’d give it a go if this is a free service but would be interested if I have to pay. Unless it’s stupidly cheap and you will stand by the summary. In other words if you get it wrong there will be compensation.

Appreciate the comment, what would you consider stupidly cheap? It wouldn't be profitable to run as a free service, but we had a lot of discussions about where we should try and price it and not sure if we've got it right

 

[Gecko001]

This sounds like something that you need professional indemnity insurance for as you are offering advice and getting paid it. Surely there is a chance that you will miss something that causes a client a quantifiable cost.

You could put disclaimers, to give you some protection of course, but these devalue the advice leading to some clients questioning the need to pay you as they can get free advice from the Internet, or be willing to pay a lawyer who of course has PPI.

 

[fisicx]

Appreciate the comment, what would you consider stupidly cheap? It wouldn't be profitable to run as a free service, but we had a lot of discussions about where we should try and price it and not sure if we've got it right

I might pay a quid if I could trust the summary. If it came with caveats then I might as well do it myself.

 

[Mark T Jones]

Her is a sad truth.

Before I turn up to sign documents (equipment finance) I will email them to the client with strong advice to read them and possibly take legal advice (time permi, this might be a week before sogning)

90% of the time they haven't actually opened the attachments - and they have never sought legal advice.

That's an indicator of how much value they will attach to it.

For reference, if a lease document for, say £100k went through your system, what kind of report/feedback might I expect?

 

[Serket-Securit]

This sounds like something that you need professional indemnity insurance for as you are offering advice and getting paid it. Surely there is a chance that you will miss something that causes a client a quantifiable cost.

You could put disclaimers, to give you some protection of course, but these devalue the advice leading to some clients questioning the need to pay you as they can get free advice from the Internet, or be willing to pay a lawyer who of course has PPI.

Thanks yes, we've read about indemnity insurance. We also have a few disclaimers.

 

[Serket-Securit]

Her is a sad truth.

Before I turn up to sign documents (equipment finance) I will email them to the client with strong advice to read them and possibly take legal advice (time permi, this might be a week before sogning)

90% of the time they haven't actually opened the attachments - and they have never sought legal advice.

That's an indicator of how much value they will attach to it.

For reference, if a lease document for, say £100k went through your system, what kind of report/feedback might I expect?

If anything we think this is the exact sort of case where it could be applicable. With a cheap price going into the meeting with a summary of the document without having to fully read it is exactly what these people would want in our opinion.

The current MVP produces a list of pros and cons per section and potential issues with the contract and an overall score for how fair it is. There's on overview section that basically tells you whether you should be worried or not and then you can act accordingly from there.

 

[Mark T Jones]

I wonder what benchmarks you are using for 'fair'? Surely that's subjective?

 

[Serket-Securit]

I wonder what benchmarks you are using for 'fair'? Surely that's subjective?

Yes it subjective of course, but it tries to give an objective view of the contract on the whole, it doesn't weight towards either side so that you can see both perspectives. For example, if you're an employer and writing an employee contract it will still tell you if you are being very unfair to the employee, even thought some people may say this is favourable to the employer.

 

[fisicx]

This is only going to work if I can trust the report. I would expect some sort of legal statement saying this has been reviewed by someone.

If all I get for my 60p is some AI generated summary I’m not so sure I’d be confident considering the level of hallucination.

 

[Mark T Jones]

Yes it subjective of course, but it tries to give an objective view of the contract on the whole, it doesn't weight towards either side so that you can see both perspectives. For example, if you're an employer and writing an employee contract it will still tell you if you are being very unfair to the employee, even thought some people may say this is favourable to the employer.

If you are going down the route of giving advice, proper liability insurance is doubly important. I'm still struggling with the notion of defining 'fair' without a huge amount of context

There is a certain irony in the idea that you can disclaimer your way around this particular advice

In my view, what your prospects need ( whether or not they are prepared to pay for it) is a concise summary of key terms, and domain suggestions of areas they might need to question further

 

[Serket-Securit]

If you are going down the route of giving advice, proper liability insurance is doubly important. I'm still struggling with the notion of defining 'fair' without a huge amount of context

There is a certain irony in the idea that you can disclaimer your way around this particular advice

In my view, what your prospects need ( whether or not they are prepared to pay for it) is a concise summary of key terms, and domain suggestions of areas they might need to question further

I like the suggestion of domain areas that might be worth questioning further. Defining fair is usually going to be a difficult question regardless of the context.

 

[Porky]

From a different perspective:

Tech is fast moving, AI specifically attracting vast sums into existing monopoly businesses. You will struggle to compete with that. My view is that your MVP to attract traction if it is successful will be quickly copied by these mega funded players.

On a positive; i guess if you could get in, get it right and get out quick enough you could flip a return but I dont see longevity with it - sorry.

Ultimately, they will charge for AI use for sure, that's the model, dominate then charge but they have the vast war chest of cash to spend the next few years developing and giving the kids the sweeties for free whilst they dominate and take market share - you will need deep pockets to compete with that.

Good luck

 

[Serket-Securit]

From a different perspective:

Tech is fast moving, AI specifically attracting vast sums into existing monopoly businesses. You will struggle to compete with that. My view is that your MVP to attract traction if it is successful will be quickly copied by these mega funded players.

On a positive; i guess if you could get in, get it right and get out quick enough you could flip a return but I dont see longevity with it - sorry.

Ultimately, they will charge for AI use for sure, that's the model, dominate then charge but they have the vast war chest of cash to spend the next few years developing and giving the kids the sweeties for free whilst they dominate and take market share - you will need deep pockets to compete with that.

Good luck

Yeah that's a good point, I think if we were to commit to it we'd ideally see the exit as selling to a big corp either for them to try and take the users or for the tech / reducing competition.

 

[fisicx]

Yeah that's a good point, I think if we were to commit to it we'd ideally see the exit as selling to a big corp either for them to try and take the users or for the tech / reducing competition.

Why would they want to buy when they could set up similar at a fraction of the price. That is if they even want to take on the risk.