AI in Contracting: How ALPLA Balances Accuracy and Scale to Meet Enterprise Demands

This blog is adapted from Christian’s presentation on our 2026 State of Contracting webinar. View the full webinar here.

When people talk about AI in legal, the conversation often gets stuck on one question: Is it accurate enough?

From my perspective, that’s the wrong place to start.

The real question organizations should be asking is this: What is better for the business—reviewing 20% of contracts perfectly, or reviewing 100% of contracts well enough to manage risk? At ALPLA, we made a deliberate choice. We chose scale, speed, and acceptable risk over perfection—and AI made that possible.

Putting AI in front of legal, not behind it

One of the most important decisions we made early on was where AI should live.

Many organizations introduce legal AI inside the legal department; that is, as a tool for legal to use once work lands on their desk. The result is often disappointing: the same workload, the same bottlenecks, just with a new tool layered on top. That was never our goal.

From day one, we designed our AI strategy to sit in front of the legal team, not behind it. AI acts as a filter, helping the organization assess contracts before legal ever gets involved. Business users can upload a contract, receive a structured risk assessment, and understand what is acceptable, what requires negotiation, and what is a clear no‑go.

This approach fundamentally changes how legal works. Instead of being the first stop for every contract, legal becomes the escalation point for real issues, the cases where judgment, negotiation strategy, or exception handling truly matter.

How to think about accuracy in AI review

Let’s be honest about reality inside organizations.

If you give a non‑lawyer a 30‑page contract, they may read the first page. By the second page, they are frustrated. By the third page, they have forgotten what they read at the beginning. Important risks are missed not because people don’t care, but because contracts are complex and legal language is not intuitive.

Now compare that to an AI legal assistant that captures 80–90% of the relevant risks, summarizes them clearly, and presents them in minutes.

Which outcome is better for the organization?

For us, the answer was obvious. An AI that is not perfect—but consistently available, fast, and structured—is far better than no meaningful review at all. And importantly, the quality keeps improving week by week.

[See also: Vera Engage delivers 95% contract review accuracy at Wilson Sonsini]v

Starting with the right contracts: NDAs and risk triage

We didn’t start with the most complex agreements. We started where standardization already existed.

NDAs were the natural entry point: highly standardized, used globally, and available in multiple languages. We rolled out AI‑supported NDA review across regions and enabled sales and procurement teams to perform immediate risk checks, sometimes while traveling, sometimes minutes before a meeting ended.

Within three to four minutes, users could see the top risks classified as red, amber, or green. Instead of sending a contract to legal and waiting weeks, teams could identify major issues immediately and address them before legal ever touched the document.

This compressed time‑to‑market dramatically—and changed the behavior of the business. Conversations with customers became more informed, earlier, and more productive.

Reframing accuracy through a business lens

From a legal perspective, perfection is tempting. From a business perspective, perfection is often impractical. We deliberately chose to cover every contract and accept that we might capture 80% of risks rather than 100%. That tradeoff allowed us to review everything.

And let’s be clear: the remaining risk does not disappear. It is managed. It is visible. And it is far better than the alternative—contracts moving forward with little or no structured risk awareness.

AI also forces a healthy shift in mindset. We stopped debating wording preferences and stylistic choices. We focused on what the contract actually regulates. If the intent is clear and the risk is acceptable, we move forward.

Measuring success differently: A CEO mindset

This kind of transformation requires more than technology—it requires leadership alignment.

Moving from a legal‑centric view to a risk‑oriented business view is a dramatic change. You need support from the CEO and executive team to make it work. Without that mandate, legal teams are pulled back toward perfection and risk avoidance.

We also changed how we measure success.

Instead of counting how many contracts legal reviewed, we track:

• 100% contract coverage
• Average number of risks identified per contract
• Percentage of amber and red risks successfully negotiated to green

That tells a far more meaningful story about business enablement than turnaround times alone.

Expanding legal’s impact with AI

AI is not replacing lawyers. It is extending legal capability to the entire organization.

When employees can understand contracts, assess risk, and engage more intelligently before legal involvement, everyone benefits. Legal teams focus on high‑value work. The business moves faster. Risk becomes a shared responsibility, not a bottleneck.

For organizations facing resource constraints, rising contract volumes, and pressure to move faster, this approach is not optional—it’s necessary.

AI does not need to be perfect to be transformative. It needs to be accessible, scalable, and aligned to how the business actually operates.

And once you see that difference, there is no going back.