# Legal Review Best Practices

Use this reference when preparing redlines, fallback reviews, and negotiation guidance.

## Core Practices

- Start with the business goal, not only abstract legal risk.
- Work from a single identified document version and keep clean vs redline status clear.
- Review the full agreement package, including schedules and incorporated policies.
- Use precise redlines; avoid rewriting entire clauses unless the structure is fundamentally broken.
- Prefer drafting fixes over issue spotting alone.
- Keep a clear record of why each requested change matters.
- Separate true blockers from tradeable items.
- Route operational issues to the right non-legal owners early.
- Track missing documents and unresolved assumptions explicitly.

## Redlining Discipline

- Do not over-negotiate low-value points when leverage is limited.
- Avoid edits that change defined terms unintentionally.
- Check whether one change affects pricing, liability, support, privacy, or security elsewhere in the document set.
- When possible, offer a preferred ask and an acceptable fallback.

## Negotiation Discipline

- Align asks with the user's role and actual leverage.
- Explain requests in practical terms the counterparty can accept.
- Preserve commercial momentum by distinguishing must-haves from nice-to-haves.
- If the paper affects privacy, security, finance, product, or compliance, make that dependency explicit before signature.

## LLM-Specific Safeguards

- Do not claim certainty where the document or playbook is incomplete.
- Do not label provisions "market" without an internal or provided basis.
- Do not rely on a single clause in isolation when the issue spans the agreement.
- Re-check cross-references, carveouts, exhibits, and definitions before finalizing.