Sullivan & Cromwell brings legal expertise into agreement review

For lawyers at Sullivan & Cromwell, reviewing a draft agreement includes weighing its terms against relevant precedents, using approaches based on the Firm’s experience and being mindful of a client’s priorities. The firm’s Agreement Analyzer brings those inputs into a single review workflow, producing analysis and proposed changes that lawyers can inspect and refine.

“I think AI will . . . allow lawyers to focus on the areas where their judgment is most important . . . so they can concentrate on the questions that are most critical for their clients.”

—John Savva, Partner, Sullivan & Cromwell

Bringing firm expertise into agreement review

Though AI was initially used most for repetitive, administrative tasks like drafting email responses or checking calendars, Savva finds that recent improvements in AI models’ analytical capabilities have changed its usage. “Now, we’re seeing many more opportunities for use in challenging legal tasks such as deep analysis of complex agreements,” he says.

Agreement Analyzer helps lawyers compare corresponding provisions across precedents and track how those provisions interact.

Sullivan & Cromwell partner John Savva developed Agreement Analyzer as a single-user proof of concept built with Codex. He then collaborated with OpenAI on improving the quality of outputs, enhancing efficiency through parallel processing and transforming the application into a tool that could be used by multiple lawyers at the same time.

“It’s not about replacing lawyers. It’s about providing a tool for lawyers to do deeper analyses and find more authority and precedents to provide an even higher quality product for their clients.”

—John Savva, Partner, Sullivan & Cromwell

Making sources and uncertainty visible

Savva emphasizes that what makes an AI tool’s output trustworthy is full transparency. “If an AI tool makes a claim about market practice, you need to be able to see the source of that information,” he says.