Document Processing & Knowledge Work
Agents read, extract and draft from contracts, forms and files. Rules validate the output, and experts review what matters instead of re-reading everything.
The business problem
A large share of operations work is reading. Contracts, invoices, claims, intake forms, engagement letters and reports arrive as documents, and someone qualified has to read each one before anything else can happen.
That reading is slow, hard to scale with volume, and inconsistent between people. Expert time goes to finding the clause or the field, not to deciding what it means.
How it runs today
- Documents arrive by email, portal upload or scan, often in mixed formats.
- Someone opens each one, finds the relevant fields or clauses, and copies them into a system or checklist.
- A second person spot-checks the work, or nobody does until something goes wrong.
- Summaries and first drafts are written from scratch, document by document.
- Knowledge of what to look for lives in a few senior people's heads.
Automate the work. Keep judgment human.
Plain automation where the logic is fixed. Agents where the input is messy. People wherever consequences or ambiguity rise.
Deterministic automation
- Intake: collecting documents from inboxes and portals, naming, filing and de-duplicating them.
- Template-based extraction where the layout is fixed, such as standard forms.
- Validation of extracted fields against rules: required fields, formats, dates and totals.
- Writing the validated data back to the system of record.
Agents
- Reading variable documents with no fixed layout and extracting the fields that matter.
- Classifying documents by type and flagging non-standard clauses against your playbook.
- Drafting summaries, comparison tables and first-pass memos for an expert to review.
- Answering questions across a document set, with a citation to the source page.
People stay responsible for
- Interpretation and advice: what a clause means for this client or this deal.
- Low-confidence extractions and documents the agent cannot classify.
- Final sign-off on anything sent to a client, counterparty or regulator.
- The playbook itself: what counts as standard, acceptable or a red flag.
Systems and integration
- Document management and shared drives
- Email and client portals
- Practice, policy or matter management systems
- ERP and accounting for invoices and statements
- E-signature and contract lifecycle tools
Validation and controls
- Every extracted field and summary links back to its source page.
- Confidence thresholds per field, with low-confidence reads routed to a person.
- Agents read only the document sets their role needs; client data stays inside approved systems.
- Nothing leaves the organization without a named reviewer's approval.
- Sampled quality review of auto-approved documents, tracked over time.
What we measure
- Documents processed per person per day
- Field error rate after review
- Expert minutes per document
- Time from receipt to usable data
- Rework caused by extraction errors
An example workflow design
Illustrative, not a client result. It shows where each responsibility sits.
Vendor contract intake and review
Trigger: A third-party contract arrives for review in the legal or procurement inbox.
An illustrative design showing how we would approach the workflow. Not a client result.
- 1AutomationCaptures the document, files it against the vendor and opens a review record.
- 2AgentExtracts parties, term, renewal, liability and payment clauses, and compares each to the playbook.
- 3AutomationValidates required fields and dates, and checks the vendor against the approved list.
- 4AgentDrafts a review summary with deviations ranked by risk and suggested redlines, each with a source citation.
- 5HumanCounsel or the contract owner reviews the deviations, edits the redlines and decides whether to sign.
- 6SystemThe contract record, key dates and decision are stored and renewal reminders are set.
Controls
- Agent cannot send redlines to the counterparty
- Every flagged deviation cites the clause it came from
- Contracts above a value threshold need senior approval
- Sampled review of contracts marked standard
What we would measure
- Reviewer hours per contract
- Time from receipt to decision
- Deviations missed in sampled review
- Contracts reviewed per month
Where we see this pattern
Assess a workflow
Bring us one workflow that is slow, repetitive, error-prone or expensive. We'll help determine whether AI is actually the right lever.