The top tile of the Contract Companion panel contains a link called “Risk Assessment.” (Figure 1) It was not covered in class or in the course handout.

This tile only displays results of the Contract Companion analysis that were marked with the Important red triangle or have been Flagged. (Figure 2)

These categories of Contract Companion results omit many items that should be considered when proofreading an agreement, including the very important Inconsistent Capitalization results. (Figure 3) While results reported with the Risk Assessment tile may be helpful as a final check after completing a Contract Companion review, we strongly recommend against starting with it.

The above results are based on the sample Independent Contractor Agreement used in the instructions and class.

 

We strongly encourage use of the Reviewed, Flag and Report features of Contract Companion, as explained on pages 45 to 53 of the instructions. Several students did not use any of these features, and very few were recorded as having generated a report.

We recommend the following approach to using these features:

• Use Reviewed to mark each result shown by Contract Companion that does not require an edit to the contract draft in Microsoft Word. Reviewed items change to grey and move to the bottom of the results list. That emphasizes the items that remain to be checked.
• Use Flag to mark each result shown by Contract Companion that does require an edit to the contract draft in Microsoft Word.
• At the conclusion of checking results in Contract Companion, generate and save a Report from a filtered list of all of the Flag items. This will serve as a checklist to help confirm that all of the required edits in Microsoft Word get completed.

These may seem like extra steps – that one could just correct the items shown in the results list in Microsoft Word while checking through the list. Proofreading contracts is meticulous work. “Extra” work that avoids errors is part of what it takes to be a good lawyer.