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- AI Clauses and AI Custom Clauses Overview: This article provides an overview of AI clauses and custom AI clauses. This includes a list of best practices when managing clauses.
- AI Clauses Overview: This article provides an overview of AI clauses. This includes a list of preconfigured clauses and how to manage them.
- Train AI Custom Clauses and Ironclad AI Clauses: This article walks you through how to train Ironclad AI clauses and AI custom clauses.
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This article will provide an overview of AI custom clauses. This includes how to manage them and a list of frequently asked questions.
A clause or clause type, also known as a provision, refers to a section, phrase, paragraph, or segment of a legal document, such as a contract, deed, will, or constitution, that pertains to a specific point. Clauses are generally 8 words or more in length and described in a sentence or multiple sentences of text.
Ironclad provides 175 out-of-the-box AI clauses that will be detected in AI Playbooks and Smart Import documents. To learn more about these default clauses, refer to the AI Clauses Overview. In addition to the preconfigured clauses, Ironclad also features AI custom clauses that enable you to train and fine tune AI to better detect clauses in both AI Playbooks and Smart Import. You can add examples to train the AI detection, and as your business and contract needs evolve, you can remove them at any time. AI custom clauses allow Ironclad AI to automatically capture and store critical clause usage data when documents are analyzed via Smart Import or AI Playbooks so you can have structured data to use for legal analysis or advanced contract insights.
Using AI custom clauses, you can improve the quality and accuracy of AI results and train the model to understand any unique data, domain knowledge, and context. This is called fine-tuning. Fine-tuning lets you enhance the Ironclad AI model to your unique use cases by adding contract data that was not observed during the original AI training process. This results in better performance and results which leads to faster decision making.
NOTE
As with all advanced AI features, Ironclad must have the necessary rights to process account data to deliver the features as designed. If you cannot self-enable this feature on Company Settings > Settings, you will be prompted to sign an amended ESA agreement, If you have questions, please reach out to your Ironclad Representative.
As with all advanced AI features, Ironclad must have the necessary rights to process account data to deliver the features as designed. If you cannot self-enable this feature on Company Settings > Settings, you will be prompted to sign an amended ESA agreement, If you have questions, please reach out to your Ironclad Representative.
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AI Custom Clauses
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Ironclad AI Clause
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Should I Use Custom AI Features?
You should use Custom AI features any time Ironclad AI is not accurately detecting a clause when using Smart Import or AI Playbooks.
Ironclad AI is iterative and will improve as you use Ironclad AI features and custom AI clauses to accelerate the learning speed of our models. The more that Ironclad AI is used, the more accurate and relevant it will become.
✅ AI Custom Clause features might be a great fit if…
- You want to improve and adapt Ironclad AI’s results and accuracy.
- You have very unique contract language or industry needs.
- You want to use any AI-powered feature in Ironclad.
- You want to report or have insights on clause-level contract data.
🚫 Wait to use AI Custom Clause if…
- You do not expect to use any AI-powered feature in Ironclad.
- You do not have the bandwidth to invest the time in improving AI’s accuracy or results.
- You do not want to use Ironclad AI’s default models.
Manage AI Custom Clauses
Create a Clause
- Click on your profile icon located in the top right corner of Ironclad. Navigate to Company Settings > AI Clauses.
- Click + Add New.
- Enter a name and a description of the clause type.
- Add examples to train the custom clause.
- Adjust the clause’s detection settings.
- Click Save and Publish.
Edit a Clause
- Click on your profile icon located in the top right corner of Ironclad. Navigate to Company Settings > AI Clauses. Click on the clause you want to edit.
- Edit the clause’s description.
- Add/Delete examples to train the clause.
- Adjust the clause’s detection settings.
- Click Save and Publish.
Add/Delete Examples to Train an AI Clause
You can train a clause to use in AI-powered features by providing a few examples of clause text. You can start with 1-2 examples to get started and add/delete examples at any point in time.
- Click on your profile icon located in the top right corner of Ironclad and navigate to Company Settings > AI Clauses.
- Click on the clause you want to edit.
- Add an example to train the AI to detect the clause in documents. Based on the examples provided, the AI can then learn to detect clauses in AI Playbooks and Smart Import. You can add up to 20 examples per clause.
- As you add an example, you can see what the example’s Training Impact is. The training impact will give you an idea on how effective your example would impact the AI custom clause detection. Based on the example provided, the training impact will display as Weak, Medium, or Strong.
- We recommend exclusively adding Strong examples to train the AI. Examples with a strong training impact ensure your AI clause can effectively detect clauses in AI Playbooks and Smart Import documents.
- We recommend exclusively adding Strong examples to train the AI. Examples with a strong training impact ensure your AI clause can effectively detect clauses in AI Playbooks and Smart Import documents.
- To delete an example, locate the example and click Delete.
Manage AI Clause Detection
After you add examples to your AI clause, underneath Detection Settings, you can use Similarity Settings to control if and when the clause will be detected in AI Playbooks and Smart Import documents. When using AI Playbooks or Smart Import, they will detect clauses that meet your defined detection criteria company wide. There are three similarity setting options:
- Exact match: AI will only detect clauses in documents that are exactly the same as the examples you have provided.
NOTE
The first four words will be ignored, and if there are new lines added in the document text, the AI will not be able to detect it correctly. - Highly Similar: AI will detect clauses in documents that look highly similar to the examples you have provided to train the AI clause. We recommend this option for most use cases.
- Somewhat similar: AI will detect clauses in documents that look somewhat similar to the examples you have provided to train the AI clause. By choosing this option, AI will detect the most results compared to the other options.
If you want to turn off detection of the clause completely, click on your profile icon located in the top right corner of Ironclad and navigate to Company Settings > AI Clauses. In the Detectable column, toggle off the clause you no longer want to be detected in AI Playbooks and Smart Import.
AI Custom Clauses FAQs
General
Is there a limit to the number of examples we can use to train a AI Custom clause?
Ironclad limits each clause to a max of 20 examples. If you need to improve the clause’s detection, there are a few ways to improve the AI’s results:
- Clause data example diversity: The more diverse a clause example is that you use to train or fine-tune the AI, the better the results will be. If you provide very similar examples where only a couple of words are different, the AI will not materially change in its quality or accuracy. Fewer, varied and diverse examples are better.
- Broad use cases or use sub-clauses: If a custom clause appears to be too long, break it down into smaller paragraphs for accurate detection.
If neither of the above resolves the issue, please submit a request with our Support Team.
Can I create an AI custom clause with the same name as an Ironclad AI clause?
Yes. We haven’t restricted this capability. For example, you may want to create the custom clauses “Governing Law - EU” and “Governing Law - APAC”. Ironclad does not prevent either the default or custom clauses from being used.
As a best practice, should I create a single AI custom clause for all types of documents or create a unique custom clause per document type?
This is a very customer-specific question and our guidance is to first think about how you want to manage & report on this data. We recommend that you start with creating a holistic clause that includes all examples of different document types to simplify the reporting & insights to start. If you find you need more granularity or additional precision by document type, you can always break this clauses by document type later and re-run the AI analysis on your existing records (coming soon).
Can I create a custom model using only our contract data?
No, but we may consider this in the future. It puts a tremendous burden on the customer. Because of this, we prefer to have a hybrid solution that allows Ironclad’s global models to power the core and foundational models while providing customers more control using training models. We’ve found that a successful partnership has delivered the best accuracy and performance.
Can AI custom clauses be easily transferred or shared across Ironclad accounts and stacks (e.g. demo vs production)?
No, not at this time. We understand the need, but do not have an immediate solution available.
Can I purchase more custom clauses?
Yes! Paid Ironclad subscriptions are given 10 complimentary custom clauses. This gives you the ability to trial the features. If you want to purchase more custom clauses, reach out to your Ironclad contact or submit a request with our Support Team. There is no charge or fee to train or fine-tune Ironclad AI default clauses.
My clauses are continually being misclassified or missed altogether. What can I do to solve this?
You can use AI custom clauses to solve your clauses being misclassified or missed altogether. For more information, refer to Manage Clause Misclassifications.
Data Privacy and Security
Will Ironclad AI use our AI custom clauses and contract data to train Ironclad AI’s out-of-the-box or global models?
Our goal is to improve our AI products to provide faster decision-making and help customers use AI to more efficiently accomplish contracting tasks. Ironclad’s use of customer data is a permissive model. We are transparent in the use of your data, and we’ll work with you to understand your data privacy needs and provide enterprise-level data privacy and security.
Is there a chance of our company’s competitor seeing private or sensitive contract data?
No, Ironclad takes data privacy, security and confidentiality very seriously and evaluates all customer and data privacy risks with our cross-team AI Governance Council (represented by Legal, Product, Security, etc.). Our Custom AI models analyzes contract data to make clause suggestions for clause names or types only. We evaluate a paragraph of text to predict if the text is best described as a clause like ‘Governing Law’ or ‘Adjustments’. There is no in-app feature that provides detailed or descriptive contract data in the results, so no clause examples provided when using Custom AI features could appear to another Ironclad user or customer.
We have a BAA (Business Associates Agreement) in place with Ironclad. Should we use Custom AI?
Yes, customers that have a BAA agreement in place with Ironclad are automatically opted out of having their data used for AI training purposes to prevent and protect PII and PHI data. Any contract data provided by these customers will be retained and used for their Ironclad instance only.