Global manufacturer cuts contract review from 1 year to 5 weeks, saving $477,000

Ahead of a major corporate transaction, a global manufacturer's in-house legal team needed a clear view of contract risk across nearly 16,000 legacy agreements. The team lacked capacity to parse the complex, varied contract landscape at scale. They urgently needed to flag unfavorable terms—especially change-in-control clauses—that could delay or disrupt the transaction.

An Axiom legal team first extracted roughly 1,500 of the 16,000 contracts containing “Change in Control” language. They then used Legora to bulk-review those agreements, with manual validation to confirm favorable/unfavorable classifications and eliminate duplicates. Legora was used again to extract metadata (document type, counterparty name, and more) into a structured data bank, followed by a final manual check categorizing the logic behind unfavorable agreements (notice/consent, termination rights, other).

The project timeline was cut from an estimated 1 year to just 5 weeks, and the client saved $477,000 versus a non-AI-enabled team approach. The Axiom team created 185 “contract families” of unfavorable counterparties for future negotiations. Human-validated AI results and structured metadata gave the client's business teams clearer insight for navigating negotiations.

• Pairing AI bulk review (Legora) with attorney validation can compress large-scale contract diligence from months to weeks without sacrificing accuracy.
• Isolating high-risk clause types (e.g., change in control) before full metadata extraction focuses effort where transaction risk is highest.
• Structured outputs such as counterparty “contract families” turn one-off review into reusable negotiation intelligence.