Features
Legal Playbooks
A Legal Playbook in Lexnus is a structured, version-controlled set of rules and clauses that defines your organisation's legal policy. Every contract Lexnus analyses, inbound or outbound, is evaluated against your active playbook automatically. The playbook is the source of truth. The AI interprets contract language against it. The playbook decides what passes.
How a contract playbook is built
Build your playbook from existing contracts
You do not build a playbook from scratch. Upload your existing Word templates and signed contracts. Lexnus reads them, extracts the standards implicit in your language: the liability caps you accept, the clauses you always insist on, the governing law you never compromise on, and drafts your first playbook automatically. You review, adjust, and publish. Under an hour. No implementation project.
Write rules in plain language
Rules are written in plain language and enforced deterministically. Examples:
- "Aggregate liability must not exceed 1.5x annual contract value."
- "Governing law must be England and Wales for all EU counterparties."
- "Termination for convenience requires at least 90 days notice."
Rules reference Smart Fields, structured data points extracted from each contract, so comparisons are precise and consistent. The AI interprets contract text to extract those values. The playbook rule then evaluates the value: compliant, violated, a gap where a required clause is missing, or needs review where only a person can decide. The model never makes that call.
Assign clauses
Each playbook contains an ordered set of clauses drawn from your governed Clause Library. Clauses can be conditional, included only when specific Smart Fields match, and nested to form a complete contract structure. Every clause in your playbook has been reviewed and approved by a qualified lawyer before it can be published.
Publish and enforce
Every saved edit to a published playbook creates a new version, and analyses from then on run against it. Every analysis result records the playbook version it was evaluated against, which is what an audit needs.
What a legal playbook contains
- Automatic extraction — Lexnus reads your existing contracts and builds your first playbook draft. No blank-slate setup.
- Plain-language rules — Rules are written in natural language, not code. Legal teams write them directly.
- Deterministic enforcement — Policy enforcement is rule-based, not AI-driven. The AI interprets contract text; the playbook judges it. The same facts always get the same verdict.
- Version control — Every saved edit to a published playbook creates a new version. Full version history. Every analysis result links to the exact policy version it was evaluated against.
- Conditional clause inclusion — Clauses can be included or excluded based on Smart Field values. The playbook adapts to deal context without requiring manual configuration per contract.
- Multi-playbook support — Separate playbooks for different contract types: NDA, MSA, employment agreement, procurement. Each governed independently.
- Approval workflow on publish — Playbook changes require Admin approval before taking effect. No policy change goes live without authorisation.
Who owns the playbook
General Counsel and Legal Ops build and own playbooks. They define the rules, assign clauses, and publish new versions when policy changes. The playbook is their primary tool for encoding institutional legal knowledge into a system that enforces it automatically.
Lawyers and Associates work against published playbooks during contract review and negotiation. When a counterparty contract is analysed, the playbook tells them exactly what is wrong and what the approved fix is.
Business users in sales, procurement, and HR benefit from playbooks indirectly. When they initiate a contract, it is assembled from the playbook's approved clauses. The rules are already built in. They cannot accidentally generate non-compliant language.