Legal AI startup Spellbook has launched a tool that benchmarks contract terms against aggregated market data rather than relying on AI-generated suggestions.
The tool is available to customers across all Spellbook’s global markets and uses a "give to get" model to build its database of deal point benchmarks.
Legal AI platform Spellbook has launched a new product it describes as "Moneyball for contracts", designed to give lawyers access to real-world market data during contract negotiations.
Canada-based Spellbook raised a $50 million Series B late last year, valuing the company at $350 million. Co-founder and CEO Scott Stevenson previously told Non-Billable that the company’s future roadmap includes a growing focus on market-data-driven tools for transactional lawyers.
Data-backed
The new tool - called Compare to Market - analyses key contract terms against aggregated data drawn from thousands of similar agreements. At launch, it supports 14 contract types and between 15 and 20 deal points per contract, with further expansion planned over time.
Spellbook is positioning the product as a response to a familiar negotiation dynamic, where parties often assert that their proposed terms reflect "market standard" practice without clear evidence to support those claims.
By grounding its analysis in historical deal data, the tool allows lawyers to sense-check those assertions against objective benchmarks and assess how closely a contract aligns with prevailing market norms.
Unlike AI-generated drafting or negotiation suggestions, Compare to Market is based on statistical analysis of completed deals rather than model-generated suggestions. This can include benchmarking provisions such as payment terms in SaaS agreements or other commonly negotiated clauses.
Give to get
The data underpinning the product is collected through a "give to get" model, with participating firms sharing anonymised, high-level statistical datapoints in exchange for access to the broader dataset. Firms that prefer not to contribute data can instead pay for access, while larger organisations with sufficient deal volume will later be able to create private data silos using only their own information.
Data changes the dynamic
If objective deal benchmarks become more widely available, the dynamics of contract negotiations may begin to shift. Lawyers armed with data on how terms are actually agreed in the market may rely less on convention and instinct, raising the question of whether "market standard" can still stand without the numbers to back it up.
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