To check a contract before signing, read it for the eight clauses that cause most problems: automatic renewal, termination terms, liability and indemnity, unilateral changes, payment and late fees, intellectual property, governing law and confidentiality. A contract checker such as ClauseGuard in CEMP Life does the first pass in seconds: photograph the pages or upload the PDF and Super Intelligence (SI) highlights red-flag clauses in plain English. For anything significant, a solicitor should still review it.
The eight clauses to check every time
- Auto-renewal and notice: a 12-month deal with 90 days' notice is really 15 months
- Termination: can both sides exit on the same terms?
- Liability and indemnity: who carries the risk, and is the cap proportionate?
- Unilateral variation: can one side change price or scope without agreement?
- Payment and late fees: interest rates, and whether they compound
- Intellectual property: who owns what you create
- Governing law and disputes: mandatory arbitration far away can kill a fair claim
- Confidentiality and non-competes: scope and duration
What does a contract checker actually do?
A good review produces four things:
- A plain-language summary of what each party must do
- Flagged clauses that are unusual, one-sided or consequential
- Obligations and dates: notice periods, renewals, penalties, deadlines
- What is missing: often the most valuable part
ClauseGuard reads a photographed page or a PDF and highlights unusual clauses such as non-competes, broad liability waivers, hidden auto-renewals and one-sided indemnities, explained in plain English. Tap Suggest Edits to open a pre-filled amendment document, and Export as PDF to share a copy with your solicitor or the other party.
How to check a contract with ClauseGuard
- Open ClauseGuard in the Everyday Toolkit.
- Photograph each page, or pick the PDF from your files.
- Read the flagged clauses and the plain-English explanations.
- Use Suggest Edits to draft the changes you want.
- Export as PDF and send it for professional review if the stakes are high.
Find the red flags before you sign.
CEMP Life puts 20+ SI tools in one app: calorie counter, food and allergen scanner, recipe maker, wellness sensors, crash detection, car diagnosis, contract checker, receipt scanner and a full creator studio. No account needed. Nothing stored.
4-day free trial on Google Play. Cancel any time.
The privacy problem nobody mentions
Pasting an employment contract into a general chatbot places your salary, address, notice period and restrictive covenants into a third-party system whose retention policy you probably have not read. A commercial agreement may include pricing and client names your counterparty considers confidential.
CEMP Life processes documents in real time and discards them. Nothing is kept on CEMP servers and no account is required, so no history ties a document to you. More on why that matters in is private AI the future?
How to get a sharper review
- Provide the whole document; definitions elsewhere change what clauses mean.
- Know your side: the same clause is friendly to a landlord and hostile to a tenant.
- Ask what is missing compared with a normal agreement of this type.
- Rank the three worst terms and focus negotiation there.
When do you still need a lawyer?
- High-value or long-term commitments
- Anything already in dispute
- Whether a clause is enforceable where you live
- Anything you are being pressured to sign quickly
Used properly, SI does not replace legal advice; it changes when you pay for it. Instead of paying a lawyer to tell you 38 of 40 pages are standard, you arrive with the two clauses that matter already identified. For receipts and expenses, see the best receipt scanner app; for the full toolkit, top SI toolkit.
Find the red flags before you sign.
CEMP Life puts 20+ SI tools in one app: calorie counter, food and allergen scanner, recipe maker, wellness sensors, crash detection, car diagnosis, contract checker, receipt scanner and a full creator studio. No account needed. Nothing stored.
4-day free trial on Google Play. Cancel any time.