Transform legal workflows with Claude, faster reviews

Anthropic’s legal team uses Claude to speed up day‑to‑day work — from marketing material checks to contract redlining — and has cut typical review times from days to hours. This enhanced draft keeps your original copy but adds specific workflows, setup guidance and SEO assets so in‑house teams can replicate the approach responsibly.

Why this matters now

In‑house legal teams are under pressure to move faster without increasing risk. Claude helps by turning repeatable reviews into guided, defensible workflows. Instead of a pile‑up of last‑minute requests, business partners complete structured self‑reviews, submit better‑formed drafts, and get quicker legal approvals. Lawyers spend more time on judgment calls and escalations; the assistant handles first‑pass checks and suggested redlines.

How the programme works (inside a legal team)

1) Marketing material self‑review. Go‑to‑market teams run content through a structured assistant before Legal sees it. The assistant applies house rules (claims, disclosures, trademarks, regulated phrasing) and returns a checklist, citations to policy, and edits to consider. Legal then reviews a cleaner draft and focuses on edge cases.

2) Contract redlining. Claude produces tracked‑change markups with margin comments that explain the rationale and point to your clause library. Lawyers can accept, edit or reject suggestions, and export a redlined document for counterparties.

3) Outside Business Activity (OBA) review. Employees submit OBA disclosures via a short form. Claude compares details to policy thresholds and flags where extra approvals or conflicts checks are needed, assembling a tidy summary for Legal.

Each workflow runs with clear guardrails: the assistant answers from approved policies and playbooks, cites sources, and refuses where evidence is missing.

Practical setup (copy‑ready)

1. Capture the rules. Turn marketing, brand and legal policies into short, numbered rules with examples (allow/avoid). Do the same for contracting positions and fallback clauses.

2. Seed the assistant. Provide these rules and clause libraries as the system context, with instructions to cite them and explain every suggestion.

3. Define inputs & outputs. For each workflow, set required inputs (e.g., asset URL, target audience, claims) and outputs (checklist + suggested edits, or tracked‑change redline + summary).

4. Add review gates. Require human approval for high‑risk items and maintain an escalation path. Log decisions and keep an audit trail.

5. Measure. Track turnaround time, deflection rate (items that pass self‑review with minimal edits), and error types to improve the rules.

Examples from day‑to‑day work

• Marketing: a blog post gets a self‑review checklist with flagged superlatives, required disclosures, and a safe rewrite; Legal signs off in minutes instead of days.

• Commercial: a vendor MSA is redlined against playbooks; summary highlights indemnity, data handling and termination deltas with links to policy.

• Compliance: an OBA submission is summarised with thresholds met/not met and a recommendation to escalate due to advisor overlap.

FAQs

How does Claude improve legal workflows?
It handles the repetitive first pass: checking claims against policy, producing suggested redlines with explanations, and preparing neat summaries so counsel can decide faster.

Is coding required?
No. Lawyers configure rules, sources and outputs in plain language. Engineering support helps with document templates, storage and access controls.

What tasks can Claude automate?
Marketing self‑reviews, contract redlining and clause comparisons, policy look‑ups, playbook‑based recommendations, and intake triage (e.g., OBAs) — always with a human decision at the end.

How is data handled?
Use a business plan with enterprise privacy controls. Keep confidential documents in approved repositories and restrict the assistant to those sources. Log prompts, retrieved policies and final decisions for audit.

Summary

Claude helps legal teams ship decisions, not just drafts. Start with marketing self‑reviews and a single contract type, measure the time saved and error rates, then expand your playbooks.

Want help codifying playbooks? Generation Digital can translate your policies into assistant‑ready rules and templates, with governance and training for business partners.