A tier-1 Australian energy retailer.
First drafts that used to take days are now ready in under an hour.
The in-house legal and regulatory team reviews and revises instead of retyping.
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At a glance
Time to first draft
Days → under 1 hour
From request to first draft ready for review
Reviewer time
~6 hours → under 1 hour
A 5–8× speed-up per document
Draft acceptance
75–85%
Accepted with minor edits only
Documents per lawyer
~2× per lawyer
Without adding staff
The in-house legal and regulatory team was typing what was already in the system. Each retail contract endorsement, each Internal Dispute Resolution response, each filing to the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) was assembled by hand from a library of previous legal documents that already held the right language. A lawyer or paralegal would find the closest matching precedent, drop it into the template, adjust for the specific matter, walk it across for review.
The work itself wasn’t hard. It was repetitive in a way that punished the people best at it. Every senior lawyer’s day was swallowed by first-draft assembly that wasn’t where their judgement actually mattered. Documents that needed to be ready the same day weren’t. The backlog was visible in the matter-management system every Friday afternoon.
A drafting assistant.
Prepares first drafts only. No review, no advice, no sending, no signing, no negotiation.
Tools and information
- Precedent library (read-only)
- Template store
- Matter-management system
- Document store
- E-signature platform (read-only)
- Internal writing style and approved clause guidance
- Find the closest approved previous document for this type of matter
- Fill the approved template with the details of the matter
- Highlight the three or four sections most likely to need changes for this matter
- Send the draft to the reviewer with the matter details attached
After the first live week, document matching needed tightening. A few drafts used a similar previous document from the wrong template group: the same document type, but a different commercial situation. Reviewers had to remove language that did not belong. The matching rules were tightened using the real matters, and drafting now paused more clearly when no suitable previous document was available.
The review instructions also improved. Drafts highlighted sections likely to need legal judgement: termination, indemnity, schedules, and price adjustments. Each draft went to the right reviewer with fuller matter details. The assembly process stayed the same; the reviewer received clearer instructions.
- Final review and sign-off on every document
- Negotiation of any term that deviates from precedent
- Anything heading toward the AER, the state energy ombudsman, or litigation
- Strategy calls: when to fight a clause, when to concede, when to involve the general counsel
- Anything outside the agreed template set
- First-draft assembly from the precedent library
- Finding the closest approved previous document for the template
- Highlighting the sections likely to need changes for this matter
- Logging the matter and the draft in the matter-management system
- Routing to the right reviewer with context attached
For context, published reports from similar in-house legal teams describe these ranges: a 5–8× reduction in reviewer time per document, documents completed per lawyer roughly doubling, and 75–85% of drafts moving through review with only minor edits.
- Give legal advice. Not in drafts, not in messages, not in summaries. Advice comes from lawyers.
- Send anything externally. No draft leaves the retailer’s domain without a reviewer’s explicit approval.
- Sign anything. E-signature access is read-only.
- Touch anything outside the agreed template set. Custom or unfamiliar documents go to a human from the first line.
- Negotiate or commit on behalf of the retailer. Every commitment (financial, regulatory, or contractual) comes from a person.
The legal and regulatory team now reviews and revises instead of retypes. The work that was always the point of the role (the judgement on where to push back, the strategic call on a tricky regulatory question, the senior eye on the documents that actually matter) is now what the day is spent on. The first drafts arrive ready for the kind of review the team is trained to do.
Draft assembled: Endorsement E-1842, base precedent 2025-A7, FY25 indexation clause applied. Three sections flagged for review: termination, indemnity, schedule 2. Routed to Sam.
LEGAL WORKFLOWS
Two other ways to start with legal work.
This case covers preparing first drafts for an in-house regulatory team. Every draft still goes through human legal review. These results do not establish results for reviewing incoming contracts or handling enquiries at a small law firm.
Need help with the first enquiry? For missed calls, web enquiries, consultation booking details, transcripts, and passing case details to your team, see the legal enquiry service.
For incoming contracts, AI can extract clauses, compare them with your approved rules, and flag differences for a human reviewer. See automated contract review. This service prepares the first review; it does not replace a full contract lifecycle management system.
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