Before You Sign

How it works

Paste, upload or link a contract, terms of service, lease or employment agreement in English or German. Before You Sign flags 19 kinds of clauses — auto-renewal, notice periods, minimum terms, termination fees, liability limits, indemnities, arbitration, non-competes, IP assignment, price escalation, penalties, guarantees, data sharing and unilateral changes — quotes each clause, extracts durations and amounts, and lists questions to ask.

• The contract is split into sentences (numbered clauses, bullets and § headings start new units).
• Each sentence is tested against 19 clause categories, each with English and German regular-expression patterns (e.g. "automatically renew", "verlängert sich stillschweigend", "Kündigungsfrist", "Vertragsstrafe", "hold harmless").
• Parameters are extracted from the matched sentence: durations (numbers or number words, incl. "three months"/"drei Monate"), percentages, money amounts, radius (km/miles), governing law and court venue.
• Severity comes from a fixed, documented rule per category (e.g. notice period ≥ 3 months = high; non-compete ≥ 12 months or ≥ 50 km = high). It signals how much attention a clause deserves, not whether it is legal or enforceable.
• Each category has fixed questions to ask before signing. Categories without any match are listed as "not detected" — absence of a match is not proof the clause is absent.

Not legal advice. This is an automated, rule-based text analysis that can miss or misread clauses; it never claims completeness. For decisions with legal or financial consequences, ask a qualified professional (e.g. a lawyer, tax adviser or consumer advice centre).