The most common question I get on a Gerri demo: “How do I set up my first playbook?”
When founders describe the contract review problem, it usually sounds like this: They’re the choke point. The knowledge lives in their own brain so they can’t delegate it, and so they remain on the hamster wheel of reviewing the same terms again and again.
Contract review playbooks change this.
With playbooks in Gerri, you set the guardrails around what positions you will and won’t accept. You can build in the checks to catch the sneaky gotchas like a termination for convenience clause. You can make sure that what burned you once won’t burn you again.
Ok, now you just have to find the time in your day to build this playbook.
Broadly, there are two approaches: do this yourself or work with our team to do this for you. I will explain both approaches in this article.
Self-serve approaches to building your first contract review playbook
Add the things that have burned you before
Time: 20 minutes
One of the best starting points is to simply document those three painful things that have burned you before. We all have them. The termination for convenience clause you missed, the retroactive requirement that added too much burden, the gotcha that didn’t surface until a deal was already signed.
You don’t have to write the rules from scratch. Use the AI chat inside Gerri. Describe what you’re trying to catch, and Gerri will draft the rule. Approve with one click, or refine in chat until it’s right.
You can stop here! This is your first playbook. Or, if you want, keep refining your playbook by laying on the following options.
Review terms in the default playbook
Time: 45 minutes
When you create a Gerri account, a default playbook lands in your account automatically. It includes 20+ rules based on what comes up repeatedly in SaaS negotiations:
- Security incident notification timelines: how fast you’re required to notify customers if something goes wrong
- Logo rights: whether the counter-party can use your name or logo publicly
- Jurisdiction: Texas and Louisiana tend to create problems; New York and Delaware are generally fine
- Auto-renewal terms: everyone prefers having auto-renewal, but will likely accept no auto-renewal
- AI and machine learning data use
The default playbook is a set of common terms that come up in contract reviews. Work through each of these and document any clear guardrails you have for how your team should respond to them.
Again, you can stop here! You’ve got a great contract review playbook in place. But if you want to do some polishing and see how your playbook performs, then you can take some time to iterate on one real contract.
Iterate on one real contract
Time: 1 hour
Upload a contract you’ve already received and run it against your playbook. See what Gerri flagged and what it missed. Anything you’d want to catch in the future, you can add as a rule.
Re-running the same contract doesn’t count against your billing, so iterate as many times as you need. Three to five review cycles on one contract gets you to a substantially stronger playbook. And, to be clear, you don’t need to target perfection — a playbook that covers 70% of what you see is enough to start getting real value.
Custom onboarding approach to help you build your first contract review playbook
If you want assistance getting started, we are also happy to help and simply build your first playbook for you. Here are some methods to kick off that approach:
- Start with your old contracts: Maybe you have a Dropbox or Google Drive folder with your contracts, or you can download a batch from whatever you use for esignature. Once you share them with us, there’s no additional time commitment on your end — we do the work.
- Start with any documentation of your positions: Many teams I talk to have an existing playbook (whether or not they call it that). A Google Sheet documenting key terms and positions, a brief, or a collection of screenshots (hey! Whatever works). We’ll take these positions and get them set up in Gerri.
- Work with an attorney. If you have been working with external counsel on contract review, they probably have a solid understanding of your positions on key terms. Ask them to take an hour to document these.
- Have a conversation with us: For CEOs and founders in particular, the playbook usually just exists in your brain. In these cases, we set up a call with a member of our team to discuss your preferred positions on key terms. We use that to build your first playbook.
What if my playbook isn’t perfect?
It doesn’t need to be. The most common concern: “What if I set it up wrong, or upload something imperfect — will that cause problems downstream?” It won’t. You can update or remove rules at any time. Start with what you have and improve it as you go. That’s the whole magic of Gerri!
Setting up your contract review playbook with Gerri
Your first playbook takes anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour. You can do it yourself or lean on us to help you. We want to make you successful!
The sooner you start, the faster you remove yourself from the contract review loop.