AI in a law firm, without touching a single point of legal judgement.

01

Why us

The person who would work in your firm has built this before, in production, as an in-house engineer: an end-to-end contract lifecycle platform for a corporate legal team — conversational intake, an in-app copilot, and a Microsoft Word add-in producing native tracked-change redlines. Every AI action in it ran as the signed-in user, inheriting the same permissions and the same audit trail as a human request, behind a confirm gate that paused every change for approval. It replaced a commercial vendor costing about €70,000 a year.

That is the difference between a consultant who has read about legal AI and an engineer who has shipped it inside a legal function with an audit trail attached. It is also why the first question we ask about any workflow is “who did this, and can you show me?” rather than what the model can do.

02

What AI can safely take over

Contracts as objects. Not law.

• Pulling contracts out of the mailbox the moment they arrive
• Naming and versioning every file to one convention, permanently, with its history kept
• Extracting parties, dates, term, notice periods, governing law, liability caps and auto-renewal — every field pinned to the page and paragraph it came from
• The deadline diary: every date in every contract, in front of you before it matters
• Comparing an incoming draft against your own playbook and marking where it differs
• A first-pass markup in Word with tracked changes, each suggestion carrying its reason
• Chasing the counterparty who has not returned the draft, and the internal signatory
• Filing to your document system correctly, first time
• Answering “where is this contract, and which version is current?” instantly

The version problem goes in the first weeks, and it is the change people notice first.

03

What stays lawyer-controlled, permanently

Whether a clause is acceptable. What to concede. Advice, to anyone, internal or external. Signature.

No advice is ever generated. No output is ever sent to a counterparty automatically. No clause is redrafted without a stated reason you can evaluate. There is no accept-all button — we were asked to build one and refused, and the partner who asked has said since that they would not have continued if we had built it.

Every suggestion is accepted or rejected individually, by a lawyer, in Word — your own tool, not ours.

04

How confidentiality is protected

Two instruments, because German professional law requires both and only one of them is about data protection.

• A data processing agreement (AVV) under Art. 28 DSGVO, signed before we see anything.
• A confidentiality undertaking in Textform under §43e BRAO, in which we are expressly instructed as to the criminal consequences of a breach under §203 StGB, and which states whether any further person may be involved — the answer is no, because Dinobridge is one person with no employees and no subcontractors. If that ever changes, it changes by written amendment before it happens, not after.

We know §43e is a separate duty from Art. 28, and we know you have to be able to document that you selected your provider carefully. We give you the file to do that with, at the start, without being asked.

05

What happens to client data

It stays in your systems. Every system we build runs in your tenancy, under your accounts, with your API keys billed directly to you. We do not host your matter content, we do not copy it to our own infrastructure, and we hold no credential you cannot revoke this afternoon.

Where a document has to be sent to a model to be read, the provider, the region and the terms are named in the proposal and in the AVV, so you can put them to your own Datenschutzbeauftragter before anything is signed. No training on your content and no retention beyond the request. No processing outside the EU — and if a workflow would require it, you hear that before it is designed, because §43e requires comparable protection for services performed abroad and the simplest way to satisfy that is not to go abroad.

Where a workflow cannot meet those conditions, it does not get built. That has happened, and we said so rather than working around it.

06

What is logged, and who can see what

Every action: who triggered it, on which document, at what time, what came back, and whether a person accepted or rejected it. Retained for a period agreed with you, then deleted on schedule, and exportable by you in full at any time without asking us. A legal AI system without an audit trail is not deployable, whatever else it can do.

Access follows your existing permissions. The systems act as the signed-in user, so an AI action inherits exactly the rights that person already has and never more — if a fee-earner cannot open a matter today, nothing we build lets them open it tomorrow. Our own access is named in the scope document, limited to the work, granted by you and revoked by you at the end of each phase. We hold no standing administrator access.

07

How a contract is actually reviewed

1. It arrives. It is identified, versioned, linked to its matter and its predecessor, and filed.
2. The summary sheet is produced, every field pinned to its source page and paragraph.
3. It is compared against your playbook — your own written positions — and the differences are marked.
4. A Word document is produced with tracked changes, each suggestion carrying its reason as a comment: which playbook position it comes from, or which risk it addresses.
5. A lawyer opens it in Word and accepts or rejects each change, individually.
6. Every one of those decisions is logged.

Nothing between the first step and the fifth leaves the firm, and nothing after the fifth happens without a person.

08

How hallucination risk is controlled

Four mechanisms, none of which is “we use a good model”.

• Nothing is asserted without a location. Every extracted fact carries a pin to the page and paragraph, so checking it takes four seconds. A fact you cannot check is worse than no fact — it looks like knowledge.
• Nothing is suggested without a reason. A markup with no stated basis is unreviewable, so the system cannot produce one.
• The comparison is against your own written playbook, not against a model’s idea of market standard. If a position is not written down, the system has nothing to compare with and says so.
• The system never paraphrases. For norms and clauses it returns the exact text with its location, because a paraphrased provision is a liability.

And structurally: there is no path from the system to a counterparty, a client or an internal recipient that does not pass through a person accepting a specific change.

09

The implementation process, and what it integrates with

Before anything starts: the NDA, the AVV, the §43e undertaking, and a one-page scope naming which systems we access and for how long.

Then intake and filing first — nothing intelligent. Then the summary sheet and the deadline diary, both useful within days, and the diary is the piece with the highest raw value because a missed notice period is a claim. Then the playbook: your positions, written down properly, with you. That is the hardest and most valuable part of the project, and the part most firms have never done. The first-pass markup comes last, because the playbook has to exist first and the playbook is your work, not ours. Anyone promising you a markup in the second week has never written a playbook with a firm.

It works with Outlook and Exchange, with Word as a native add-in so your people stay in Word rather than in someone’s portal, with SharePoint and Windows file shares, with your calendar for the deadline diary, and with your document management system where it has an interface. If yours has no interface, you hear that on the first call rather than in the third week.

10

How quickly you see value

Filing and versioning first, and it is the change people mention first. The deadline diary next, and it is the one that prevents a claim. The markup last, once the playbook exists.

Throughout, a named person in your firm owns each piece, is trained on it, and has changed a rule in it themselves before it goes live.

11

What proof exists

A commercial practice with two partners, and an in-house legal function of five inside a manufacturing group of about three hundred people. Both asked not to be named — role and region only, which is the norm in this sector — and both have agreed to speak to a serious prospect after a first conversation. We keep a private record of who said what.

And separately, verifiable without any client’s permission: the production contract-lifecycle platform described at the top of this page, built in-house, which replaced a vendor costing about €70,000 a year.

12

What happens if you stop working with us

Everything keeps running. It is in your tenancy, under your accounts, with your keys, and the code is in your repository. You get a written handover for every system — produced the week it was built, not the week we leave — covering what runs where, how to change a rule, how to switch it off and what breaks if you do. A named person in your firm has already used it while we watched.

On request, at any time: a full export of every log, and written confirmation that we hold nothing of yours. Nothing needs a licence, account or subscription of ours. If we disappeared tomorrow, your systems would run and your people could change them.

13

Where we say no

Bespoke, high-value, one-off negotiation work. There is no playbook there because there is no repetition, and a first-pass markup on a genuinely novel deal is noise dressed up as help.

Anything that produces advice. Anything that sends. Anything with an accept-all button.