A small business attorney in Nashville reviews commercial leases for restaurant clients. Each lease is 30-50 pages. She reads every clause manually, flags concerning terms, and drafts redline suggestions. A single lease review takes 3-4 hours — billed at $350/hour, that's $1,000-1,400 per review. Her clients love her thoroughness but wince at the bills.
Contract review is the bread and butter of transactional legal practice. Enterprise law firms use Kira Systems, LegalSifter, and Luminance — tools that cost $20,000-100,000+/year and require implementation support. These tools extract clauses, compare to playbooks, and suggest edits. But 400,000+ solo attorneys and small firms in the US can't afford enterprise legal tech.
SpotDraft raised at a $400M valuation for contract management. Harvey raised $80M for Big Law AI. But both target enterprise. The gap is an AI contract review tool at $49-99/mo for solo and small firm attorneys: upload a contract, get instant clause extraction, risk flagging (unusual indemnification, broad termination rights, problematic IP clauses), and suggested redline. Not replacing lawyer judgment — augmenting it. Focus on common contract types first: commercial leases, employment agreements, NDAs, service agreements.
What People Are Saying
Real voices expressing this pain point
One thing I wish someone had told me earlier: no CMS does everything well
💰 Revenue Blueprint
Three-tier value ladder to monetize from day one
10 contracts/mo, clause extraction, risk flagging, summary report
30 contracts/mo, redline suggestions, playbook comparison, Word export
Unlimited contracts, custom playbooks, team access, API, priority support
📊 Market Evidence
🏆 Competitor Landscape
How existing players stack up in this market
| Competitor | Pricing | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| SpotDraft | Custom ($400M valuation) | Strong workflow automation. Not great as repository. More affordable than Ironclad. |
| Ironclad | Enterprise ($20k+/year) | Fortune 500 focus. AI Assist for redlining. Overkill for small firms. |
| Clio | $49-139/mo | Practice management with some contract features. Not AI-focused. |
| Spellbook | Transactional lawyer focus | AI contract drafting/review. Word integration. Lawyer-specific. |
| LegalOn | Corporate counsel focus | AI review and redlining. Growing player. |
| Juro | Enterprise | All-in-one CLM. Mid-market to enterprise. |
Strong workflow automation. Not great as repository. More affordable than Ironclad.
Fortune 500 focus. AI Assist for redlining. Overkill for small firms.
Practice management with some contract features. Not AI-focused.
AI contract drafting/review. Word integration. Lawyer-specific.
AI review and redlining. Growing player.
All-in-one CLM. Mid-market to enterprise.
🛠️ Recommended Tech Stack
Suggested tools and technologies to build this idea
Why this stack: Focus on reliability over speed. Clause extraction with confidence scores. Word export maintains lawyer workflows.
Score Breakdown
Good market signals with room for growth
Market (20%) + Revenue (20%) + Trend (15%) + Competition (15%) + Build (15%) + Pricing (15%)
🚀 Start Building
Copy a prompt into your favorite AI coding tool and start building this idea right now.
Build a SaaS product called "AI Contract Review for Small Law Firms". ## Product Overview Affordable AI-powered contract review tool designed for solo attorneys and small law firms who cannot afford enterprise CLM solutions ## Problem Solo and small law firms pay $20k+/year for enterprise contract tools or do manual review. No affordable AI contract review for small firms. ## Solution Build AI Contract Review for Small Law Firms ## Target Audience indie hackers, small businesses, and solopreneurs ## Tech Stack - Next.js 15 (App Router) with TypeScript - Tailwind CSS v4 for styling - Supabase for auth, database, and storage - Vercel for deployment - shadcn/ui for UI components - Framer Motion for animations ## MVP Features to Build 1. Landing page with clear value proposition 2. User authentication (sign up, sign in, forgot password) 3. Core product functionality based on the solution above 4. Dashboard for users to manage their data 5. Pricing page with at least 2 tiers (free + paid) 6. Basic settings/profile page ## Known Competitors SpotDraft, Ironclad, Clio, Spellbook, LegalOn, Juro ## Key Risks to Address Standard market entry risks ## Deployment 1. Set up Supabase project and configure environment variables 2. Deploy to Vercel with `npx vercel --prod` 3. Set up custom domain 4. Configure Supabase RLS policies for security ## Instructions Start by creating the project structure, then build the landing page first. Use server components where possible. Make it mobile-responsive from the start. Focus on getting the core value loop working before adding polish.