Field notes · Legal & contracts

When legal AI gets the clause wrong.

It didn't invent anything. It quoted a real clause, cited the right section, and missed the exception on the next line. That's the legal AI error nobody catches, and the one ARR was built to stop.

For in-house counsel, contract managers & legal ops · 6 min read
A limitation of liability clause split in two. The AI received only the first half, saying the supplier is liable for all losses, and answered yes. The carve-out excluding loss of profit, on the following lines, never reached it.
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The story

A real clause. Half of it.

An outage at a key supplier costs your business a week of sales. Someone asks the contract-review AI a simple question: is the supplier liable?

The AI finds clause 14.2 of the master supply agreement: "The Supplier shall be liable for all losses arising from its negligence," and answers immediately.

AI answer
"Yes. Under §14.2 the supplier is liable for all losses."
confident · cited · half the clause

The clause didn't end there. On the next line it continues: "except for indirect or consequential losses, including loss of profit, which are excluded in full." Lost sales are exactly the kind of loss that carve-out is written to exclude. The AI never saw it.

Why it happens

Not a hallucination. A fragment.

The cases that make headlines are fabrications: lawyers fined for citing cases that never existed. Even purpose-built legal research tools have been found to get answers wrong in more than one in six queries, and general chatbots far more often (a Stanford study summarised by BriefCatch).

But in contract review the more common failure is quieter. Before your AI answers, the system splits your agreements into pieces and hands it the few that match the question. Those pieces are cut by length, not by meaning. A clause that runs onto the next line can be cut in two, and the exception lands in a piece the AI never receives.

The quote is real. The citation is correct. A spot-check confirms the words are in the contract. That's what makes it dangerous.

01

Someone asks

"Is the supplier liable if the outage cost us sales?"

02 · where it breaks

The clause is cut in two

The obligation lands in one piece, the carve-out in the next. Only the first piece reaches the AI.

03

A clean, wrong answer

"Yes, all losses." Accurately quoted. Legally wrong.

Five signs, five fixes

Every quote checks out. The advice doesn't.

01
Half a clause

The sentence runs onto the next line

Your AI receives the first half and answers confidently on incomplete terms.

✓ With ARR

Your AI receives the whole clause, however it's laid out on the page.

02
The missed carve-out

The exception sits two lines below

Your AI quotes the obligation and never sees the "except where" that changes everything.

✓ With ARR

When two terms sit together, your AI is handed both, so the obligation and its exception arrive as one.

03
The wrong version

Two drafts with the same name

Your AI answers from whichever draft it found first, with no sign the signed version says something different.

✓ With ARR

The versions are paired and you see exactly what differs before your AI answers.

04
The borrowed wording

Standard language, different deals

Your AI quotes one agreement and never mentions the same wording appears in another, with a different meaning there.

✓ With ARR

You're told outright whether the wording is unique or appears in several places.

05
The missing schedule

"As set out in Schedule 3"

Schedule 3 was never attached. Your AI summarises the deal as if it were complete.

✓ With ARR

Every document that's referenced but missing is listed, so your AI can say the deal isn't complete.

Why double-checking isn't enough

You can't spot-check your way out of a missing exception.

The usual safeguard is to verify the AI's citations. That catches invented cases. It doesn't catch this, because the citation is real and the quoted words really are in the contract. To catch a missing carve-out you'd have to reread the whole clause yourself, every time, and then the AI has saved you nothing.

ARR doesn't replace your model or your judgment. It changes what the model is handed: complete clauses, their exceptions, the right version, and a warning when something is missing.

A fair caveat

ARR won't stop a model inventing a case that never existed; that's a different failure. What it addresses is the AI being handed the wrong or partial source. We've measured these abilities in our own benchmark on code and text, not yet on contracts, so treat this as how ARR is built to work here, not a measured result. That's what early access is for.

Try this tomorrow

The carve-out test

  1. Pick a contract with an exception you know well, such as a liability cap or an exclusion.
  2. Ask your AI whether the obligation applies in exactly the case the exception covers.
  3. See whether its answer mentions the exception.

If it doesn't, the AI didn't misread the contract. It was never given the whole clause. That's the part ARR fixes.

Early access

Be one of the first legal teams to test ARR on real contracts.

We're opening ARR to a small group first. Tell us how your team works with contracts and we'll be in touch when your place is ready. No payment required.

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