Methodology
How these guides are written, and what isn't reviewed
Legal information is exactly the kind of content that should tell you where it came from and where its limits are. This page does that.
Who writes them
The ReviewMyContracts editorial team — Product and research. Guides are researched against primary sources and current market practice, then checked against the same clause checklists the product runs.
Editorial review is done by Claude Opus 5, not by a lawyer. Every guide is put back through the model as a reviewer rather than a writer, checked against a fixed rubric: factual errors, statements that over-claim where the answer actually depends on jurisdiction or wording, British rules presented as general ones, statements that have gone out of date, contradictions between the body and the FAQ, and missing caveats that could lead a reader into a costly decision. Each article carries the date it last passed that check.
What that is not. It is not legal sign-off. No qualified lawyer has read these guides, and an automated review — however rigorous the rubric — does not carry the accountability a named attorney does. Where a question turns on your jurisdiction or your specific facts, you need someone qualified there. We say this plainly rather than implying an endorsement nobody gave.
Where the clause checklists come from
Each contract type has a checklist of what a review examines and a list of the terms that most often cause problems. Those lists are built from three things: the clauses that recur across standard forms of that agreement, the terms that most frequently generate disputes, and what is customary in the market for that document type.
The checklists are the same ones the product runs. What you read in a guide is what the analysis actually looks for — the guide is not marketing written separately from the tool.
How claims about "market standard" are made
When a guide says a twelve-month non-solicit is normal and a five-year worldwide non-compete is not, that is a statement about prevailing commercial practice, not about enforceability in your jurisdiction. Those are different questions and the guides try to keep them separate.
Where enforceability genuinely varies — non-competes are the clearest case — the guides name the jurisdiction and the test that applies there rather than giving a single global answer.
What we deliberately do not do
- No invented statutes or case names. If a guide cannot state a rule accurately, it describes the general principle and says the answer depends on where you are.
- No manufactured urgency. A clean contract scores low and the guides say when a term is ordinary. A tool that flags everything is useless for deciding.
- No advice on live disputes. Everything here is about reading a document before you sign it.
Corrections
If a guide gets something wrong, tell us and we will fix it and note the change: joantonigrimalt@gmail.com. Corrections from lawyers are especially welcome — a specific example of a misread clause is more useful than a general complaint.
Updates
Every guide carries the date it was last reviewed. Areas that move — non-compete enforceability in particular, where rules have changed repeatedly at state and federal level — are revisited more often than settled ones.
How the product differs from the guides
A guide explains a clause in general. The product reads your document and quotes the actual wording with a line number, so you can check every claim against the text in front of you. That verification step is the point: don't trust it, check it.
Read a guide, or check your own contract
Or read the complete sample report first — published in full, including the contract it analyzed.