Practice note, February 28, 2025
Practice note: reviewing an NDA in four minutes without missing the assignment clause
The problem
The short version: reviewing an NDA in four minutes without missing the assignment clause is easier to get wrong than most teams assume, and the failure is usually silent.
The usual approach is to read for the obvious form of the issue and move on. That catches the clean cases. It misses the ones where the operative language sits somewhere other than where you expect, which in a negotiated document is most of the time.
What we do about it
The register is the deliverable. A finding without an owner and a date is an observation, not a control.
In the current build this runs as part of the standard pass, so it applies to every document in the set rather than only the ones someone thought to check.
Where it breaks
Scanned originals with poor image quality remain the weakest input. So do agreements that were assembled from three precedents and never reconciled, which is common in long-lived supplier relationships.
The practical takeaway is narrow: write the exception down, point it at a source, and give it an owner.
Working notes from the Lawrs team. General information about legal technology and practice, not legal advice.