We built Clause Shepherd because signing the wrong agreement can quietly wreck a month of work — and most people don't have a lawyer on speed dial. The product is simple: upload a contract, tell it your role, get a plain English read on where you actually stand before you sign.
Contracts hide the things that matter most in dense, deliberately formal language. Indemnification, unilateral termination, automatic renewal. These are the clauses that can cost you the most, and they're precisely the ones written to be skimmed past.
A proper legal review fixes that, but it's slow and expensive. Paying a lawyer to read every freelance agreement, MSA, or NDA simply isn't realistic, so people make a quiet trade: sign now, understand later, and absorb the risk in between.
Clause Shepherd closes that gap. Not by replacing a lawyer (we're upfront that we can't) but by giving you a careful, honest first read so you walk into the conversation knowing exactly what you're agreeing to.
Clause Shepherd is an AI-assisted contract reviewer. You upload a PDF or DOCX, choose your role, the contract type, and the governing law to read it under, and within a minute it produces a plain English analysis: a verdict (sign, negotiate, or seek counsel), drafted pushback language, and a downloadable report you can share or take to a lawyer.
The product is built around one idea — that understanding a contract should not depend on whether you can afford a $400 review. We translate the legalese; you make the call.
If a contract lands in your inbox and you're not quite sure what you're agreeing to, Clause Shepherd is for you. It works the same whether you sign one agreement a year or one a week.
Designers, photographers, and writers juggling client agreements between projects.
Consultants and agency owners negotiating scope, payment, and liability terms on every new client contract.
Owners signing client contracts, MSAs, and NDAs without an in-house legal team to check them first.
Anyone signing an NDA, a service agreement, or anything else with clauses in it.
Three principles run through every decision we make about the product — what to ship, what to charge for, what to leave out.
It translates legalese into language you'd actually use. Every flag comes with a plain English explanation of what the clause says, what it means in practice, and why it matters. No jargon left unexplained, no hedging dressed up as advice.
Your contracts are private. The file never leaves your browser — only the text is sent, it is discarded once your review is written, and the review itself is deleted whenever you ask. Never sold, never used to train AI models. Your business stays your business — full stop.
Professional-grade contract review shouldn't depend on your budget. Every plan, including the free one, gets a genuinely careful read; paying more buys a deeper analysis pass, not a first look you'd otherwise be denied.
A short list of things you'll never see from us — because they're how this kind of product usually goes wrong.
We're a careful reader, not a substitute for counsel. We say so plainly, every time.
A 9/10 risk gets a calm, specific explanation — not red sirens and shouting copy.
We never use your documents, reviews, or questions to train AI models, ours or anyone else's.
Plans, limits, and renewal terms are on the pricing page in plain English.
A snapshot of where the product is today. Numbers update as the service grows.
Clause Shepherd is built by a small team, kept deliberately small, based in San Francisco — engineers, designers, and a fractional general counsel who keeps us honest about what the product can and can't claim.
We're not part of some giant legal-tech platform. We're builders who got tired of watching friends sign agreements they hadn't really read, and who think the answer is a tool that respects both the document and the person reading it.
We use Clause Shepherd on our own contracts before anyone else sees it. If it isn't good enough to catch what we'd ask a lawyer about, it isn't good enough to ship.
Clause Shepherd helps you understand a contract. It does not — and legally cannot — make the final call for you. For decisions with real consequences, talk to a qualified lawyer in your jurisdiction. We try to be useful precisely because we know our limits.
Our analysis is informational and generated by AI. It is not a substitute for advice from a licensed attorney, and using Clause Shepherd does not create a lawyer–client relationship.
Questions about the product, our approach, partnerships, or anything else — a real person reads every message and writes back.
General questions, press, partnerships, or a stuck contract you want us to look at — we read everything.
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