Give each contract finding the right form
A distribution agreement can place three different negotiation decisions inside a single clause. An overbroad grant of exclusivity may need a counterproposal. An undefined annual sales threshold may require an answer from the client. An acceptable notice period may need no intervention at all. If an AI-assisted review turns all three findings into rewritten prose, the output conceals the decisions that counsel and the counterparty need to see. The useful deliverable is not a supposedly improved copy of the agreement. It is a Word document in which each intervention has the right form: a tracked amendment, a native comment, or a deliberate absence of markup.
Assume the draft grants the distributor exclusivity for every product supplied in the territory throughout the agreement. The commercial instructions, however, support exclusivity only for a named product line and only while agreed performance conditions are met. This is not merely an issue to flag. The available information is sufficient to formulate a counterproposal. The broad product scope can be removed and replaced with the specified line. In Word, that intervention belongs in Track Changes so the recipient can see the deleted language, the proposed language, and the precise point at which the allocation of contractual rights changes.
A tracked amendment meets an unresolved sales threshold
A tracked amendment communicates more than the final wording of a sentence. It exposes the distance between the draft received and the position proposed. In the exclusivity example, deleting the reference to every product and inserting the relevant product line makes the negotiated issue visible. The same principle can apply to a liability limitation, purchasing commitment, or termination right: when alternative contractual language is sufficiently settled to be exchanged, it belongs in the redline. A clean rewritten copy forces the reader to reconstruct differences by comparing versions. Genuine Track Changes makes the difference itself the object of review and response.
The sales threshold calls for a different move. The clause may make exclusivity conditional on reaching an “annual sales threshold” without stating its value, currency, calculation method, or the consequence of partial performance. Without client instructions, inserting an assumed number would create a commercial position that has not been authorized. Drafting an elaborate mechanism would not cure the central unknown. The appropriate intervention is a native comment anchored to the relevant phrase: What threshold was agreed? How should it be measured? What follows if it is missed? The answer needs to come before the drafting, so changing the contractual text at this stage would be premature.
Comments and untouched wording serve different functions
A comment is not a weaker version of an amendment. It performs a different document-level function: it keeps an unresolved issue beside the text without pretending that the answer is already known. A comment can identify ambiguity, request a factual instruction, or explain why a legal point remains open. That distinction matters in an exchange because the counterparty and the client should be able to separate actual counterproposals from questions. Turning every question into contract language makes the redline appear more settled than it is. Reducing every counterproposal to a comment, meanwhile, withholds alternative wording that could have been accepted or revised.
The 30-day notice period illustrates the third move: preserve the wording. If the period matches the mandate and presents no identified issue, it should not be rewritten merely for stylistic consistency. Low-value editing can crowd the redline, invite negotiation where none is needed, and make consequential amendments harder to find. Leaving the text untouched is therefore not evidence that it escaped analysis. It is a substantive classification: the language has been considered and does not call for a counterproposal. A contract-review tool should distinguish between wording that could sound more elegant and wording that actually needs to move in negotiation.
The three-move decision rule in comment-only Word review
These three moves create a practical decision rule for each review finding. First ask whether the language presents an issue material to the instructed position. If it does not, leave it unchanged. If it does, ask whether the available facts and instructions support complete alternative wording. When they do, express the counterproposal as a tracked amendment. When they do not, place the unresolved question or reservation in a native comment. This classification avoids two opposite failures: speculative drafting that invents missing commercial choices, and an observation list that fails to advance the negotiation even where usable replacement language is already available.
Wisanna supports a comment-only Word review mode that adds native comments without changing the document text. It can be used for an initial annotated pass: the sales threshold can be marked for clarification while the exclusivity language and notice period remain unchanged in the body of the agreement. The resulting document separates questions from proposed drafting and preserves the draft as received. Each issue remains connected to the phrase that prompted it, but no unconfirmed answer is silently incorporated into the contractual language.
Selective application creates a negotiation-ready redline
Once open points have been resolved, lawyers can review proposed amendments in Wisanna and apply only the changes they accept as tracked changes. Wisanna can return a real Word document with genuine Track Changes while preserving tables and diagrams. In the distribution example, counsel can apply the revised exclusivity provision, decline another proposed amendment, and leave the acceptable notice period untouched. The suggestions do not have to enter the document as a package. Selective application determines which proposals become part of the redline that is ready to circulate.
Before that redline is sent, it should be read as a negotiation artifact rather than merely as the output of an analysis. Every insertion and deletion should state an intentional counterproposal. Every comment should contain a question or reservation that cannot yet responsibly be resolved in contractual language. Every untouched passage should require no negotiation. For the distribution clause, the final pattern is clear: amend the exclusivity scope, comment on the undefined sales threshold, and preserve the acceptable notice period. That discipline turns AI assistance into a usable Word deliverable instead of a rewrite that obscures what changed, what remains open, and what was deliberately left alone.
Turn contract findings into a usable Word redline
Wisanna lets lawyers add native comments, review proposed amendments, and selectively apply accepted language as genuine Track Changes.
See Wisanna's lawyer-controlled workflow