DIY Legal Automation: Building a Simple Contract Auditor with Power Automate

The Legal Tech market is exploding. Tools like LexAudit Suite and Thomson Reuters Audit UI offer incredible power for analyzing thousands of contracts.

But for a boutique firm or a solo practitioner, paying $500+/month for enterprise software is often overkill.

In this post, I want to explore the "Build vs. Buy" decision and show you how to build a simple, "DIY" Contract Auditor using the Microsoft 365 tools you already pay for.

---

The Enterprise Landscape: When to "Buy"

If you are processing 500+ contracts a month, you should absolutely use a dedicated tool. Platforms like LexAudit AI offer:

• Pre-trained legal models (they know what "Indemnification" looks like in 50 jurisdictions).
• integrated e-Signature workflows.
• SOC2 Compliance out of the box.

But what if you just want to extract a 'Termination Date' from a PDF?

The DIY Alternative: When to "Build"

For simple, repetitive tasks, you can use Power Automate + AI Builder.

The Logic flow

Here is the exact architecture of a "DIY" auditor:

1. Trigger: A file is dropped into a SharePoint folder named _Incoming Contracts.
2. Action: Power Automate grabs the file content.
3. Intelligence: Send the text to AI Builder (or OpenAI API) with a specific prompt:

   "Extract the Termination Notice Period and Governing Law from the following text. Return as JSON."

4. Storage: Update the file's "Columns" in SharePoint with the extracted data.

Why Build This?

• Cost: You already own Power Automate.
• Customization: You define exactly what you want to extract.
• Data Ownership: The data never leaves your tenant (if using AI Builder).

A Simple Example: The "Expiry Alert"

One of the most useful automations I've built for clients is a simple Expiry Alert.

Instead of buying a CLM (Contract Lifecycle Management) tool, we simply:

1. Created a SharePoint Library.
2. Added a "Date" column called Contract_End_Date.
3. Built a Flow that runs every morning at 9 AM.
4. Condition: If Contract_End_Date is equal to (Today + 60 days).
5. Action: Email the Partner: "Heads up! The Smith Agreement expires in 60 days."

Conclusion

You don't always need a Ferrari to go to the grocery store. Start with simple, low-code automations to fix your immediate pain points. When you outgrow them, then look at the enterprise heavyweights.