Paste any job offer or freelance contract. AI reads it instantly and flags the clauses that should worry you — in plain English, before you sign away your rights.
Most people sign employment contracts and freelance agreements without reading them carefully — or without understanding what they've read. This is understandable: legal language is deliberately dense, and the pressure of a job offer or a new client feels urgent. But the clauses you skip over can have enormous consequences for your career, your income, and your ability to work in your field for years afterward.
This AI scanner reads your contract text and flags the clauses that most commonly cause problems for employees and freelancers. It's not a substitute for a lawyer on high-stakes agreements, but it gives you a clear picture of what you're agreeing to in plain language — and specific questions to ask before you sign.
Non-compete clauses are among the most consequential terms in any employment contract, and among the most frequently misunderstood. A broad non-compete can restrict you from working in your industry for 1–3 years after leaving — effectively preventing you from using your primary skills to earn a living. Many states limit or refuse to enforce non-competes (California refuses to enforce them at all), but you'd need to go to court to test enforceability, which is expensive and stressful even when you eventually win.
Intellectual property assignment clauses that extend beyond the scope of your employment are another major red flag. Reasonable IP assignment says the company owns work you create during your employment, using company resources, in the course of your duties. Problematic IP clauses claim ownership of everything you create during your employment — including personal projects, side work, and creative work done entirely on your own time with your own equipment. This is overreaching but surprisingly common.
Mandatory arbitration clauses waive your right to sue your employer in court or join a class action lawsuit. All disputes must instead go through private arbitration — a process that statistically favors employers over employees. Arbitration decisions are generally final and binding with limited appeal rights, and the proceedings are private rather than public record.
The most important question in any freelance contract is who owns the work you create. "Work for hire" language in a contract means the client owns everything you produce as if they created it themselves, and you have no rights to it whatsoever — not to use in your portfolio, not to modify, not to share. This is sometimes appropriate (clients paying for custom software or proprietary content) but worth understanding clearly before you agree.
Payment terms are another area where freelancers frequently get burned. Net-90 payment terms (meaning the client has 90 days to pay your invoice) are extreme but not uncommon in some industries. Combined with no late payment penalties and no right to stop work for non-payment, you can find yourself delivering months of work with no legal leverage to collect payment. Look for contracts that specify payment within 30 days, include late payment interest, and give you the right to stop work after invoices go unpaid.
The contract scanner uses Claude, Anthropic's AI model, to analyze your contract text and identify clauses that commonly create problems for the signing party. The AI has been trained on extensive legal and contract analysis data and can identify non-standard, one-sided, or legally risky language across a wide range of contract types.
The AI assigns each flagged clause a severity level: red flags are clauses that are clearly harmful or legally risky and should be negotiated or understood before signing; yellow flags are common clauses worth discussing or negotiating; green flags are terms that are genuinely favorable to you. The overall score (0–100) reflects the general contract quality, with higher scores indicating fewer and less serious concerns.
No. Your contract text is sent to our secure AI processing endpoint for analysis and is not stored on our servers. We don't log, save, or share the content you paste. That said, avoid pasting contracts containing sensitive personal information like Social Security numbers, bank details, or personal health information — redact those before scanning.
The scanner is highly accurate at identifying known red flag patterns — overly broad non-competes, problematic IP assignment, mandatory arbitration, unusual termination clauses, and so on. It's less reliable for highly jurisdiction-specific legal nuances or for novel contract structures it hasn't seen before. Use it as a first pass to identify areas requiring attention, not as a definitive legal opinion.
Yes, for anything significant. The worst realistic outcome is they say no and the offer stands. Most employers and clients expect negotiation and build room for it into their initial offers. Focus your negotiation energy on the highest-impact clauses: non-compete scope and duration, IP ownership, termination conditions, and payment terms. Small changes to these clauses can have enormous long-term impact.
The most common problematic clauses in employment contracts: overly broad non-compete clauses (covering a wide geography or industry for 2+ years), IP assignment that covers work done on your own time and personal equipment, mandatory arbitration that waives jury trial and class action rights, at-will termination with zero severance, vague job descriptions that allow unilateral role changes, and signing bonus clawback provisions that require repayment if you leave within 1–2 years.
Yes — select your jurisdiction and the AI will apply relevant legal context for that region. Coverage is strongest for US, UK, Canada, Australia, and EU contracts where the AI has the most training data. For other jurisdictions, the general contract analysis is still useful but specific legal standards may differ from what's flagged.
Yes — you don't need to paste the full document. If you're concerned about specific clauses, paste just those sections. The AI will analyze whatever text you provide. Longer text generally produces more thorough analysis, but even a few paragraphs of key clauses will generate useful output.
For high-stakes agreements — executive employment contracts, equity agreements, partnership agreements, or any contract where you'd be signing away significant rights or taking on significant obligations — a qualified employment or contract attorney is worth the investment. An attorney review typically costs $200–$500 for a standard employment contract and can save you far more than that in avoided problems. Use this scanner for initial screening, and escalate to an attorney when the stakes are high.
It depends entirely on your state. California, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Oklahoma refuse to enforce non-competes almost entirely. The FTC issued a rule in 2024 broadly banning non-competes, though its status has been contested in courts. Most other states enforce reasonable non-competes — with "reasonable" generally meaning limited in duration (under 1–2 years), geographic scope, and restricted activity. Signing a broad non-compete is risky even in states with limits, because testing enforceability requires litigation.