# Agent Instructions This documentation is published with GitBook. GitBook is the documentation platform designed so that both humans and AI agents can read, navigate, and reason over technical content effectively. Learn more at gitbook.com. ## Querying This Documentation This site has an agentic ask interface you may use to query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the following URL with the `ask` and `goal` query parameters: ``` GET https://operations.clausebase.com/index.md?ask=&goal= ``` `ask` is the immediate question: it should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. `goal` is what the user is ultimately trying to achieve, the reason they need the answer. Sharing it helps GitBook give you a better, more relevant answer. A goal is most helpful when it describes the outcome the user wants rather than restating the question. For example, with `ask=how do I create an API token`, a goal like `automate deployments from our CI pipeline` lets GitBook tailor the answer to that use case. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. --- # 30 October 2025 ## Doc Chat length Improvement In Doc Chat, you can now specify a short, medium-length or long answer (previously only "concise" could be selected). Your setting will be remembered between sessions until you log out.
*** ## User assets overview New feature There's a new flyout menu that allows administrators to immediately see the number of clauses, folders and documents owned by a particular user. These ownerships can also be reassigned to another user (e.g., before the user would be deleted).
## Export users list New feature The list of users can be exported to an Excel file that contains the first name, last name, email address, state (anonymous / disabled), groups and profiles of each user.
*** ## Show owner information Improvement The "Additional information" of a Quality Clause library now also shows the owner of a clause.
# 14 September 2025 ## New "Similar Clauses" module Major update The old "AutoSuggest" module has been rebranded to "Similar Clauses". It's not only completely rebuilt from scratch, but also significantly extended.
The new module hosts several new options (*please experiment with the Options dropdown button!*) and now features two very different modes: #### 1. Search for alternative clause This mode is similar to the old "AutoSuggest". Essentially, ClauseBuddy will find clauses that deal with a similar subject, or have similar content, as the clause you have currently selected in MS Word. As was the case with the old AutoSuggest, the typical use case is to **find inspiration** (e.g., during drafting or while negotiating) and quickly insert a new clause into your opened DOCX-document.
#### 2. Search for identical clauses In this mode, ClauseBuddy will search for clauses that are **as identical as possible** to the clause you've currently selected in MS Word. Up to 10 clauses will be returned, from either the Quality Library or the Truffle Hunt module. The typical use case is for **compliance tasks,** to check whether you've written a certain clause (or some text very similar to it) in the past. In this mode, ClauseBuddy will also immediately show you the comparison with all the differences (if any) to the currently selected text.
*** ## New Proofreading module Major update The Proofreading module has also been significantly changed.
The **user interface** has been redesigned, to provide a cleanear separation between the various sub-modules. The **definitions** checker now also involves Generative AI after the standard check. This combines the best of both worlds: ClauseBuddy first performs a standard check (very fast and exhaustive, but with some false negatives due to superficial intelligence), and then submits the results to a Large Language Model (slower, but smarter). Due to the fusion of both checks, ClauseBuddy can quickly and more accurately check very long documents. Two **additional checks** are done, and more are on the way! Errors in **number expansions to letters** — e.g. 5 (six) — are now flagged.
**Wrong weekdays** are flagged (e.g., 14th September 2025 is a Sunday instead of a Sunday).
# 7 September 2025 ## All-new, GenAI-driven Statistics module New feature There's a brand new statistics module in ClauseBuddy. It allows you to ask questions about your usage statistics in natural language. Behind the scenes, GenAI will then reformulate your question and have your data analysed and shown on the screen. On the opening page, you get some inspiration of what you can ask:
You can click any of these examples, or formulate your own prompt. The results you see, can also be presented as a list, or exported to Microsoft Excel.
{% hint style="info" %} To be clear: the GenAI-data only reformulates your prompt, it never gets access to your actual data. We also took many different layers of precautions to avoid that the data is properly "sandboxed", so prompts can never deliver the wrong data. {% endhint %} ## Save partial answers in Smart Templates & Clause9 New feature It's now possible for end-users to store the answers to a specific subsection ("card") of a questionnaire. Any number of answer-sets can be created per subsection; they are stored for individual users.
## @strikethrough, @subscript and @superscript special functions New feature These new special-functions allow delineated parts of a text to have ~~strikethrough~~, subscript and superscript formatting. Combined with the conditionality-options offered by Smart Templates and Clause9, this allows to dynamically decide about the formatting of text-fragments. # 29 June 2025 ## Deeper integration with iManage New feature While ClauseBuddy already integrated with iManage by allowing to *push* files from iManage to a Truffle Hunt basket, it was not yet possible to obtain files from iManage in the other modules of ClauseBuddy. ClauseBuddy now allows a much deeper integration. Essentially, everywhere you can upload documents in ClauseBuddy, you can now obtain those documents from iManage.
## Integration with Sharepoint / OneDrive New feature ClauseBuddy now deeply integrates with Sharepoint! The functionality is essentially the same as with iManage, see previous item.
## Integration with LawVu New feature ClauseBuddy now deeply integrates with LawVu! The functionality is essentially the same as with iManage, see previous item.
# 22 June 2025 ## Summarise Changes New feature ClauseBuddy now contains a new module that allows you to summarise changes (comments & track changes) inside of a DOCX-file. * The result is a grid (table) that groups all changes & comments across the entire document. * You can either start from an existing DOCX-file, or perform an adhoc-comparison of two existing files and use the differences between them as track changes. * You can specify the output language, answer length and grouping level.
The following introduction video gives a nice overview: {% embed url="" %} # 15 June 2025 ## New ClauseBuddy look & feel Improvement ClauseBuddy has a fresh new look. It now shows a top menu bar from which you can easily navigate to other modules. We also tweaked the colours to be more consistent.
## New welcome screen New feature ClauseBuddy features an entirely new and helpful welcome page. * At the top, it shows the four modules you most recently used. * In the search box, you can ask a natural-language question (with auto-suggest).
For example, when asking *Draft legal document with a questionnaire*, ClauseBuddy's AI will provide the following helpful answer, referring to the various modules offered by ClauseBuddy that could be useful.
We are convinced that this assistant will support users in understanding & using the wealth of ever-increasing functionality available in ClauseBuddy. ## Automatic rewriting of entire text fragments New feature The new *Apply rules to selected text* feature allows users to automatically rewrite some selected text in order to make it compliant with the visible playbook rules. For example, when selecting some text and then clicking on the purple button at the bottom...
... ClauseBuddy will automatically insert both a force majeure clause and insert a governing law clause, in order for the text to meet the rules shown in red above.
As the rewriting happens with layout-awareness, this new feature can be truly revolutionary, as it allows to **revise & redraft an entire agreement in mere clicks**. {% hint style="info" %} Due to LLM over-taxing concerns, we currently limit this features to 200 paragraphs. Once LLMs get better, we will raise this limit. {% endhint %} ## Filter playbook rules by text selection New feature When selecting the new *"Text selection only"* mode, you can get an overview of all the playbook rules that are relevant for the current text selection. For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that only the rules relating to the *Entire Agreement* clause are shown. This allows lawyers to go through a document on a clause-by-clause basis, to check which rules are (not) complied with by each clause. The default mode (*"Entire document"*) is still available, for approaching the review from the perspective of the rules instead.
## Improved Write & Rewrite module Improvement We revised the Write & Rewrite modules, to act even more as a "specialised drafting room" for legal professionals. For example, when seleting an existing clause in a contract...
... you will get a new version with changes highlighted:
You can draft as many other versions as you like, each time drafting a new prompt. You can even mix & match paragraphs between versions. Users can also upload attachments (even Excel-files, Outlook emails or Powerpoint-slides) to provide as inspiration towards the LLM. ## Automatic placeholder filling New feature By checking the *Fill placeholders* checkbox, users can automatically fill placeholders with any information found in uploaded attachments.
Perhaps even more interesting is the automatic connection to the various corporate entity registers in each jurisdiction. As long as the AI can infer the country, the address, entity type, company number, etc. will be automatically filled in:
Even without any additional instruction (just check the *Fill placeholders*) this will result in a new version with all the placeholders automatically filled in:
When there is ambiguity about which entity specifically, a selection screen will be shown:
## New Document Cleanup module New feature There's a new *Document Cleanup* module. With just a few clicks, it allows users to automatically perform cleaning operations such as: * Removing empty spaces * Removing metadata * Swapping track changes authors * Adding a watermark * Appending some other document before or after All of these operations can also be stored as a workflow that can be saved (or even published within the team) for easy reuse later.
# 31 May 2025 ## Bulk comparison improvements The bulk comparison module was revised, to show its results differently. Improvements The results are now shown as a true "heatmap", with different shades of yellow, to indicate how many documents changed the affected paragraph.
When a paragraph is clicked on, details will be shown of the exact changes that were made to the paragraph.
New feature Users can then click one of the results to get a bilateral comparison with the base document:
New feature Users can also immediately export a ZIP file with all individual comparisons (i.e. between the base file and every single version):
## Filter review results Improvement Users can now filter reviewing results by their status, so that — for example — no requirements are shown that are fully met (shown in green). The filtering also applies to the exported results.
## Faster PDF conversions New feature Converting PDF files usually takes 5 to 60 seconds. Converted PDF files are now stored for a few days in a secure file vault, in order to speed up any future use of that same PDF file. ## Bulk creation of new users New feature In order to speed up the onboarding of large legal teams, we have introduced a new feature that allows to create new users by uploading an Excel-file that contains all necessary details for the new users.
## Upgraded to GPT4.1 Improvements All legal teams — except for those committed to a specific other LLMs — have now been upgraded to OpenAI's GPT4.1, hosted on Microsoft Azure in either Sweden (for European customers) or the United States. GPT4.1 is [faster, more up-to-date with facts, and can handle larger amounts of text](https://openai.com/index/gpt-4-1/), and is therefore a recommended default for every team. ## New Clause9 special functions New feature The following special functions were added to Clause9, all related to cross-references with subtle differences: [@ref-full-context](https://help.clause9.com/special-functions/references#ref-full-context) inserts a cross-reference that works like the '*Paragraph number (full context)'* cross-reference in MS Word: the full context (of a multi-level list) of the referenced item is shown. [@ref-no-context](https://help.clause9.com/special-functions/references#ref-no-context) inserts a cross-reference that works like the '*Paragraph number (no context)*' cross-reference in MS Word: only the number of the actual level the referenced item has is shown. [@ref-relevant-context](https://help.clause9.com/special-functions/references#ref-relevant-context) inserts a cross-reference that works like the '*Paragraph number*' cross-reference in MS Word. What gets inserted as a number will depend on the position of the cross-reference. ## Direct copying of clauses on Mac Improvements Due to security restrictions enforced by Apple when using ClauseBuddy inside of MS Word on a Mac, it was not always possible to copy clauses to the clipboard. This has now been resolved. ## Standalone MultiDocumentTable & Checklists modules Improvement Given their popularity among users, the MultiDocumentTable module and Checklists modules are now turned into their own, separate modules. (Previously they were part of the Doc Chat and Write & Rewrite modules).
# 27 April 2025 ## Interactively changing clause levels New feature ClauseBuddy now allows users to interactively change the "level" that text gets inserted into a Word-file. This avoids that users would have manually change the numbering by altering the DOCX-file. By default, text gets inserted at the top-level (level 1), which will result in a clause with number 10 in the screenshot below.
Immediately after insertion, while the insertion-menu is still visible in ClauseBuddy, users can now changing this level. For example, when changing to level 2 (simply by clicking on the number), the numbering of the inserted article will get changed to 9.7
Users can also interactively toggle the title through the popup-menu.
Also interesting to note: * This interactivity also works for text inserted with "track changes" enabled. * Users can also interactively change whether footnotes and cross-references must be inserted. * Due to technical limitations, it is not possible to replace previously inserted text when using ClauseBuddy in Outlook. Accordingly, with every level change, additional text will be inserted, so users will have to manually remove previously inserted text. ## Bilateral company registry connections Improvement For Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, we now directly connect to the national company registries in order to do lookups for names, addresses and company numbers. While we still use a centralised cross-jurisdiction third party service for all other countries, we are gradually connecting directly to national registries. The primary reason is that the cross-jurisdiction services are often slow to update and are more prone to errors. Additionally, these cross-jurisdiction services do not take into account all the specifics of certain countries. For example, for Belgium, companies may have different street names and entity type names in Brussels, so the same company would be shown differently in French & Dutch: When a Q\&A would be set to French or English, the company would be shown as follows:
... but if the Q\&A would be set to Dutch, the very same company would be shown as:
## Caching of converted PDF-files Improvement Users are increasingly uploading PDF-files in different modules of ClauseBuddy. Unfortunately, the conversion of PDF-files to DOCX can take quite a while (often up to a minute), which is particularly impacting the user's experience when the same PDF-file gets uploaded multiple times, e.g. in different modules of ClauseBuddy or at different times throughout the day. We therefore added a caching layer. Converted PDF-files will be stored at ClauseBase's servers for 8 hours, so that they do not need to converted when used again within this time period. ## Improvements to Multi-Document Table Improvements Several changes were made to this increasingly popular module. The feature to "constrain" answers was relabelled to "**multiple choice**", as this was how most users perceived it. Furthermore, different choices will now have customisable **colour coding**, so it will be immediately clear to which predefined category a certain answer belongs: For example, when specifying the following options for "Applicable law":
The results table will show:
Answers can also be **edited** afterwards, e.g. to make small corrections during a quick review phase.
The **question type** of existing questions can be changed afterwards (except when predefined options were inserted already). For multilingual contexts, the **language** in which answers must be formulated, can now be specified upfront.
**Additional instructions** can be communicated towards the LLM, e.g. to specify how results must be formulated. ## Improvements to Doc Chat Improvements Several changes were made to this module. First, upon popular request, **multiple documents** can now be uploaded at once, so users can interrogate them simultaneously.
Users can also **export** the chat session (answers & questions) to a Word-file, if desired with a customised layout.
Third, interactive notes (circled numbers) will appear with relevant references to the paragraphs in the document (opened DOCX-file or uploaded DOCX/PDF file) that were used by the Artificial Intelligence engine to formulate its answer.
## Recently used modules Improvement In ClauseBuddy, the navigation menu now shows the four most recently modules, to allow users to easily switch back-and-forth between frequently used modules.
## Clause9: identifiers panel New feature The new [*Identifiers* pane](https://help.clause9.com/qna/identifiers-pane) allows you to get a centralised overview of all the identifiers that are assigned to cards and questions. While you can go to each individual card and question and check/assign its identifier, this will be inefficient when you are dealing with a large number of identifiers. ## Clause9: launch other Q\&As New feature Clause9 now allows you to launch one or more Q\&As from within the current Q\&A, typically for scenarios where multiple documents are closely linked and you want to reuse answers from one Q\&A in a subsequent Q\&A. For example, for corporate law, you may want to create an initial set of questions, and then create launch buttons to create a shareholder agreement, a set of bylaws, some governmental forms that must be completed, etc. The answers from the initial Q\&A will then be copied into all those other Q\&As.
## @float, @int and @cache special functions Special functions to [convert text to floating-point numbers](https://help.clause9.com/special-functions/text-structure#float) or [plain numbers](https://help.clause9.com/special-functions/text-structure#int) were added. In addition, in very specialised circumstances with heavy processing being done inside the browser, calculations can be cached through the [@cache](https://help.clause9.com/special-functions/special-items-1#cache) special function. ## API: exporting documents as webhooks Improvement The API [now allows](https://help.clause9.com/dev/custom-functions#export-of-documents) to create dynamic export-buttons that can export the current Q\&A's document as HTML, DOCX or PDF. In the exported data, the e-signing position of signature boxes can be optionally specified. # 30 March 2025 ## Doc Chat New major feature The former "DocAnswer" module has been replaced by the "[Doc Chat](https://help.clausebuddy.com/artificial-intelligence/doc-chat)" feature. This new module allows you to interactively "interrogate" your opened document — or one or more other PDF/DOCX files — with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI). In addition, you can also ask generic legal questions. Doc Chat is "layout-aware". If its answer consists of texts that you will likely want to insert into your opened MS Word document, then those answers are shown in green, and can usually be inserted without any layout configuration necessary.
*** ## Multi-Document Table New major feature In addition to chatting with a single document, we also introduced a module that allows you to extract information from multiple documents (PDF/DOCX) at once. The new [Multi-Document Table](https://help.clausebuddy.com/artificial-intelligence/multi-document-chat) feature allows you to ask multiple questions about multiple documents at once. You then get back a table with the answer to each question for each of your documents, which you can then optionally export to an Excel-file or table in MS Word.
By hovering with your mouse over an answer (or one the numbered references next to a question), you can immediately see the relevant original paragraphs.
*** ## Bulk Operations New major feature The new [Bulk Operations](https://help.clausebuddy.com/operations/bulk-operations) module allows you to perform multiple *operations* simultaneously across one or more Word-files or PDF-files, in order to handle tedious editing tasks that would otherwise require many multiple mouse clicks — or even multiple hours. For example, you can: * Bundle 16 different DOCX-files together into one single DOCX or PDF. * Create a table with all 635 paragraphs (across 23 long documents) that contain certain keywords. * Update the same paragraph with some payment term across twenty different templates. * Within fifteen different annexes, accepting all track changes, removing metadata, and making sure that all footers say "Execution Copy" instead of "For discussion purposes only". More than 30 different operations are available, and we are actively thinking about yet other ones. You are highly encouraged to check out the [extensive manual](https://help.clausebuddy.com/operations/bulk-operations)! *** ## Automatically include new rights in profiles New feature At ClauseBase, we very frequently add new functionality. However, not all customers want their users to automatically have access to all new features, because the pace of the introduced changes may be too high. Such customers can set profiles to *not* automatically include new rights, i.e. to not automatically give access to newly introduced features.
*** ## Personal Truffle Hunt baskets New feature In the *New user defaults*, you can now enable the option [**Person Truffle baskets**](https://help.clausebuddy.com/inspiration/managing-baskets#personal-baskets). When activated, this will automatically create a personal basket under Truffle Hunt for each user.
*** ## Various AutoSuggest improvements Improvement The AutoSuggest module now features the following improvements with respect to Quality Library clauses: The contents of a clause can be **directly edited** through the edit button (assuming the end-user has sufficient rights to do so).
Through the **"..." menu**, users can get more information about the clause, such as the clause's internal number and last modification date.
When multiple "[search folders](https://help.clausebuddy.com/administration/managing-folders#about_folders_search_folders)" are available, the **name of the search folder** is being included at the left.
Users can **switch to the relevant folder** in the Quality Library's browser module, by clicking on the folder name.
*** ## Translations in the Quality Library (& AutoSuggest) Improvement Temporary translations of clauses in the Quality Library can now be achieved through the wrench-icon. Previously, this was only available for Truffle Hunt clauses or by actually editing a quality library's clause.
*** ## Send entire clause to curator Improvement ClauseBuddy's *Send to curator* feature was initially designed for submission speed, i.e. allow a user to send a potentially interesting clause to the curator with as little overhead as possible, and let the curator work out the details. Over time, however, customer shave asked to also include a possibility for users to include all relevant details, so that interested end-users can convey clause details that the curator will then no longer have to figure out (e.g., a suggested location, title, attributes, etc.) The *Send to curator* module therefore includes both options now: *Minimal* and *Full*.
Furthermore, upon submission of a new clause, the end-user will also get a **warning** when a clause already seems present in the clause library. This may help in avoiding unnessary clauses being sent to the curator. *** ## Summarisation of other PDF/DOCX files New feature In addition to summarising the currently opened DOCX-file, the Summarisation module now also allows to summarise entire PDF/DOCX-files that are uploaded.
*** ## Small administration improvements Improvements The Truffle Hunt, Users management and Groups management modules now allow you to **filter on the name of the user**. This should help customers with many users to quickly find the relevant user. In addition, the left & right panes can now be independently moved, and the active user is being shown with a darker background.
The access bundles settings now allow you to additionally inspect the personal access bundles (i.e. access bundles linked to one specific person). Previously, those access bundles were only accessible from Clause9.
*** ## Text compare improvements Improvement When two blocks of text were very different from each other, but nevertheless shared a few words, then ClauseBuddy's comparison algorithm compared those texts anyway — often resulting in highly "fragmented" comparisons. From a technical perspective this was correct, but for human consumption this was often suboptimal. A new algorithm was developed to avoid this fragmentation. Even when a few words are identical, the new algorithm only dives into actually comparing blocks of texts when they are truly comparable. In addition, there's a clear warning shown when the texts are simply too different to be interesting to compare.
*** ## Small ClauseBuddy improvements Improvements The **Strict?** setting (for literal searches, instead of smart semantic searches) is now remembered across ClauseBuddy sessions. When the user has **activated track changes** in MS Word, every insertion coming from ClauseBuddy would end up as a change. To avoid confusion, ClauseBuddy now disables *Insert with changes* in such situation, and shows a warning explaining why.
Because users increasingly **process large PDF-files** with ClauseBuddy, the PDF processing server is now upgraded to allow for faster PDF-processing. In addition, the maximum processing time (before an error is generated) is increased from max. 5 minutes to max. 15 minutes. *** ## Clause9 improvements Improvements A new setting "**Allow rows to break across pages**" was added to the table settings inside the Base styling.
The **file usage** dialog has been improved to help advanced users: * It is now shown at the right-side, so that you can continue to browser through files on the left side. * It includes a *Refresh* button that allows you to recalculate the usage after changes have been made. * You can keep a temporary checklist that allows you to track which usages you have inspected or changed. * You can directly edit one of the target files that is mentioned.
Subdocuments of a binder can now have a "**Don't restart numbering**" setting configured, which avoids that the numbering of headings would get restarted in that specific subdocument.
Based on a penetration testing recommendation, the **password** of a user can only be changed when the current password is also entered. The [**@is-unique** special function](https://help.clause9.com/special-functions/lists#is-unique) was added. It has an advanced use case, roughly equivalent to being the opposite of the @is-duplicate special function. *** ## REST API additions New feature The REST API was expanded with the following end-points: * **/create\_folder**: specify folder name + parent folder ID, get back the new folder’s ID * **/create\_clause**: create simple clauses through the API * **/create\_document**: create simple documents through the API * **/create\_qna**: create simple Q\&As through the API * **/create\_qna\_answerset**: create a set of answers for a specified Q\&A, and store it in a specified folder. Get back the answer set’s file ID * **/qna\_answerset**: get the answers of an existing Q\&A answerset * **/qna\_questions**: get the essentials of each question in a Q\&A (with questions being grouped per card) * **/delete\_file:** to delete any folder, clause, document, Q\&A or Q\&A answerset. *** ## Removed features At ClauseBase, we're not afraid to admit that some features don't turn out the way we initially assumed they would. Accordingly, it sometimes also happens that features get removed: * The **Bulk Import** module allowed to upload a selection of documents (typically 1 to 10) and then have them analysed for interesting clauses. Clauses that would match across documents could be easily lined up and extracted. \ \ This feature assumed that legal professionals were interested in spending time on carefully selecting the best clauses from a list of slightly different versions found in their drafting history, and then in a second step curating them as part of their Quality Library. However, even though clause effectively discrepancies exist in virtually every organisation we worked with (so that lining up similar clauses should be a relevant exercise), our assumption about the importance of this process, was wrong. \ \ As this feature dated back from before the arrival of Truffle Hunt and GenAI, it has now been removed. Features that partially fulfil the same role include [Truffle Hunt itself](https://help.clausebuddy.com/inspiration/clauses-mode) (i.e., automatic splitting of documents into clauses) and [filtering Truffle Hunt clauses with AI](https://help.clausebuddy.com/inspiration/process-results-with-ai#optimize-search-results-truffle-hunt) in order to find the best clauses. Furthermore, the Quality Library now also incorporates features that warn if similar clauses get added. * The **Explain** feature (one of our earliest Generative AI modules) allowed to explain selected text. As exactly the same functionality can be achieved through the new Doc Chat functionality, it has been removed. # 10 February 2025 ## Layout-aware drafting Improvement We continue to tweak our new layout engine (launched in [January](/updates-january-2025/18-january-2025)) that allows users to insert clauses and redraft text while respecting the layout of the opened document. We are proud to say that the majority of legal documents "in the wild" are now handled with resonable layout settings. Due to the nature of legal documents — most tend to have mediocre to very bad layouts, technically speaking — it will never be possible to provide perfection, but ClauseBase goes significantly beyond what everyone else (including Microsoft's CoPilot) is doing with plaintext-only. Read more about this in our [news flash](https://www.clausebase.com/post/clausebuddy-achieves-layout-awareness). ## AutoCheck New major feature In the Write & Rewrite module, users can now initiate an AutoCheck or AutoPolish action, for zero-effort rewriting of existing documents. In **AutoCheck**, users must simply select which parties they are acting for (e.g., the customer vs. the supplier, or the employee or the employer).
With the help of the built-in legal intelligence of the LLMs, ClauseBuddy will then present a fully automated markup of the selected text. For example, the following suggestions are made if acting for the Licensee:
This works best for documents that are well-known to LLMs and are not too jurisdiction-dependent — for example, the various types of commercial agreements. If any guidance must be provided to the LLM, or background knowledge is required for the LLM to understand the contract, then playbook-based or checklist-based workflows must instead be considered. ## AutoPolish New major feature ClauseBuddy now allows users to perform automated proofreading of texts, with automatic changes being applied.
With *Only correct obvious errors*, ClauseBuddy will instruct the LLM to only correct, well, the very obvious errors — similar to what a senior would ask from a junior, as a last review before a document is sent to the counterparty. For example, the following changes are then made:
The use case of this feature is to go beyond Word's standard spellcheck and grammar check, which does not truly "understand" text and only focuses on well-known problems. The *Correct errors and optimise wording* goes beyond this. With this option, the LLM will also propose various optimisations. This is the equivalent of asking a native speaker or editor to go through your final text — expect many things where you are positively surprised, but also expect many changes that you don't agree to. ## Checklists New major feature Any reviewing rules that are created can now also be used for "checklists". Checklists are intended for legal professionals and/or legal documents for which the fully automated reviewing process is not desired. Those fully automated reviews are most suitable for reviewing relatively short, easy-to-medium complexity documents that can be sufficiently standardised so that rules ("playbooks") can be written for a machine to understand. Conversely, complex deals and highly variable documents are not yet the primary candidates for fully automated reviews. In addition, many legal professionals don't trust those reviews yet, and instead want to go through documents themselves. For those situations, checklists are a perfect balance between the traditional reviewing process (no LLM involved) and the new-style reviewing process (everything through LLMs). The idea is that legal teams prepare a standard checklist in advance, and that legal professionals then go through their document and the checklist, checking and annotating the checklist as you go. * Individual items of a checklist can easily serve as the basis for a rewrite with the LLM. * Checklists can be saved and reloaded at any point. * The checklists can be completely customised. * The output of automated legal reviews can serve as a new (partially completed) checklist. * We provide 32 sample checklists of various legal documents, to give legal teams a starting point.
## Sample checklists & playbooks New feature We provide a list of 32 sample playbooks that can serve as starting point for reviewing sets and/or checklists. The idea is that those checklists are discussed internally within the legal team, customised where necessary (mostly by deleting) and then uploaded to ClauseBuddy, where they will be immediately converted to a "review category", ready to be used for automated reviewing and/or checklist-based reviewing.
## Automatic import of existing playbooks New feature Existing playbooks can now be converted into ClauseBuddy's playbook-format, ready to be used in automated reviews or checklist-based reviews. * Either users can **upload an entire DOCX file**, if the document has a structure that resembles ClauseBuddy's own samples (i.e. with a group title in Heading 1 style and the actual rule in Heading 2). * Or users can **select text from their currently opened Word-file** and have the LLM extract the rules intelligently.
## Custom report layouts New major feature It is now possible to use custom layouts for the reports exported from an automated review, as well as various other exported documents (such as summaries and checklist reports). As an admin, you can actually upload multiple templates (e.g., for different departments or clients) through the *Settings > Export Templates*.
All those documents you upload there, will become part of the dropdown list for end-users.
## New types of review rules New major feature There are two new types of elements that can be added to a review category: * **Information extraction** allows you to ask the LLM to simply extract data (e.g., the name of the signatories, or the geographical location of the real estate that’s being sold, or ...). The LLM will report this data as the first elements in its output (also exported to your report), and even tell you if there are ambiguities in what it found. * **Literal text matching** allows you to look for literal matches of text, e.g. literal fragments of some legislation that must (or must not be) present in the document. \ \ *Background: these rules are NOT passed to the LLM — instead, they are executed through traditional text matching — because LLMs are very bad in searching for literal text in a large document.*
## Customisation of predefined prompts New major feature Large organisations will be happy to hear that they can now customise the predefined redrafting prompts. As an admin, you can now configure which redraft examples should be shown to the end-user at the bottom of the “Redraft” panel in the Write & Rewrite panel. There are quite some configuration options: you can for example show/hide the ClauseBase system defaults, or show different examples for different departments, and/or have firm-wide examples. You can also configure the ordering of each of those.
## Personal truffle baskets New feature Organisations can now add personal truffle baskets for everyone (also future users).
## Improved quality during reviewing Improvement After many test sessions and with the help of the feedback from many customers, we have been able to increase the quality of the automated reviews being done by the LLMs. In particular: * You can now have reviewing sets of unlimited length. Previously long lists often caused the LLMs to get overloaded so that their responses were poor, but this has been resolved now (at the expense of more "token" usage and somewhat slower responses). * You can set a "quality" indicator (through the ... icon in the top-right corner during review). This can be useful if individual requirements are very complex to understand for the LLM. Setting the quality to "high" will cause ClauseBuddy to be more cautious about what it sends to the LLM. * We have rearchitected the way clauses are being referenced. Previously, the LLM would often refer to too many paragraphs when it got confused due to the amount of information to process. # 18 January 2025 ## Write & rewrite New major feature The former “Draft” and “Redraft” modules have been merged into a new “Write & Rewrite” module.
The new module performs a **deep layout analysis** of the opened MS Word document, to **preserve the layout and numbering** when (re)drafting clauses. It provides a "**playground**" to experiment with your (re)drafting, without making changes to the opened Word-document. Once a clause is drafted from scratch, or an existing clause is redrafted, you can still tweak the results with redrafts of one or more selected clauses. The new module is **multi-tabbed**, allowing you to create new tabsheets to play around. When drafting, it takes into account the surrounding paragraphs (or even the entire document when the *“Include document context”* checkbox is checked). More detailed information in [ClauseBuddy's manual](https://help.clausebuddy.com/artificial-intelligence/write-and-rewrite). # 6 January 2025 ## Search result optimisations in Truffle Hunt New major feature You can now use GenAI to refine your search results. By clicking on *“Optimize search results”* button and then optionally adding an additional prompt, all your results will be sent to an LLM, who will then intelligently match your search query + prompt with your search results, and have the results automatically be reordered for relevance.
Moreover, the LLM will add interesting highlights in the search results, to allow you to quickly see why certain results are indeed relevant. You can particularly use this as an intelligent additional filter. For example, if you’re looking for a specific type of content, you can submit this as your additional prompt. Going forward, the best strategy is to do a rough query first and then refine your results, either by comparing them with “Extract legal features”, or by using the new “Optimize search results”. (If you’re wondering: the reason for this two-step approach is that LLMs are simply too slow to do the initial selection, and they are not able to handle thousands of clauses. You must therefore feed them a more limited set.) ## Search result optimisations in AutoSuggest New major feature The “Extract legal features” option is now also possible in the keyword-based search mode of the Quality Library. (Previously, for technical reasons, it was only available in the Browse-mode. (You’ll also notice that we slightly rearranged the icons here.)
*** ## Better DOCX layout insertions New major feature While competing software packages simply copy/insert plain text, ClauseBuddy always tried to go the extra mile, by doing a “guesstimate” of the documents’ layout, and/or offering the possibility to customers to define their own custom house-styling. This worked reasonably fine for documents with good layout... which unfortunately only represent perhaps 30% of all legal documents. After months of development, we now introduce **a new layout engine that performs a very deep analysis of the active Word-document**. The results are much better, particularly for documents with poor layout. Furthermore, everything is faster and works without any server/LLM involvement, which is important from a security perspective. Some examples: Titles that split in the middle are usually correctly used:
“Embedded titles” (e.g. definitions with the term in bold) are usually recognised as such:
ClauseBuddy does not fix bad layouts, and has to do a lot of guessing, so this simply cannot be perfect and will still go wrong often. But usually the results are usually at least “OK”. A few additional changes to mention: * To reduce clutter, the *“Insert with changes”* option only appears when some text is selected in MS Word * There’s always a Copy button (to copy in plaintext), but be aware that it doesn’t work for Truffles on Mac (error message). * When inserting paragraphs between manually numbered paragraphs, the number deliberately shows up in red to highlight that
* The icons at the bottom are simplified; the few relevant options are accessed through a submenu.
# 1 December 2024 ## Export Q\&As New feature In Clause9's Q\&A editor, you can now export the categories, cards, conditions, questions and predefined answers to a DOCX-file.
The typical use case is to allow external editors (e.g., reviewers) to learn the structure of a Q\&A.
## Cross-tags New feature In Clause9's Assemble Document module, there's a new *Cross-tags* panel. This panel shows all the cross-tags that are available in the document and allows you to navigate to both the clauses/documents that implement this cross-tag, and the clauses that refer to those cross-tags.
## Allow Shift & Control-click in user lists Improvement In lists of users (e.g., members of a Group or Profile) you can now Shift-click to select a contiguous range of users and Control-click (Alt-click on Mac) to selectively add/remove individual users. This allows much quicker configurations of large user configurations. ## Filename separately stored in Truffle Hunt Improvement In Truffle Hunt, we now store the filename of uploaded DOCX/PDF files separately from the title of the document. Previously, the filename was only stored when no title was found inside the document (either within the metadata, or within the document's contents). ## User interface tweaks to the Summarise module Improvement The arrangement of the main toolbar buttons, configuration panel and save dialog box are slightly changed. ## @subdoc-crosstags special function New feature The `@subdoc-crosstags` [special function](https://help.clause9.com/special-functions/references#subdoc-crosstags) allows you get an overview of all the cross-tags of all enabled subdocuments in a Binder. These crosstags can then be used for other purposes, e.g. for compiling an inventory of subdocuments. # 16 November 2024 ## Reviewing improvements Improvement ClauseBuddy's reviewing module now shows results in four categories (red, orange, light green or dark green), instead of previously only two categories (red or green). In our tests with the LLMs, we noticed that this differentiation nudges the LLMs towards better assessments.
In addition, base on our customer's feedback, we now show a *Status* button, that allows the human reviewer to indicate his/her assessment of a certain rule. This allows legal professionals to better keep track of their own reviews. The status is also exported in the report generated through the *Export* button.
## Save adapted clause New feature In ClauseBuddy's Quality Library, you can now click on the *Save as...* button to immediately save a clause that was re-written by the LLM, as some other version.
## Searching for numbers Improvement In both the Quality Library and Truffle Hunt, you can now search for numbers (e.g., 2016) and compound words. As for the latter, for example, when searching for *95/46/EC,* ClauseBuddy will correctly find and highlight this compound word.
Previously, due to technical limitations, numbers were largely ignored in the Quality Library and only partially supported in Truffle Hunt. # 9 November 2024 ## Multi-summaries New feature In the *Summaries* module of ClauseBuddy, you can now create "multi-summaries". Those summaries consist of a concatenation of individual summaries, applied together on one document. For example, assume you are a legal counsel who has to provide an overview of every contract for which you sign off, in which you have to list (1) all deadlines mentioned in the clauses; (2) all interest rates; and (3) all partner companies co-signing the agreement. With the help of the multi-summaries tool, you can now perform this in one go, instead of having to run several summaries after each other.
## Semantic Search Improvement The *Semantic Search* part of DocAnswer has been upgraded to make use of the additional intelligence layers we [introduced in October](https://operations.clausebase.com/updates-october-2024/20-october-2024#enhanced-clause-search-intelligence). Essentially, you can now specify a search query, and DocAnswer will provide a list of all parts of the document that are semantically associated with the search term. For example, when searching for "GPDR" in a license agreement, the software will not only show a definition that literally contains this term, but also a clause that does not mention this term exactly. This semantic search facility is still ideal for situations where MS Word's literal search capabilities fall short — so you should try it when you're quickly searching for something in a long document and your literal search doesn't deliver any results. Unlike the *"Ask Questions"* part of DocAnswer, it does not involve any LLM.
## Chunking (API) New feature Our API now provides an endpoint for "chunking" a document, i.e. split it into pieces (usually clauses, but potentially also other types of divisions). This allows for intelligent splitting of documents, which can help to have LLMs analyse your documents. ## Rate limitations To protect against programming errors or abuse, Clause9, ClauseBuddy and the API now include automatic rate limitations. When a certain customer or user is over-using the server, an error will thus be generated. In normal situations, you should never encounter these errors — if you do and you are affected by it, please let us know. # 2 November 2024 ## Individual proxy clauses New feature In ClauseBuddy, it is now possible to create a "proxy" to an individual clause, i.e. similar to a shortcut to a file in Windows that allows you to easily navigate to a certain file from within a different folder. Applied to the legal world, this would for example allow you to create a generic confidentiality-clause that would not only be stored inside of a generic folder with all types of confidentiality clauses, but also (through proxies) inside of a folder regarding *additional obligations for vendors*, inside of a folder regarding *compliance*, inside of a folder regarding *obligations that survive the contract*, etc. Previously, it was already possible to create a proxy *folder* (through the *Manage-folders* administration module). However, it was not possible to create proxies to an individual clause
# 20 October 2024 ## Support for Noxtua LLM New feature The ClauseBase platform can now make use of [Noxtua](https://www.noxtua.ai), an LLM dedicated to the legal community. Any customer can make use of Noxtua in addition to the standard GPT4 LLM. Noxtua is Europe’s first sovereign Legal AI. Noxtua meets the strict requirements of performance, reliability, and professional secrecy, going even beyond the GDPR in protecting sensitive data. *** ## Enhanced clause search intelligence Improvement The ClauseBase platform now features upgraded clause search intelligence in the Quality Library, Truffle Hunt and AutoSuggest! The new smart searches are now the default search mode, with a keyword-based search as the optional fallback. For example: * You do not have to worry about using exactly matching keywords - synonyms will work fine.
* You can paraphrase what you're looking for, and get good results.
* You can search in one language, yet get results back in another language
{% hint style="info" %} These smart searches **do not rely on any external LLM** (Large Language Model), as this would not only be too slow across thousands of clauses, but could also be problematic for some of our customers. Instead, this is based on an internally hosted model. {% endhint %} *** ## Deep Compare improvements New feature The Deep Compare feature now shows a percentge with the textual similarity between paragraphs. With the click of a button, you can [compare two texts](https://help.clausebuddy.com/compare/deep-compare#comparing-text). In addition, you can now [check & uncheck checkboxes](https://help.clausebuddy.com/compare/deep-compare#checkboxes) next to each extracted legal features, to indicate during a legal review that you've processed that legal feature. # 13 October 2024 ## Clause duplication New feature In ClauseBuddy, clauses can now be duplicated into any location accessible to the current user.
## Editable clause hierarchies New feature In Clause9, clause hierarchies — i.e. predefined stacks of clauses, potentially multiple levels deep — can now be edited after they have been created. This allows template authors to use this advanced feature even more intensely, as the structure and contents of clause hierarchies can be changed, with these changes automatically "rippling through" to all templates (or even other clause hierarchies) in which they are used.
# 6 October 2024 ## Download comparison with initial answers New feature In a Q\&A, users can now download a DOCX-file that shows a comparison between the current state of the document (i.e, the right-side of the window) and the initial state of the document.
# 29 September 2024 ## Smart placeholders in ClauseBuddy New feature ClauseBuddy now allows users to create sub-options for placeholders inside of static clauses, as shown in the following screencast:
# 15 September 2024 ## Notification email sent to curator New feature Curators are now sent a notification email when a user sends an email to their inbox. ## Users are no longer physically deleted Change When an administrator deletes a user, this user becomes *disabled*, instead of being physically deleted. The reason for this change is that ClauseBuddy and Clause9 are very centrally organised, so that clauses can be positioned anywhere in the filesystem, ready to be shared by anyone. The downside of this approach is that deleting a user can cause significant harm, as this may affect clause folders and even documents/binders in Clause9. For this reason, users are now merely disabled. * They will not count towards the maximum number of users. * They can be reinstated with the click of a button (see the rightmost button in the screenshot below).
Only ClauseBase employees can permanently delete users. ## Consult ownership amounts New feature In Clause9, it is now possible to receive an overview of all the folders, documents, binders, clauses, etc. that are owned by a particular user.
## Better placeholders in Smart Templates Improvement In ClauseBuddy's Smart Templates, placeholders for unanswered questions will now also show when embedded within cyan-highlighted fragments that also contain other elements. Previously this was only the case when the entire cyan-highlighted part referred to the answer. The [manual page](https://help.clausebuddy.com/smart-templates/smart-templates-in-depth/highlighting-word-documents#placeholders) on highlighting and placeholders contains an in-depth explanation, with numerous examples. ## @if-value special function New feature The new `@if-value` special function ([manual](https://help.clause9.com/special-functions/conditions#if-1)) is specifically intended to cater to the aforementioned new behaviour in ClauseBuddy's Smart Templates. It alllows template authors to prevent that a placeholder would be shown for an unfilled question. For example, have a look at the following screenshot, of a simple document in which the body
## Warning when accidentally changing a Smart Templates Change ClauseBuddy will now warn you when it thinks you accidentally updated a Smart Templates with the wrong document. # 8 September 2024 ## Smart Merge New feature ClauseBuddy now contains a "Smart Merge" function that allows users to get an intelligent merge of two texts — e.g. a currently selected clause and a a Truffle clause or clause from the Quality Library. With the help of AI, ClauseBuddy will show a list of legal characteristics available in both texts, and then allows the end-user to easily select which features to keep or remove.
The function is shown in every text-insertion popup-menu. It is also available within Deep Compare. [Read the manual](https://help.clausebuddy.com/artificial-intelligence/smart-merge) for the in-depth documentation.
## Re-engineered Deep Compare Change The Deep Compare functionality, previously [introduced in July 2024](https://operations.clausebase.com/updates-july-2024/21-july-2024#deep-compare), has been re-engineered, to integrate the Smart Merge feature and incorporate feedback from our customers. The new module will now allow you to: * Get an exhaustive overview of all clauses from the other document that are legally *associated* with some clause of the target document * Swap the left-side and right-side document at any time * Search within both documents to limit the visible text * Incorporate the central Smart Merge functionality for selected clauses
More information is available in the [documentation](https://help.clausebuddy.com/compare/deep-compare). ## "Please enlarge this panel" New feature ClauseBuddy now shows a teal panel at the top to invite users to enlarge the width if it's currently too narrow. Background: unfortunately, MS Word does not remember the width of its plugin-panels, and it is impossible for plugin developers to force the width to a certain size. Accordingly, having this kind of invitation on the screen is the only viable manner to nudge users to make the panel a bit wider.
## Smaller font Both ClauseBuddy and Clause9 now use a base font that is now 1px smaller, aligning it a little bit better with the default font size of dialog text in MS Word. # 31 August 2024 ## Text Compare New feature With the new *Text Compare* feature, users can now compare any combination of two DOCX-files, PDF-files, text selections or pasted text. This goes significantly beyond MS Word's built-in DOCX-to-DOCX comparison feature offers. Check out the [documentation](https://help.clausebuddy.com/compare/text-compare).
{% hint style="info" %} This feature will be enabled for all customers as from 8th September. If you need access earlier, please let us know. {% endhint %} *** ## Bulk Compare New feature While the Text Compare feature offers two-way compares, this feature offers the possibility to compare a single document (the "base document") towards many different documents at once.
As described in the [documentation](https://help.clausebuddy.com/compare/bulk-compare), the Bulk Compare feature has many different use cases for legal teams, e.g.: * a general counsel can compare the model T\&C or sales agreement with the actually signed documents, to find "hot zones" of frequently contested clauses * in a due diligence procedure, a law firm can do a mass-check of all employment agreements, sales agreements or loan agreements * sales teams can compare various versions of sales contracts to identify common changes requested by customers, helping to refine negotiation strategies. The result can then be checked on the screen, or downloaded as a DOCX-report.
{% hint style="info" %} This feature will be enabled for all customers as from 8th September. If you need access earlier, please let us know. {% endhint %} *** ## Linked accounts in Clause9 New feature In [previous](https://operations.clausebase.com/updates-august-2024/17-august-2024#configure-users-who-can-switch-to-other-accounts) [updates](https://operations.clausebase.com/updates-may-2024/11-may-2024#upgradable-accounts) to ClauseBuddy, we added the possibility to give certain users the right to "jump" to another account (e.g., to allow certain users to temporarily become an administrator; see the [documentation](https://help.clausebuddy.com/administration/linked-accounts)). This "jumping" possibility can now also be used directly from within Clause9, through the menu in the upper-right corner of the screen.
{% hint style="info" %} The configuration panel itself is only available in ClauseBuddy, as this is primarily a feature for ClauseBuddy-targeted customers. {% endhint %} # 25 August 2024 ## Custom bullet numbering in Clause9 New feature It is now possible to add custom bullet numbering to one or more clauses. While it was always possible to configure which bullets to use at each level, this custom numbering always applied across the entire document. This helps to achieve consistency for legal documents (one of the pain points of legal document in day-to-day life), but some users insisted that custom bullets were nevertheless sometimes required — e.g., in introductory paragraphs such as contract recitals. See the extensive documentation at ## Integration with Excel files in Clause9 New feature It is now possible to offload calculations in legal documents to an Excel-file. While Clause9 has an extensive range of [special functions](https://help.clause9.com/special-functions/introduction), among which [30+ for calculations](https://help.clause9.com/special-functions/numbers), there will always be situations where more advanced power is necessary. This is now possible by uploading an Excel-sheet to Clause9, in which certain cells can then be changed on-the-fly. Clause9 can then obtain the result of the calculation. Another example where Excel can truly help, is for advanced lookup-tables. While Clause9 has always featured the possibility to insert [basic spreadsheets for lookups in a Q\&A](https://help.clause9.com/integrations/spreadbases), it is now also possible to add similar features to an actual clause. See the extensive documentation at ## Directly download Truffle DOCX file New feature It is now possible to download an uploaded (or PDF-converted) DOCX-file directly from within the "Manage" tab...
... or instead immediately after the upload was successfully processed:
## Replace Truffle document and/or clauses New feature Users can now replace a previously uploaded Truffle document, while keeping the metadata. The primary use case is to keep documents in sync that are also stored outside ClauseBuddy.
## Better PDF uploads Change The ClauseBase platform now uses the [Abbyy OCR engine](https://www.abbyy.com) for converting the contents of PDFs. While Abbyy is somewhat slower than our previous OCR-engine ([Omnipage](https://www.tungstenautomation.com/products/omnipage/server)), the quality is significantly better for legal documents, particularly when it comes to recognising numbering and headers/footers. # 17 August 2024 ## Configure users who can switch to other accounts New feature Administrators now have an easy-to-use user-interface to define which users are allowed to switch to other user accounts (see the [feature that was added on 11th May](https://operations.clausebase.com/updates-may-2024/11-may-2024#upgradable-accounts)). Previously, this configuration required an intervention at the database-level by someone from the ClauseBase team.
*** ## Deep Compare with PDFs New feature It is now possible to "deep compare" a currently opened Word-file with some random PDF-file. Previously (see the [changes of 21 July 2024](https://operations.clausebase.com/updates-july-2024/21-july-2024#deep-compare)) it was only possible to compare against another DOCX-file.
*** ## Directly compare AutoSuggested clauses New feature Clauses found using the AutoSuggest feature can now be directly compared against clauses in the currently opened DOCX-file (i.e. at the left side).
*** ## Customer logos also shown for administrators in Clause9 If a custom logo is defined within Clause9, then this will also be shown for the administrator. Previously, the logo was deliberately hidden for administrators, but some customers found this confusing. # 4 August 2024 ## Export of Truffle Documents New feature End-users with Truffle management rights can now export the list of Truffle Documents: * To an Excel-file, including all details about each file * To a ZIP file, with physical copies of all DOCX-files. *(Note that documents that were uploaded as PDF-files, are immediately converted into DOCX files upon upload, so you will always download DOCX-files.)*
# 21 July 2024 ## Deep Compare New feature In addition to the rule-based ("playbook") review function, ClauseBuddy now also features the possibility to intelligently compare a document against another document. Deep Compare will intelligently line up your active document with some other document that you upload. You can then immediately see the legal differences between various clauses, and even create merged versions of each clause. Typical use cases include: * Situations where you have to use the document of your counterparty, but you want to compare it against your own standard document to see what's missing. * Law firms that need to review their client's document, and want to compare it against one or more of their own "golden standard" templates. * Merging two different templates containing partially similar and partially different clauses.
# 14 July 2024 ## Automatic Q\&A preparation New feature In ClauseBuddy, administrators can automatically "prepare" the active Word-document for use as a Smart Template. For example, paragraphs such as the following...
... would be automatically replaced as follows:
This major new feature shows up as an extra element in the *Create new template* dropdown, assuming the end-user has the right to create new Smart Templates and has the right to use LLMs. (The LLM module that is used, is "Document analysis").
What happens under the hood, is that the LLM receives a copy of the active Word-document, and tries to detect relevant text sections that should be replaced by cyan-highlighted placeholders. These cyan placeholders can then, in a next phase, be used for creating questions in the Q\&A. Note that this feature may also having interesting use-cases outside of Q\&A preparation, as the document is automatically anonymized in a fairly smart way. {% hint style="info" %} Do note that the anonymisation is not perfect, because this is quite a challenge for LLMs. In our tests with multiple LLMs, we notice that some glitches will inherently occur and that some cleanup will be necessary. Besides some reasoning errors that humans would not make, there are of course also some "gray areas" where humans would also disagree on whether a placeholder should actually be inserted. {% endhint %} ## Default user preferences New feature In both ClauseBuddy and Clause9, administrators now have a "New user defaults", which allows them to set the default settings for several individual user preferences (software language, content languages & currencies ordering, which elements must be inserted upon paste, whether personal search folders must be created, etc.)
Instead of merely setting the defaults for new users, administrators can also remove all current preferences of all existing users, by pressing the "Save for all users" button.
Administrators can also configure all those preferences per individual account. *** ## LLM-assisted Q\&A answers completion New feature In both ClauseBuddy and Clause9, users can now paste text that will be used by an LLM to auto-fill the answers of the Q\&A. For example, if a lawyer would get an email describing the type of license agreement that must be drafted, then she can copy/paste the relevant part of that email and automatically have (a subselection of the Q\&A's) questions be completed using that information
Note: the end-user must have the "Fill answers with AI" right enabled (not enabled by default), otherwise this button will not show up. The relevant LLM module is "clause analysis". *** ## Upgrade notice Before the ClauseBase platform is updated (typically on a Saturday or Sunday morning in the CE(S)T timezone), a warning will be displayed that a server update is imminent.
After the update (which typically takes about one minute) users will see a banner inviting them to reload Clause9 or ClauseBuddy.
# 9 July 2024 ## Automatic "legal feature" extraction New feature In the Quality Library, Truffle Hunt and Samples Hunt, you can now ask the LLM to automatically extract "legal features" from the currently visible clauses, and then filter on such features. Such legal features are interesting characteristics with legal value, e.g. for a duration clause, whether the term is defined or undefined, whether the term can be renewed, whether one party can(not) unilaterally renew or terminate, which deadlines need to be respected and so on. After the LLM has processed all the clauses (which usually takes only a few seconds for up to 50 clauses), end-users can then easily filter clauses on the available legal features.

The green buttons in the middle represent legal "features" that were automatically extracted by an LLM. Next, end-users can filter on those features.

## Curators ### Indication of group(s) in the dropdown list In the *Send to Curator* dialog box, you will now see the group(s) to which the curator belongs.
Also, by way of bug fix, curators whose account were disabled will no longer be shown in the list. # 22 June 2024 ## Automatic styling New feature The “Guess styling” mechanism — for determining the styles to be applied to content inserted into a Word-file — is completely overhauled. Essentially, ClauseBuddy runs through all the paragraphs of the opened document to determine their styling. This takes a few documents on very long documents, but definitely improves the guesswork. It’s still “guesswork” for badly-styled documents — which, as we all know, is the majority of the files out there. However, with decently styled documents (e.g. typical templates from large law firms) this works nicely. For all the badly-styled documents, the software will fall back to minimized styling. Change Guess styling is now also set as the default styling (previously the "minimal" styling was the defeault).
## Font-name & font-size are now extracted in Outlook New feature ClauseBuddy will now guess the font & font-size that users are using in the body of their email (which can be anything: the company house style, or some font that the correspondent uses). Usually ClauseBuddy will be able to change the font & font-size of the inserted text accordingly. ## Show/hide additional information for a clause New feature There’s a new button (turned on by default) that allows users to configure whether or not to show all the extra information, such as the folder hierarchy, attributes, comments and description:
## Search folder selection is improved When you don’t have the right to select a certain search folder for saving stuff, it will be immediately greyed out (& its folders will be shown in red & grey).
## "Add other subscriptions" disabled by default There’s a new user right (“*Add other subscriptions*”) that should be enabled to give users the possibility to add additional subscriptions. Change When it’s not turned on, the upper right menu of ClauseBuddy will simply not show a second drop-down button, except when the user would already have another subscription, or would have the right to jump to another user (as administrator-users can do, for example). ## Change metadata of uploaded Truffle documents New feature Users can now immediately change the metadata of a Truffle-document they just uploaded, so they don’t have to switch back-and-forth to the Inventory tab.
*Do note that with more than 20 files that you upload in one go, the server will “serialize” everything and send you an email afterwards when it’s done. So in such scenario, this won’t work.* ## Multiple placeholder values in ClauseBuddy New feature When a pipe-symbol is added in the middle of a yellow placeholder in a clause, users automatically get a drop-down butotn in *Configure clause* that shows all the words separated by those pipe symbols.
## Other changes in ClauseBuddy * Change The list of curators to whom to send new clauses, is now alphabetically ordered. * New feature There's now an option for customers to specify that personal search folders must be created by default for new users. # 15 June 2024 ## Categorised Truffle Baskets New feature Baskets in Truffle Hunt can now have a "category", which allows them to be hierarchically ordered. This can be particularly useful when many baskets have been created.
## Additional Q\&A sharing options in ClauseBuddy New feature ClauseBuddy users can now also specify that Q\&A documents * must not show a document preview (right-side) * can be sent back to the person creating the link. These features already existed in Clause9 for a long time, but are now also available for ClauseBuddy users, at popular request.
## Automatic translations New feature Across ClauseBuddy, when you click on e.g., *“+ English”* to add a translation, and already have another language box filled in, the content will be automatically translated and filled in through our translation engine (DeepL). This even works with rich text (such as the body of a clause), and essentially works everywhere you have multilingual boxes in ClauseBuddy and Clause9. ## DocAnswer improvements The DocAnswer module of ClauseBuddy now: * New feature Supports HTML output, so that users can for example ask for a table with some answers. * Supports a bigger context window for LLMs, so that larger amounts of potentially relevant information can get analysed by the LLM. * Shows a copy button, so that users can copy the information to some other location. ## Quality Library improvements New feature There is a new entry box for "Extra keywords", through which users can store extra keywords. Those keywords are searched for, at the same priority level as the filename of the clause.
New feature Users can add a “status” to a clause, e.g. “draft, “experimental”, “final”, “to be reviewed”; including an optional comment
New feature Users can now filter the results within *Browse* to only show those clauses within the selected (sub)folder that contain one or more keywords.
Users can now directly edit, move & delete folders, right from within the Quality Library.
## Redesigned clause adaptation popup New features * You can now translate (with DeepL, not with the LLM) with the click of a button * If you use an LLM, you can choose which ones, assuming you have multiple configured. * You get a few standard adaptations available out-of-the-box, as easily accessible green buttons. You can also add your own prompts that will turn into green buttons.
## Various improvements in ClauseBuddy * For customers with large numbers of search folders, we now present the dropdown of search folders as a searchable list (with an input-box). * In Manage Folders, the first search folder will be automatically loaded, so users don't have to manually select it anymore. * Change In the *Configure clause* dialog box, placeholders will now be shown in the order they appear in the clause, instead of being alphabetically ordered (as was the case before). This should help with recognising relevant placeholders. * Change Preferences regarding the language and currency are now stored on the server, instead of being merely locally stored. * German capitalisation is better respected across Truffle hunt. In the autosuggest and definitions, the search results & terms are now no longer in lowercase. * Change Truffle hunt fields that resemble URLs are now shown with a hyperlink * New feature Clause / truffle rewriting is now also available in the browser version of ClauseBuddy, and also works for the Samples Hunt. (Previously this was only available in the Word version. Particularly interesting is that you can now autotranslate entire English samples from the Samples Hunt.) * New feature At the server-level, administrators can configure the language preference of new users, for both the content and the GUI
* Upon clause insertion, you can now configure whether you want to insert footnotes & pink highlights.
# 8 June 2024 ## Rich text in clause comments & descriptions New feature Users can now include "rich text" (with bold, italic, underline, tables, hyperlinks, etc.) in comments and descriptions, in both ClauseBuddy and Clause9.
### Changes to how comments and descriptions are shown Change In the Quality Library, the descriptions and comments now act somewhat differently: * Descriptions are displayed with a grey background, comments with a green background. * Users have to click on a long comment or description to expand it.
## Curator improvements New feature Many improvements were made to the way curators are handled in ClauseBuddy. * Curators can now be assigned to a group of users. Such "group curators" automatically collect all the rights of their group members when it comes to the calculation of access bundles — essentially, if at least one member of the group has a certain access bundle right, then the group curator(s) will also automatically have such right. * One or more curators can be added to each group, and each group can have one or more curators.
*** ## Q\&A New feature In Clause9, users can now flag a question with "Hide for anonymous users". This causes the question to be invisible for anonymous users who are completing the Q\&A.
*** ## Uncover export in Clause9 The documents exported by the new "uncover export" will now also contain numbers. In addition, the way conditions involving lists is being described in the export, is now improved. *** ## User rights * Addition of the "Download Truffle document" right, which allows to enable/disable the possibility to download the original DOCX file that got uploaded to Truffle Hunt. * Change Search folders now no longer have their own access bundles, as this extra layer of configuration proved too complex for most users. Instead, search folders receive their access rights from the underlying folders. *** ## Various bug fixes * In several modules (e.g., proofreading), a "file is too large" error is now shown when files above 16 MB would be uploaded. * In certain cases, line breaks were not included when clauses would be inserted into a DOCX file from within ClauseBuddy. * Due to caching, it could happen that some clauses would temporarily still include old attributes that were recently deleted. # 1 June 2024 ## LLM ### Available in ClauseBuddy New feature The LLM configuration editor (which allows to configure the order & availability of LLMs) is now also available in ClauseBuddy. ### Configuration per module and/or rights profile New feature Various small improvements (translations, bug fixes) were made to the LLM configuration editor. For example, administrators can now specify the availability per ClauseBuddy module and/or per rights profile. *** ## Q\&A links New feature For those customers with a dedicated subdomain and virtual machine, it is now possible to whitelist IP-address ranges for direct links to Q\&As created in ClauseBuddy or Clause9. This allows customers to, for example, avoid that such links would be used outside their own network. # 25 May 2024 ## On-the-fly-provisioning (OTFP) New feature If SSO is enabled, administrators can now configure OTFP. If enabled, this will cause a user to be automatically created in the ClauseBase-platform when a user is authenticated by the customer's SSO server and then gets sent to Clause9/ClauseBuddy. The default profile and group(s) of which such new user must be part, can be configured by the administrator.
*** ## Various improvements to ClauseBuddy * The "ClauseBase" style scheme will now only be shown in ClauseBuddy for documents created with Clause9. * The **"Taxonomies" system** (which allows folders to be tagged with predefined taxonomies) is phased out, because users were not actively applying any taxonomies. * The **Truffle Hunt "Manage" tab** is now hidden when users are not curators and do not have any upload/editing rights for any of the Truffle Hunt baskets. * Improve the position of the **"animal" icons** (icons that allow users to take their currenty query from one search module to another, e.g. from a search in the Quality Library to a search in Truffle baskets). # 18 May 2024 ## Proofreading improvements * New feature Detection of (and alerting about) uncapitalised terms.
* Reduce the likelihoofd of false alerts * Detect grammatical variations of capitalised terms in various languages ## LLMs New feature Add GPT-4o support # 11 May 2024 ## Addition of Profiles New feature For both ClauseBuddy and Clause9, "rights profiles" are added. These profiles essentially bundle user-right, so that they can be applied in bulk to certain users. When a customer, for example, has 50 different user accounts, it gets cumbersome to manage all the rights for all those 50 users. Instead, with such user amounts, it is recommended to use profiles instead, which allow the administrator to centrally manage the rights (e.g., have a "Standard" profile, a "Senior lawyer" profile, a "Partner" profile, etc.). When, for example, a specific right is added to the Standard profile, all of the users tagged with that profile will immediately get that additional right. Users can have multiple profiles, for which all the rights are always cumulatively applied.
*** ## Custom labelling in ClauseBuddy New feature ClauseBuddy administrators can now add custom labels to basically *any* label on the screen. For example, when a customer would not like the term "Truffle Hunt" or "Quality Library", the administrator can change that label to something else — even in multiple languages. In addition to the most common screen elements, administrators can temporarily turn on a "show translation labels" mode to hunt for other messages and hints to customise.
*** ## "Upgradable accounts" New feature Specific user accounts can now be tagged with upgradability rights, so that the user in question can "jump" to any other account, without entering the relevant security code. This even works across servers. This allows a lawyer in the Berlin office to, for example, "jump" to some other account of his firm's office in Paris, in order to consult the legal content of that firm. Another possibility that is enabled by this new feature, is for a regular user to "jump" to some administrator account. This is particularly relevant when SSO is enabled, because in most customers' SSO setup, end-users will always login with their personal account, which is then transferred to the ClauseBase platform.
*A backend GUI interface for this feature will be added soon.* *** ## Document Reviewing Various small improvements were made: * New feature The LLM is now requested to add a "reason" to paragraphs & clauses, to explain why it considered the paragraph or clause to be relevant for a certain requirement. * The prompting instruction sent to the LLM was improved. *** ## New configuration options for Truffle Baskets New feature Users can now specify for Truffle baskets: * The category (to group multiple Baskets) together * Whether, by default, clauses must be uploaded into this basket * Whether, by default, documents must be uploaded into this basket. *** ## Additional sharing options for Q\&As New feature ClauseBuddy users can now also specify for shared links to Q\&As: * Whether to allow sending back answers * Whether to show the interactive right-side (document preview)
*** ## ClauseBuddy hints system Upon first login, ClauseBuddy presents several helpful hints in popup-boxes at the top of the screen. ClauseBuddy will now remember which of those popup-boxes were previously shown to the end-user, even after logout, so that they are not presented again. *** ## Clause9 ### Possessive form in Dutch, Swedish and Danish The possessive form of concept-labels — essentially the suffix `'s` or even a simple `'` — is now improved for these languages. *** ## Administration * Administrators could inadvertently turn themselves into "anonymous" users, effectively locking them out of the system. # 4 May 2024 ## Document Reviewing Users can now add independent questions to a reviewing set (instead of being required to add questions as a sub-element of a condition). This will help towards generating reusable, generic reviewing sets. *** ## Smart Templates ### Automatic question generation New feature With the help of an LLM, users can now automatically create questions & predefined answers for their Q\&A.
*** ## Truffle Hunt ### Detection of "fallback titles" Paragraphs that are now position above a list of bullets, will be taken into account in the clause splitting algorithm. ### No results message in multi-lingual documents The "no results" message for Truffle Hunt was improved, so that it is less frequently showed in multilingual documents. *** ## Single Sign On The Clause9 SSO token cookies were changed to have an expiry date equal to the number of expiry hours configured in the SSO settings (instead of having session cookies), to avoid issues with the token cookie not being taken into account after network interruption in Chrome *** ## Clause9 ### Various improvements Polish language support (particularly for dates) was improved. # 27 April 2024 ## iManage integration New feature Launch of our integration with iManage. Features: * Users can send workspaces and/or multiple files to a Truffle Basket of their choice. * Users can choose a Clause9 or ClauseBuddy template right from within iManage, and then open that Q\&A in a browser window. *** ## ClauseBuddy ### Summarization improvement There's a new filterable dropdown list, that also supports summary deletion, and remembers recently selected entries. The summarization feature now also works in Outlook. ### Reviewing PDF files New feature Users can now upload PDF files for the Review feature. ### Reviewing improvements Some simplifications were added to the Reviewing feature, to facilitate the user's experience. The prompting instruction sent to the LLM was also revamped. ### Saving prompts New feature In several LLM-enabled modules of ClauseBuddy, users can now save their prompt (through the "..." button at the right of the edit-box), so they can then easily retrieve those prompts later on. *Note that the prompts are saved to the personal settings of the user: they are not currently shared within a team.*
### AutoSuggest "unsupported language" message When the user tries to use AutoSuggest on an unsupported language (e.g. a German document, when using a Belgian server that only supports English/Dutch/French), there will now be a clear error message. *** ## Clause9 ### Addition of "uncovered export" New feature In the “...” menu at the top right of Assemble Document, users can now do an “Uncovered export” of a template towards a DOCX file. This allows other team members to see which parts of a text contain conditional logic, which can be useful for reviewing complex documents. Of course complex documents remain challenging to review (cf. your feedback-list), but this new tool should help. By using the special function @explain (e.g., in an enabled-field), you can provide a description instead of showing a complex formula. This is also possible for other fields.
### Special functions `@extract-number` now also accepts a duration Addition of `@explain`, for the uncovered export described above. # 20 April 2024 ## ClauseBuddy ### Conditional rows, columns and sections (Smart Templates) New feature ClauseBuddy now supports conditional rows, columns and sections in an MS Word file. This is a major upgrade to the conditionality system for Smart Templates, as it allows a new level of expressiveness in legal documents.
Each See the [extensive documentation](https://help.clausebuddy.com/article/a0irling87-conditional-sections-rows-and-columns) on our help website. *** ## LLMs ### Multiple LLMs supported New feature ClauseBuddy & Clause9 now support multiple Large Language Models (LLMs). * The availability and priority of the LLMs can be configured by the administrator. * The generation of tokens can be interrupted through "stop" buttons in the user interface. * Claude3 & Mistral were added as options
*** ## Q\&A ### Increased save delays As our users are increasingly creating heavy Word-documents (particularly in ClauseBuddy), a slow transfer speed from ClauseBuddy/Clause9 to the server could sometimes cause a save error. We have therefore increased the save delay to 30 seconds. ### Better comparison of tables When asking for a real-time comparison between the previous and current version of a document (by alt-clicking or choosing "Show last changes), table rows are now also compared with each other. Previously, tables were considered as a whole in the comparison functionality, so that even a tiny change in one row would cause the entire table to be marked as being changed. *** ## Search ### Small optimisations **Conversion to vectors:** The conversion of text to semantic "vectors" (as used in the background for clauses & truffles) is now improved for situatinos where words are present in multiple languages. **Cut-off point & amount of results**: Small optimisations were made to how Truffles are being searched, e.g. the cut-off point was relaxed. **Improved ranking of AutoSuggest results** in ClauseBuddy. *** ## Administration ### Personal search folders When editing user settings, administrators will now see an option to add a personal search folder for a user. (Previously, this needed to be manually achieved through the *Search folders* panel of Clause9.) ### Single Sign On SSO for ClauseBuddy is now also working with the Microsoft MyApps dashboard (and similar launching apps for SSO). Users can now click on such a link, authentica and retrieve access through the browser. # 13 April 2024 ## ClauseBuddy ### Full reviewing rule set is always presented When reviewing rules are presented towards the end-user, the original rule set will always be shown, even when rule subsets are available. Previously, the original rule set (i.e., the one containing *all* the rules) was not presented to the end-user when at least one rule subset was created. ### New bulk truffle export options New feature Previously, users could export the currently visible truffle clauses to a DOCX file. With this new export option, truffle clauses can also be exported to an Excel-file. ClauseBuddy will now export *all* truffles that match the given search criteria, not only the currently visible clauses. Users can also request to include all clauses, even duplicates.
*** ## Clause9 ### New documentation and tutorials websites New feature We have moved the documentation away from [help.clausebase.com](https://help.clausebase.com) towards [help.clause9.com](https://help.clause9.com) and [tutorials.clause9.com](http://tutorials.clause9.com). At the same time, the documentation was updated and the search-system was significantly improved. *** ## API ### Subtype of repeating list The subtype of a repeating list (boolean, date, duration, ...) is now shown in both the GUI in Clause9, and is also included in the export of API endpoint `/datafields_in_document`. ### Better error messages The API now gives better and more helpful error messages when passing invalid values to API endpoints. # Security Log The following high-profile (or widely published) bugs were mitigated or deemed not relevant for ClauseBase: * **6 December 2026** — [CVE-2025-55182](https://react.dev/blog/2025/12/03/critical-security-vulnerability-in-react-server-components) (ReactJS server components): ClauseBase does not make use of ReactJS server-side, so is not vulnerable. * **21 July 2025** — [CVE-2025-53770](https://msrc.microsoft.com/blog/2025/07/customer-guidance-for-sharepoint-vulnerability-cve-2025-53770/) (Sharepoint): As this only affects on-premise installations of Sharepoint, ClauseBase is not vulnerable. * **23 June 2025** — [CVE-2025-6019](https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2025-6019) *(udisks vulnerability)*: This [widely published](https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/linux/new-linux-udisks-flaw-lets-attackers-get-root-on-major-linux-distros/) exploit requires the udisks daemon, which is primarily installed on desktop Linux systems for managing removable storage through GUI interfaces. Our Ubuntu servers don't run udisks as it's unnecessary for server operations. Additionally, the exploit requires local user access. * **23 June 2025 —** [CVE-2025-6018](https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2025-6018) *(PAM vulnerability)*: This [widely published](https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/linux/new-linux-udisks-flaw-lets-attackers-get-root-on-major-linux-distros/) vulnerability allows bypassing password prompts when chained with the udisks exploit, but also requires an existing local user session to trigger. Our servers have no local users, no physical access, and only allow authenticated SSH connections behind a firewall. * **2 July 2024** — Affected (but mitigated through other measures, so probably not exploitable) by the ["regreSSHion" exploit in SSH](https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2024-6387); patched all servers * **9 June 2024** — ClauseBase is not affected by the 9.8 severity PHP-CGI issue (Windows only). * **29 March 2024** — ClauseBase is [not affected](https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2024-3094) by the [xz Utils backdoor](https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/03/backdoor-found-in-widely-used-linux-utility-breaks-encrypted-ssh-connections/). * **7 June 2023** — ClauseBase is not affected by the[ VMware Aria Operations for Networks exploit](https://www.cvedetails.com/cve/CVE-2023-20887/?q=CVE-2023-20887). * **11 April 2023** — ClauseBase is not affected by the [Common Log File System vulnerability (Windows only)](https://www.cvedetails.com/cve/CVE-2023-28252/?q=CVE-2023-28252). * **24 December 2022** — ClauseBase is not affected by the [SMB issue for Linux kernel 5.15](https://www.zdnet.com/article/patch-now-serious-linux-kernel-security-hole-uncovered/). * **19 May 2022** — ClauseBase is not affected by VMWare security issue [CVE-2022-22960](https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/88099) or BIG-IP exploit [CVE-2022-1388](https://support.f5.com/csp/article/K23605346). * **21st April 2022** — ClauseBase has been patched against the [cryptographic security issue CVE-2022-21449](https://www.oracle.com/security-alerts/cpuapr2022.html). * **12 December 2021** — ClauseBase is not affected by the Log4J vulnerability [CVE-2021-44228](https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2021-44228).