Docusign AI Contracts Tool Translates Legal Jargon Into Plain English for Faster Signing

Confused by a contract? Docusign's AI will explain it now - but don't skip the fact-check

Docusign's new AI aims to explain a document you need to sign.The AI can also help document creators prepare a form.But always verify the information you receive from an AI. Have you ever received a long and complex document that you needed to sign via Docusign? Did you take the time to read and understand all the finer legal points? No? I didn't think so. Often such documents are steeped in complicated and confusing legalese, challenging us to interpret them. Now, Docusign has a new AI-powered feature that strives to help. Launched on Tuesday, DocuSign's new contract-specific AI aims to cut through the legal jargon in contracts, forms, and other documents so you can better understand what you're signing before you sign it. With this goal in mind, the AI in the latest version of eSignature serves up a simple summary of the agreement with all the key terms used throughout. You can also ask the AI specific questions, such as "What happens if I need to cancel the agreement?" or "When does this contract expire?" And there's more. Beyond assisting document signers, the AI is also there to help document creators. Endeavoring to put together all the text, the fields, the formatting, and the other parts of a form can be challenging. Here, the AI tries to automate the process by identifying different types of agreements, confirming the recipient details, and putting the signature and information fields into the right places. "AI is transforming the way people work, but agreements demand an extra level of clarity and trust," Mangesh Bhandarkar, GVP of Product Management at Docusign, said in a news release. "Our customers tell us manual agreement preparation is time-consuming, and signer confusion causes delays. We're applying AI to solve both challenges by removing the contract busywork for preparers and using features like AI-powered summaries to eliminate signer hesitation. This directly drives faster completion rates and a more trustworthy process." This all certainly sounds helpful. But it's still AI. And that means it can make mistakes. Can you trust Docusign's AI to interpret all the points of a document and answer your questions correctly? That trust is especially crucial if you're signing a legal document that you need to fully understand before signing it. There are no easy answers to that question. But you can take a few steps. AI can certainly be a time saver. And this new feature from Docusign sounds promising. But you still need to do your due diligence to make sure the information you receive is accurate and reliable.

Docusign wants to use AI to turn your complex contracts into plain English

Docusign's AI is also available directly within ChatGPT via MCP Docusign has jumped on the AI bandwagon with a useful tool to help contract signers understand the terms of what they're agreeing to in plain English. Generative AI translates complex terminology into plain English summaries, and users can also interact with the documents in Q&A style to explore the finer details. Besides improving clarity, the esign software firm says its new AI assistant can improve consumer confidence: "Complex agreements are now easier to understand, and people can sign faster, with confidence." The company's AI-fueled eSignature features, powered by its Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM) platform, tackle two key areas. The first, outlined above, responds to "dense legal language that slows signers down." DocuSign says today, around three in five consumers admit to signing contracts they didn't fully understand. Three in four said they would feel more confident if they were provided with AI-generated summaries. But there's also a business-focused upgrade to deal with the "manual, error-prone work of document preparation." For this, Docusign's AI can automatically identify agreement types, verify recipients, and place signature and data fields with one click, all in a bid to reduce preparation time and reduce the likelihood of errors. Docusign's own AI engine (Iris) is said to offer better accuracy, automation, and enterprise-grade security than general-purpose LLMs. "AI is transforming the way people work, but agreements demand an extra level of clarity and trust," Docusign Product Management GVP Mangesh Bhandarkar explained. "This directly drives faster completion rates and a more trustworthy process." More broadly, the IAM platform is also available to ChatGPT users through the MCP so that users can create and analyze contracts within he popular AI chatbot interface.

Docusign's AI will now help you understand what you're signing

New AI tools from Docusign aim to make contracts easier to understand and quicker to prepare. For people signing documents like leases or purchases agreements, a new AI feature will make it possible to request an overall summary of the contract and its key terms. Users will also be able to ask questions about the document, which for consumer agreements could include requesting details about cancellation procedures, fees that may apply, relevant timelines, or terms of a warranty. "The whole purpose of this is to allow and provide a level of trust to the signer so that they understand what is it that they're signing," says Mangesh Bhandarkar, GVP of product management at Docusign, "and help them get through the signature process in a much quicker way, with a better understanding of the agreement itself." In a demonstration for Fast Company, Bhandarkar highlighted how the AI could generate a basic summary of a residential lease, automatically pulling out key terms like the rental period, monthly rent, and landlord and tenant responsibilities for various utilities. The AI also answered questions about other terms like pet fees, including links to relevant, highlighted sections of the document.