Asking the right questions and providing the right predefined answers in your questionnaire (Q&A) are crucial for contract automation. Poorly formulated Q&A may confuse or annoy users. Repeated and redundant phrasing can be tiresome. Providing lots of explanations via information icons (tooltips) can be off-putting and cause users to ignore them. It is important to keep the user engaged and make completing a questionnaire as easy and straightforward as possible. This guide will help you formulate your Q&A effectively.
As a general note, when creating new questions it is important that the tag names are meaningful. Doing so enables a quick and smooth integration with CLM, other contract creation templates and external applications. Never use tag names that either only incorporate a default answer or are so generic as to be indistinguishable from other tag names, such as [edit.30 days] or [edit.Number of days] (rather than [edit.Milestone 2 Term for delivery], for example), or [date.Date] (rather than [date.First delivery], for example).
TABLE OF CONTENTS
A. Tag names
B. General Q&A drafting principles
C. Formulating Q&A questions
D. Formulating Q&A answers
E. Formulating AI prompts
F. Default answers
G. Policies regarding other Q&A elements
H. Miscellaneous Q&A options
I. Preferred terminology (English)
J. Correcting the contract text
A. TAG NAMES
1. Use meaningful tag names! A meaningful tag name simplifies maintenance and the implementation of other Weagree functionalities. Tag names are reused (a) as the default field label in the CLM, (b) as the name of a metadata property in API messages and (c) as part of the prompt sent to the AI model.
2. If a tag is part of a group of related variables or series, start it with a common denominator so that tags of the same kind are grouped (alphabetically listed).
Examples: Date of expiry, Purchase price (which you can adapt to Purchase price amount, Purchase price payment and so on for related variables), Milestone nn (e.g. Milestone 1, Milestone 2, Milestone 3), Party nn DPO.
Apply Weagree’s best practices for using defined terms and definitions.
B. GENERAL Q&A DRAFTING PRINCIPLES
1. Keep it short! The questionnaire’s WYSWIYG view (‘underwater screen’) provides the full context of the question and shows each question’s exact, complete output.
2. Do not use formal language or legalese. Avoid legal terms or explain them concisely in the info icon’s tooltip.
Find the best verb. For terminology, see section I below.
3. Each question should be formulated as concisely as possible.
a. The flow of the question should lead the user into a concrete answer.
b. Formulate a sentence such that it moves from a known context into the main message, with the actual Q&A topic as much as possible in the back end of the question. If crucial information appears halfway through the question (instead of at the end), its import or even the entire point of the question might be lost on the reader.
4. Questions should be formulated consistently across the questionnaire of the template, and as much as possible consistently across all other templates of the portal.
C. FORMULATING Q&A QUESTIONS
1. Every Q&A question should begin with a capital and end with a punctuation mark (normally a colon or a question mark).
In sequences of related Q&A-questions characterised as enumerations, simplification is preferred. For example:
- Seller – Name contact
- Seller – Phone contact
- Seller – E-mail contact
2. Every sentence has a subject and a predicate. The predicate may be the choice answers (which means that the sentence reads on into the Q&A answers, and in such case, each answer would be the final part of the question).
3. Questions should refer to Parties, Products, Seller, etc. in lowercase, except in respect of the key subject matter of the Q&A-question (the key words should not have initial capitals).
For example: in case of a contract clause addressing the improvement of the lead time of a product, the question could be: “Will the supplier be obliged to continuously improve the product’s lead time?” (Note: “supplier”, “product” and “lead time” are in lowercase).
4. Read the surrounding contract clause to capture the correct terminology (e.g. verbs and nouns to be used).
D. FORMULATING Q&A ANSWERS
1. Q&A answers should be concise, leaving out all unnecessary details.
Note: such details can be inserted in the info icon’s tooltip (explanatory note) and the WYSIWYG view provides full context and shows the effect of each answer.
2. All choice answers (as they appear in the Q&A) must start with a capital, and must not end with a semicolon or full stop.
Note: the contract text to be inserted by virtue of a choice made must be as the underlying template requires.
3. Where possible, a Q&A-answer should not start with a numeral (e.g. avoid 1, 2, 30, 45, etc.).
The numbers one through ten should be written in full, and higher numbers should be in numerals (e.g. 12, 30), except in case of amounts and units of measurement (which must always be expressed as a numeral).
Note: if multiple consecutive numbers are proposed, be consistent with all the numbers (whether you choose to write them as numbers or in full – e.g. not “Seven, 12, 30”).
E. FORMULATING AI PROMPTS
Your Q&A questions and answer options are used as the default AI prompt for the automated review of a third-party drafted agreement or extraction of CLM data from a signed agreement. To increase the effectiveness of the AI review, you can override the default by simply inserting your own AI prompt.
1. Formulate all AI prompts in the same language as the language used in the CLM contract sheet (or underlying template-Q&A). Instructions to the AI model should refer to it as “you” (e.g. you must or you may).
2. In formulating the AI prompt, include all key parameters required to identify and classify a certain contract provision adequately, using the most appropriate verb, words, terminology and other important clause parameters.
Keep in mind that including parameters unusual or uncommon for the relevant contract may confuse the AI analysis (causing it to ‘hallucinate’).
3. The AI prompt should be accurate, concise and focused:
- An overly broad AI prompt may result in the failure to identify a contract provision, due to the AI model (a) treating all parameters in the prompt as requirements and (b) finding them insufficiently present in the contract (false negative).
- An AI prompt that encompasses multiple contract parameters may return a result based on just one or a few of the prompted parameters, erroneously suggesting that all are present in the contract (false positive).
4. Do not include prompt elements that will always be provided by Weagree’s back end:
- The fictitious background of the contract reviewer (i.e. a legal contract analyser).
- That the review relates to a (legal) contract.
- Aspects that also apply to all other AI prompts in the same template.
- Technical or format-related instructions regarding the AI’s output.
F. DEFAULT ANSWERS
1. Default answers should be consistent with the formulated text in the agreement.
2. Choice questions should be provided with a default answer as often as possible.
3. The default Q&A answer of a choice or lookup-list question should be the first Q&A answer.
Note 1: this may reverse the consistent order of answer options: sometimes Yes > No, sometimes No > Yes. In such case, to avoid confusion a consistent order of Yes > No (or the other way around) may be preferred.
Note 2: it is reasonable to deviate from this rule if the answer options should logically be listed alphabetically or in numerical order, but this means the default answer cannot be the first option on the list.
4. Insert the required unit of measurement in the answer field to avoid confusion (e.g. [__] kg, EUR [_____], USD [_____], [__] days, [__] months).
Note: in order to improve consistency, if a numeral of 1 to 99 is required, use two underscores; if any numeral or words may be entered, always use five underscores.
G. POLICIES REGARDING OTHER Q&A ELEMENTS
1. An explanatory note should be included only when relevant, and always be concise: the WYSIWYG view already provides context. An explanatory note may clarify the question, provide guidance for answering or (alternative) answers.
The final (or, where applicable, the only) sentence in an explanatory note should not end with a full stop.
If an answer to the Q&A may potentially lead to a violation of the law (e.g. competition law) an explanation should be inserted, starting with an all-caps “WARNING” or “IMPORTANT”.
Note: for warnings, consider adding an attention notice instead. This will appear prominently beneath the question and for choice and lookup-list questions may be made dependent on the selected answer.
2. The If unanswered answer text should use the same format as the default answer, but with a blob tag between double square brackets instead of underscores (e.g. [[*]] kg, EUR [[*]], USD [[*]], [[*]] days, [[*]] months). In the absence of a default answer, the If unanswered field should nonetheless be filled.
Note: in special cases, If unanswered may intentionally be left completely blank. For example, this may be warranted for a local choice element (tree) linked to a global question that should only trigger the global question and cause it to appear in a specific place in the Q&A, without the need to insert any text at that choice element’s location.
3. Leave the authorisation level indicator of the Q&A answers unchanged, unless you want to filter out the Q&A question or answer option for certain lower authorisation levels.
H. MISCELLANEOUS Q&A OPTIONS
1. Always tick the option Use answer name (not the answer text).
Only in exceptional cases will the answer option be phrased correctly if it matches the text that it actually inserts (in which case the option may be unticked).
2. Where possible, in global questions, extend the answers that directly answer an implied (second) question. For example:
I. PREFERRED TERMINOLOGY (ENGLISH)
Be meticulously consistent in the terminology used:
a. Use ‘will’ instead of ‘shall’ in all cases, regardless of the terminology in the contract.
b. Enter (to prompt for inserting data, a value)
c. Tick (to tick or untick a Q&A checkbox)
d. Select (to select a radiobutton or dropdown option)
e. Pick (a date)
J. CORRECTING THE CONTRACT TEXT
Typos should be corrected. Obvious grammatical errors should be addressed with the (contact) person responsible for the model contract.
Textual corrections of the inserted model contract should be made in accordance with applicable template insertion conventions (Weagree can provide a standard document for this).
