Leading tools for risk detection in agreements

1. Signer summaries

Signer summaries are a brief overview of the key information in an agreement, such as the parties involved, important dates, and critical clauses. They help signers quickly understand the essence of the document and can highlight any potentially risky or unusual terms before signing.

Docusign has signer summaries in beta in eSignature. Docusign is the first and only vendor (as of September 2025) to offer summaries directly within the signer experience. Adobe allows signers to use an AI add-on called AI Assistant in Acrobat Pro, but this is a separate experience from the core Adobe Acrobat Sign experience.

Docusign solutions, including signer summaries, as well as other products and features, improve the speed of document turnaround time by 79%.*

2. Smart repository

An AI-powered agreement repository helps you track your agreements and obligations they contain, organize agreements by the parties involved, track addendums, and more. A repository can help your team:

• Find all of your agreements in one place so you don’t miss out on providing any services or products you need to

• Manage renewals so you don’t miss any opportunities to negotiate for better terms or cancel services you’re not using

• Track obligations with automated reminders

• Easily see the entire contracting history between you and the organizations and people do you business with in one view

Docusign’s repository, Navigator, helps you centrally store, manage, and analyze agreements with help from AI. Navigator helps you find specific information in your agreements to help you make smarter business decisions and manage your agreements more effectively. 

Other companies like Dropbox, Box, Microsoft, and Google have repositories as well, but they lack the functionality of Docusign Navigator in several key ways. Other vendors' AI capabilities are agnostic of content type and are not purpose-built for agreements. Mixing agreements and non-agreement files together opens risks for hallucination from AI models that can get confused. Furthermore, most other companies do not extract and structure data from agreements so that organizations can easily track, search, and analyze information across all of their agreements at once. 

Additionally, what makes Docusign unique here is that we have both out-of-the-box agreement data extractions and tools that allow our customers to quickly set up their own agreement extractions. Other vendors often have longer time to value, with long deployment times that are resource intensive and cut into ROI and time to value realization.

Catchafire, a Docusign customer, saved time by using Navigator. Navigator’s AI capabilities makes it easy for Catchafire employees to check for specific terms in agreements or even answer questions on the fly, like how often a certain clause appears across contracts or whether a particular limit of liability has been consistently applied. 

“It’s saved a ton of time,” said J.D. Filippone, Deputy Director of Revenue Operations at Catchafire. “I can find the majority of the information I need right then and there, as simple as just doing a search or applying a filter.”

3. Workflows

Agreement workflows help automate and streamline the process of creating, reviewing, approving, and executing agreements. By defining a series of automated steps and actions, workflows ensure consistency, reduce manual errors, and accelerate the entire agreement lifecycle, ultimately minimizing risks associated with delays or non-compliance.

Docusign offers specialized, secure, and easy-to-use workflows with Maestro. With Maestro, you can easily build and deploy customized workflows that automate and accelerate your agreement processes without writing any code. You can also extend your agreement workflows by connecting partner apps through the Docusign App Center.

Other workflow vendors that are often seen in organizations include Box Relay, Nintex, Microsoft Power Automate, and airSlate. These tools automate workflow processes like Docusign does, but they don't have capabilities that streamline the entire agreement process, such as ID verification, data verification, and an app ecosystem with more than 1000 integrations.

KPC Private Funds saw a 90% reduction in time with Maestro and App Center Integrations. “Maestro has helped us tremendously with the routing—and then, on the back end, it interfaces with our CRM to store those documents in an automated fashion,” said Dean Rubino, Managing Partner, Kelly Park Capital.

4. Identity verification tools

Identity verification tools for agreements help senders ensure that the people signing their contract are who they say they are. These tools offer various methods to confirm a signer's identity, such as knowledge-based authentication, government ID verification, and biometric checks. They are crucial for maintaining the integrity and legal enforceability of contracts, particularly in remote signing scenarios and in countries or industries that require additional levels of verification.

Docusign offers a variety of identity verification tools. Docusign offers integrations with CLEAR, risk-based verification, identity verification built into Maestro workflows, and more. Docusign is the first and only vendor of its kind (as of September 2025) to offer CLEAR and risk-based identify verification (IDV) in the context of agreement workflows. Other tools like IDnow, Yoti, and OneSpan do not offer risk-based verification and also don’t offer a flexible agreement workflow engine like Maestro.

IKEA is just one Docusign customer who saw efficiencies from using our identity verification tools. “The efficiency gained with Docusign’s digital signature solutions allows us to spend more time with our employees, share our culture, and provide greater value,” said Joana Lopes, People & Culture Administrator, IKEA Portugal.

5. Integrations with third-party apps

Integrating with third-party applications helps you build risk detection into your agreements by allowing you to connect specialized tools directly into your agreement processes. These integrations enable automated data verification, compliance checks, and access to external data sources that can flag discrepancies or potential risks. By seamlessly incorporating these external functionalities, businesses can ensure greater accuracy, efficiency, and adherence to regulatory requirements, ultimately minimizing human error and proactively addressing potential vulnerabilities within their agreements.

You can easily build third-party functionality into your Docusign agreement processes with apps in the App Center. Docusign offers connections to LSEG Data Verification, Smarty Address Verification, SSN Verification, and more so you can build these tools into your workflows to reduce your risk. Other legacy e-signature vendors, such as Adobe, OneSpan, PandaDoc, and Dropbox, don't offer an agreement-focused app center, so any integrations would require custom development, while Docusign offers this functionality out of the box.

6. AI-assisted review

AI-assisted reviews in agreements help you automate the process of reviewing your agreements against your requirements or playbooks. AI-assisted review tools can help you de-risk your agreements by flagging anomalous clauses and suggesting redlines that align with your allowed language. Some AI-assisted review tools, like Docusign’s, also allow you to ask questions about your agreement and get insights and links to relevant source text in seconds with a Q&A experience powered by generative AI.

Docusign offers AI-Assisted Review as part of its IAM plans and CLM plans. Docusign delivers trusted AI that scales for the enterprise, backed by the most extensive agreement dataset in the world. While some CLM and Legal AI Assistants try to deliver similar capabilities, they often lack the training material in order to develop the breadth and depth that Docusign delivers. In the e-signature space, this isn't a capability that is offered by legacy providers.

Flowserve’s legal team uses AI-Assisted Review to help reviewers compare third-party language against Flowserve’s internal playbooks, flag deviations, suggest markups, and get answers on the spot.

“Already, we’re seeing faster, more streamlined workflows. Even as agreement volume rises, we know we won’t have to increase headcount,” said Dundi Thompson, Senior Project Manager, Legal Ops, Flowserve.

7. Agreement intake, collaboration, and management tools

Agreement request intake tools help organizations standardize and streamline the process for employees to initiate and review new contracts. This simplification helps detect and reduce risk by ensuring that all necessary information is captured upfront, reducing the chances of missing critical details or miscommunications. A streamlined intake process also allows for consistent application of internal policies and compliance checks, preventing agreements from moving forward without proper vetting and approvals.

Docusign offers Agreement Desk to help organizations effortlessly manage requests, collaboratively negotiate and redline, and automate the busywork—accelerating the path to signed agreements. Agreement Desk is available within Docusign IAM. Similar functionality is offered with some CLM solutions, but these solutions require complex setup and deployment. Docusign IAM is unique in its ability to deliver rapid deployment while also providing the flexibility for customers to upgrade to Docusign CLM in the future when it is needed.

8. Audit trails

Audit trails can help you reduce risk by providing a comprehensive, time-stamped record of all activity related to an agreement. This includes details like who viewed, edited, sent, and signed an agreement, along with the precise timestamps of these actions. By offering an immutable log of events, audit trails enhance transparency and accountability, making it easier to identify unauthorized access, changes, or unusual activity. This detailed historical record serves as vital evidence in case of disputes, compliance audits, or security breaches, helping organizations quickly pinpoint the source of a problem and mitigate potential legal or financial repercussions.

Many e-signature vendors, including Docusign, offer audit trails. Audit trails for e-signatures are required for enforceability. Docusign takes it a step further with audit trail capabilities for agreement workflows in Maestro. This means you can track actions and dates across your workflow steps.

9. System event and activity monitoring

Activity tracking and alerts help you quickly learn about and address any potential threats to your agreements or unauthorized activity. You can set rules-based alerts to get flagged to any threats in near-real-time, and then you can implement action plans to mitigate risk if a threat is verified. These types of tools can surface numerous types of events across your organization, including login attempts, password changes, and envelope deletions.They can give you in-depth alert details like IP address, location and history, to help you rapidly determine next steps.

Docusign offers Monitor as an add-on to eSignature, CLM, and IAM plans. Monitor helps you safeguard your agreements with near-real-time alerts to help your team investigate any suspicious activity involving your agreements. Most e-signature and contract lifecycle management (CLM) vendors do not offer a similar tool. Box has some of these capabilities but lacks other advanced agreement management and contract lifecycle management features that Docusign has, like anomaly detection and warnings when there are unusual patterns of e-signature usage.

10. CLM for advanced use cases

Strong contract lifecycle management tools offer you ways to detect and mitigate risk, with features like the ability to:

• Extract, analyze and report on key contract data points and legal topics with over 100 pre-trained AI models

• Conditionally drive workflows with analytics, risk scores and contract content for faster contract cycles

• Automate review and surface insights that help close sales deals faster, reduce procurement costs and speed legal review

• Accelerate contracting with AI-assisted review and negotiation, as well as automatic identification and extraction of common contract terms

Docusign offers all of the features listed here. Our customers have seen an 85% reduction in errors from using CLM. Harry Hall, Associate General Counsel, North American Vehicle & Aftermarket Divisions at Sensata Technologies described the shift to using Docusign CLM as “taking a leap a thousand years into the future.”

Frequently asked questions

What are the benefits of risk detection in agreements?

The ability to automatically detect and manage potential issues translates to faster turnaround times, reduced legal expenses, and improved overall business performance. Implementing robust risk detection tools is essential for safeguarding business interests and ensuring the smooth operation of agreements.

Docusign is the industry leader in agreements and offers innovative solutions to help organizations detect and mitigate risks in their agreements. With Docusign tools, detecting risk in agreements is easier than ever.

Learn more about Docusign IAM.

Why should you use risk detection tools in agreements?

Identifying and mitigating risks within agreements is a crucial part of working in a modern business. There are a variety of AI-powered tools from industry leaders and new companies that can help you analyze contracts, pinpoint potential issues, and support compliance obligations. These tools can scan through your lengthy documents, extracting key clauses, identifying deviations from standard language, and flagging terms that could lead to future disputes. 

By automating the risk detection process, businesses can significantly reduce manual review time and human error, which could mean lowering the risk of financial loss and missed business opportunities.

What types of agreements can benefit from risk detection?

Risk detection tools can help you with any type of agreement. Organizations that have to create and manage high volumes of agreements or that operate in highly regulated industries may be particularly interested in getting help from a tool to flag risky clauses and deviations from their standard clause libraries.

You can use risk detection tools to:

• Flag clauses in an agreement that deviate from your organization’s standard playbooks

• Identify and change risky clauses while you’re negotiating an agreement

• Route high-risk agreements to the appropriate internal resources who can advise on the best next steps

• Reduce inadvertent human error in your agreement process

• Standardize and optimize your agreement process

How does risk detection in agreements with Docusign work? 

Docusign Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM) can help you improve your processes for creating, committing to, and managing agreements. With IAM, you can access features that help you review contracts collaboratively before they are finalized. You can also set up custom workflows to route agreements to the right people on your team, and you can even set up conditional workflows that do things like route a sales agreement to your legal team if the overall contract value is over a certain amount. This can help focus reviewer time on the agreements that could pose the most risk to your organization. Docusign IAM helps ensure that every agreement aligns with organizational standards and legal requirements, providing peace of mind.

Does Docusign offer comprehensive agreement tracking?

Docusign IAM also gives you a comprehensive view of risk across the agreement lifecycle. It tracks changes, manages approvals, and helps you support your compliance requirements, ensuring that agreements remain aligned with business goals. You’ll get an audit trail of who signed the agreement when and who changed what within the agreement. By centralizing agreement data and processes, Docusign IAM enables better visibility and control, leading to more informed decision-making.

All Docusign features and products mentioned are either currently available or being released this year.

*Note: Intended as a guideline based upon historical results from a random sample set of customers. ROI is dependent upon many different factors that are customer- specific. Therefore, actual results will vary.

Source: Docusign Customer Relationship Survey conducted in May 2025 by Docusign. Survey respondents were 1,257 business executives/project sponsors and system administrators worldwide”