Contract Review Checklist Template

Position Register

Illustrative rows for a fictional six-partner firm reviewing colocation paper.

The fallback is what you sign without asking. The escalate column is what stops everything reaching a partner, and a column naming the same person on every row means the ladder has not been decided yet.

An unset row is not a position. Every issue landing on the fourth row comes back as not in register, which is a finding rather than a gap for the run to fill.

Issue Register

Six issues, one inbound master services agreement, nothing decided yet.

Row 2 came from two clauses, not one. Each is defensible alone. Read together, the window for serving notice shuts before the right it serves comes into existence.

Row 4 is the register's gap, not the contract's. No recorded position covers precedence, and clause 39 ranks four schedules nobody supplied above the document that was reviewed.

Four issues open. This review cannot close.

Review Memo  ·  Issue 2

One issue section, written out. Five elements, every time.

What the clause says. Clause 7(b): the customer may terminate for convenience after the thirty-sixth month of the initial term, on written notice served no later than the end of the thirty-first month, with an effective date up to 120 days after that notice.

What the register says. Termination for convenience, standard: either party on 60 days written notice. Fallback: customer only, after month 12, with a stated early termination fee. Set by P. Anand on 2026-01-12.

The call. Departs. The two limbs do not overlap. Notice served on the last permitted day takes effect thirty-three days before the earliest date the right exists, so the clause grants an exit that cannot be exercised as drafted.

Risk. High. The exposure is the whole of the remaining term at the contracted monthly charge, with no exit and no stated remedy for the drafting conflict.

Who decided. Open. With the partner on the matter since 2026-03-04.

Supervision Record

One row per closed review. The counts are the only thing here that reads across matters.

Reseller agreements escalate 9 of their 20 issues across two matters. Every other contract type here escalates none. That is not a cautious reviewer; it is a contract type the firm has no settled view on, and it only shows up once several reviews have closed.

Register version is on every row. A review measured against the November register and recorded against the January one cannot be checked by anybody afterwards, which is the entire purpose of the sheet.

Six months later, the answer to why a clause was accepted comes off this row rather than out of somebody's memory.