Founders & Small BusinessFree
Review a Contract Without a Lawyer
River resolves every duration in the agreement against the date you would sign it, including the notice deadline the document never prints.
River reads the agreement you have been asked to sign, then resolves every period in it against the date you would sign. Back comes a Doc covering what you are committing to, the termination and renewal position, and the clauses worth raising before you sign. Beside it sits a Sheet with one row per obligation: how the contract words it, the date that wording resolves to, and what happens once that date passes. Every date in that column is derived, and the Sheet says so.
How little a contract prints is easy to check. Take one master services agreement filed with the SEC in August 2026. It runs to 94,041 characters across the agreement itself, a statement of work, a service level agreement and an indemnification agreement. Between them they print one calendar date and fifty-six periods stated as a length of time. The one date is the day it took effect. The date that would let either party out is not in there in any form.
This is for the founder handed someone else's paper, with a deal worth signing and no budget for counsel on every one. If the document is investor paper rather than a customer's, the term sheet is a different read. If you have already sent comments and a marked-up version came back, that comparison is its own job. A purchase order is their paper too, and the purchase order check reads it first. It reports what the document says and what its words work out to, not whether a term holds in your jurisdiction.
The deadline is an offset from an offset
Read the renewal clause closely and the deadline is two derivations deep. Notice is due sixty days before the end of the then-current term. Which term that is depends on how many times the agreement has already renewed. When that term ends depends on whether a twelve-month term ends on the anniversary of signing or the day before, and the agreement never says which. So one clause and one signature date produce two candidate deadlines, one day apart. Both leave exactly sixty days. The register carries both instead of picking one.
One legislature decided the duration was not good enough. Wisconsin requires a seller renewing a business contract to disclose the date of the deadline for the customer to decline renewal. Not the notice period, the date. The statute is squarely business to business: its customer is a person who conducts business in the state and purchases business services under a business contract. Miss the disclosure and the renewal provision is not enforceable, and the contract ends at the term. That is Wisconsin law and it binds Wisconsin business contracts only.
Elsewhere the cover is thinner than it is reported to be. New York's rule does reach companies, since a person there means a corporation as much as an individual. But it covers service, maintenance and repair contracts for real or personal property, and not where the renewal runs a month or less. California is cited constantly as a business protection and is not one: its own definition of a consumer is an individual acting for personal, family, or household purposes. So the date is yours to work out.
How it works
Paste the agreement
Give it the document you were sent, attachments included, and the date you expect to sign.
Find every period
River pulls each obligation stated as a length of time rather than as a date.
Resolve them
Each period is worked out from your signing date, and the ambiguous ones are computed both ways.
Price the deadlines
What each missed date commits you to, taken from the figures the contract already states.
What you get
- One row per obligation, with the words the contract uses and the date they resolve to
- The non-renewal deadline computed both ways, because a twelve-month term has two defensible endings
- Recurring obligations resolved into actual dates, including the ones a weekend pushes later
- What a missed notice deadline commits you to, priced from the contract's own figures
- Clauses where the contract contradicts itself, quoted side by side rather than reconciled
- Every derived date labelled as derived, since the document you were sent contains none of them
Common questions
Why does it ask when I would sign, not when the contract ends?
Because the end date is itself derived. An unsigned agreement states a term as a length of time, so its end is a function of the day you sign. Asking for the end date assumes the answer the document withholds. Give the date you expect to sign, and every row moves with it if that slips.
Does it tell me whether the auto-renewal clause is enforceable?
No, and that limit is deliberate. Enforceability turns on which state's law governs, what kind of contract it is, and facts outside the document. Those are not things a reading of the text settles. What the run does is quote the clause, resolve its dates, and name the questions worth paying a lawyer an hour to answer. Your own outbound paper is a drafting job, not a read.
Doesn't click to cancel cover me now?
Not for business services. The federal rule in force is the prenotification negative option rule, and it is written about plans for merchandise. The 2024 revision people mean by click to cancel is not what the code currently carries. Read the clause you were sent rather than a rule you have heard about.
It is forty pages. Which dates actually matter?
The ones that close a door. A notice deadline is the sharpest, because past it the only exit may be gone for another full term. Recurring items behave differently: a retainer due on the first business day of every month is a rule, and the register turns it into twelve dates. Whether those payments then left the account is a separate read.
The words and the numerals disagree in one clause. Which wins?
The run will not choose for you. Where a clause spells out one number and puts a different numeral in brackets, both readings go into the register with the date each produces. Which of them governs is a question about that contract and the law over it. What you get is the conflict before you sign rather than after.
I already signed it. Any use?
Partly, and you have lost the better half. The dates resolve the same way, so you still get the calendar. A folder of signed contracts rather than one wants a vendor renewal tracker instead. What is gone is the ability to ask for a different notice window, which only exists before signature. After that the useful checks move to the money, like whether what landed matches what was agreed.
What should I actually take to a lawyer?
Sort the questions first. Whether a term is enforceable, and what a clause means under the governing law, is judgement. So is whether an indemnity is unusual for your industry. Which date the notice window lands on is arithmetic, and the run answers the arithmetic and labels the rest. Property paper works the same way, which is what the commercial lease review does with a landlord's draft.
Review a Contract Without a Lawyer
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