Contract Workflow Authority Pack™ for UK legal practice.
Every AI-assisted contract action — bound to an open matter, gated behind a supervising lawyer before any client or counterparty sees it, escalated to a partner when the risk crosses the line, and signed into a redline Evidence Pack™ at the moment it happens. AI drafting without a supervision trail is unsupervised practice. KYE Protocol™ produces the supervision evidence — the Contract Workflow Authority Pack™ is the productisation that lands it inside UK law firms and in-house legal teams.
AI contract drafting meets the SRA supervision obligation — final responsibility still rests with a qualified person.
AI tools now draft, redline, and negotiate contracts at scale. The SRA Code of Conduct does not move: a qualified person remains responsible for the legal work product, client confidentiality is absolute, and competence is non-delegable. Three facts converge:
- Supervision is non-delegable. An AI tool acting outside an engaged matter, or releasing to a counterparty without a lawyer’s sign-off, is unsupervised practice. The supervising lawyer carries the regulatory responsibility, not the model.
- The current evidence base is weak. Email threads, document version history, and recollection are the dominant evidence today that a human reviewed an AI-drafted clause. They are reconstructive, contestable, and unsigned.
- KYE Protocol™ produces materially better evidence. Authority Finality™ on every AI-assisted contract decision, bound to the matter scope, the playbook clause, the risk classification, and the lawyer-review state. The redline Evidence Pack™ is signed, replay-derivable from published JWKS, and produced at the moment the action commits.
- The buyer is named and budget-holding. The supervising partner, the Compliance Officer for Legal Practice (COLP), and the in-house General Counsel carry the exposure and hold the budget for governed AI adoption.
Provable supervision — signed at the moment, derivable from public keys alone.
- Matter-scope binding on every action. No AI-assisted draft, clause, or redline runs without a bound matter — client, supervising lawyer, permitted contract types, and a value/risk authority limit. Unbound actions are refused before they happen.
- Lawyer review before external release. No AI-generated or AI-redlined artefact reaches a client or counterparty until a qualified supervising lawyer named on the matter has reviewed and signed off. The review state is bound to the artefact, signed.
- Risk escalation to a partner. Uncapped liability, indemnity acceptance, off-playbook deviation, governing-law changes, and value over the matter limit cross the risk-escalation threshold and route to a partner before they can be accepted.
- Confidentiality and Article 28 preserved. Privileged, confidential, or special-category client material is refused egress outside the matter trust domain — preserving the SRA confidentiality obligation and the UK GDPR Article 28 processing boundary.
- Replay-derivable from published JWKS. A supervising partner, COLP, or auditor can verify the redline Evidence Pack™ offline, against published keys alone. No vendor cooperation required.
An 8-step pipeline — from AI contract action to supervision view.
Every AI-assisted contract decision flows through the same eight steps. The pipeline is bound to canonical KYE Protocol™ envelopes — no parallel surfaces, no bespoke shapes per firm.
- 1 — AI contract action proposed. The AI agent or operational team proposes a draft, clause acceptance, or redline that classifies as a contract-workflow action.
- 2 — KYE™ authority check. The Action Admissibility™ Gate verifies the bound matter scope, the playbook coverage, and the release-authority chain. No matter scope = no action.
- 3 — Evidence Pack™ assembled. The runtime emits kye.purpose.request.v1 + kye.purpose.admissibility.v1 + kye.evidence.decision_map.v1 + kye.evidence.pack.v1 in lockstep.
- 4 — Authority Finality™ outcome. The action either commits or is refused. The outcome is bound to the matter for the supervision record.
- 5 — Risk classification recorded. The clause risk (liability, indemnity, off-playbook deviation, governing law, value) is scored; above-threshold decisions escalate to a partner.
- 6 — Lawyer review bound. Before any external release, the supervising lawyer’s signed sign-off is bound to the artefact. Queryable per matter, per clause category.
- 7 — Redline evidence emitted. The signed redline Evidence Pack™ is sealed and made replay-derivable. Available to the supervising partner, COLP, audit, and the firm’s regulator on demand.
- 8 — Supervision view. The AI-assisted contract decision register surfaces in the supervision dashboard. The supervising partner reviews quarterly and co-signs the attestation envelope.
Bound to the canonical UK legal-practice regulatory perimeter.
The Pack binds the canonical KYE™ artefact set to the UK legal-practice regulatory perimeter. Every claim resolves to a control row on the bound framework.
| Framework | Control area | Pack coverage |
|---|---|---|
| SRA Code of Conduct | 3.5 Supervision of the legal work product | full |
| SRA Code of Conduct | 6.3 Confidentiality of client information | full |
| SRA Code of Conduct | 3.2 Competence | partial |
| UK GDPR / Data Protection Act 2018 | Article 28 processor obligations | partial |
| Contract law | UCTA 1977 reasonableness of terms | partial |
Full coverage means every requirement in the control area is bound to a canonical KYE™ rule, dictionary term, or evidence-pack contract. Partial coverage means the bound surface satisfies the control area when paired with the firm’s own attestation envelope.
Qualified UK legal-sector partners — apply through the Foundry.
The Contract Workflow Authority Pack™ is a KYE Sector Pack Foundry™ expert-pack under constitution §54 §14. Productisation is via the KYE Sector Pack Foundry™ Build tier; commercial distribution is value-based, qualification-gated, and disclosed under NDA to qualified applicants.