Review scopes — whole document, tracked changes, version comparison

When you launch Review with playbook from a contract, the AI Review dialog opens to a four-step setup: Documents, Coverage, Playbook, Approach. This article is about step 2 — Coverage (which scope of the document the AI reads).

There are three options, designed for the three things most reviewers actually want to do.

Whole document

Full playbook review across the entire contract.

The baseline. Every clause the playbook covers is evaluated against the entire selected version. Use this when:

• You’re seeing the contract for the first time.
• The counterparty has sent a clean version with no markup, and you want a full position-vs-standard write-up.
• You want a baseline review you can later diff future revisions against.

This is also the only scope that works on PDF-only contracts — the differential scopes need a DOCX (for tracked-changes markup) or two specific versions to diff (for comparison).

Tracked changes

Analyse <ins>/<del> markup already in this document. Pick authors and a date range below.

Restricts the review to the tracked-changes revisions already in the DOCX you’ve selected. Use this when:

• The counterparty has sent back a marked-up version of your contract and you want to know what they changed and what it means, not “what does the whole contract say”.
• You’re in negotiation round 3 and want a focused review of just round-3 changes without re-litigating the rest.

When you pick this scope, a filter panel appears with:

• Authors — tick the revisers whose changes you want reviewed (e.g. just opposing counsel, not your own internal edits).
• Date range — restrict to changes made within a window. Useful when the same DOCX has revisions from multiple negotiation rounds and you only want to look at the most recent round.

A live count appears on the Scope card — “Run review on 17 changes” — so you can sanity-check the filter before kicking off.

Requires a DOCX with real tracked changes (<w:ins> / <w:del> markup). If the version doesn’t have any, the panel tells you so and the Tracked changes scope is disabled.

Compare with another version

Diff this contract against an attachment or another contract. The AI evaluates the differences.

The most flexible differential scope. Instead of relying on in-document markup, Clment computes a paragraph- and word-level diff between any two documents you select and the AI reviews the differences, not the whole text. Use this when:

• The counterparty sent a clean counter (no tracked changes) and you want to know what they changed vs your last sent version.
• You want to compare two NDAs you’ve signed with different counterparties.
• You want to compare a draft contract against an executed precedent.

When you pick this scope, a target picker appears. The “other side” of the diff can be:

• Another version of the same contract (the typical “compare what they sent to what we sent” workflow).
• A different contract entirely (“compare CLM-89’s MSA to CLM-12’s MSA”).
• An attached document (e.g. an attachment uploaded for context).

The diff is computed server-side and stored on the resulting review for reproducibility — opening the review later shows the same diff even if either document is subsequently revised.

This scope unlocks the side-by-side comparison view, which is the most polished surface Clment has for actually understanding what changed.

Picking between Tracked changes and Compare

Both differential scopes answer “what did they change?” but get there differently:

	Tracked changes	Compare with another version
Source of truth	<ins>/<del> markup in the DOCX	Server-computed diff between two specific versions
Works on PDFs?	No — DOCX only	Either side can be PDF or DOCX
Author/date filter?	Yes	No (the diff is whole-document)
Best when	Counterparty sent you a marked-up version	Counterparty sent a clean counter, or comparing precedents

If the version you’ve uploaded HAS tracked changes, Tracked changes is usually quicker and more precise. If they sent a clean version (or you’re comparing across contracts), Compare with another version is what you want.

What changes in the rest of the dialog

Picking a differential scope doesn’t change the rest of the dialog much — the playbook, review strategy, and review depth work the same way. The visible differences:

• The Run button reads “Run review on N changes” instead of just “Run review”.
• The resulting review carries finding-to-change links — clicking a finding scrolls the side-by-side view to the specific change it’s about, and vice versa.
• Findings are scoped to changes, so the count is usually much lower than a whole-document review (5–20 findings for a typical counterparty mark-up vs 30–50 for a fresh whole-document review).

See also

• Reviewing contracts — the overview that frames this step.
• Choosing a review strategy — step 4 (Approach): how assertive the review is and what lands in the redline.
• Comparing versions side-by-side — the result surface for differential reviews.
• Multi-document reviews — when one review needs to span attachments or include reference context.
• Understanding finding verdicts — what to do with the findings once they come back.