In this article:
What is Draft Assistant?
Draft Assistant is your starting point in LawVu Draft. It’s the first thing you see when you open Draft, so you can get started without having to learn what every tool does.
Simply describe what you want to do - whether that’s understanding a contract, reviewing a clause, or drafting new text. Draft Assistant helps you take the next step and guides you to a dedicated tool, such as Playbooks or Templates, when it’s better suited to your task.
Built for legal work, Draft Assistant lets you ask questions about your documents and continue with follow-up questions. Its answers can include references to the source text, helping you check the context and find the information you need without having to search through pages.
When you ask Draft Assistant to write or rewrite text, it can provide a layout-aware answer that you can insert directly into your open Word document while preserving its existing formatting and layout.
✅ When to use it
To find the right tool for your task
Start with Draft Assistant. When a dedicated module, such as Playbooks or Templates, is better suited to your request, it guides you there.To get quick answers from long or complex legal documents
Ask questions and get concise responses without reading everything.To find the exact section you need
Click references to go directly to the relevant paragraph.To rewrite or draft text inside your document
Insert suggested text into Word while keeping layout formatting.To work with multiple documents at once
Helpful for bundles, transactions, or related files.To stay focused on legal content
Built-in filtering reduces irrelevant or off-topic answers.
❌ When not to use it
When you need fully reliable legal advice without checking
Always verify AI output before relying on it.For non-legal or unrelated topics
The legal filter will block many non-legal questions.
Chat with your document(s)
Draft Assistant works much like other generative AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot. You ask a question about your document, receive an answer, and can continue with follow-up questions for an ongoing conversation.
What sets Draft Assistant apart is that it is layout-aware.
When an answer includes text that is likely intended for insertion into your open Microsoft Word document, it is highlighted in blue and can be inserted directly - without needing to adjust formatting or layout.
Draft Assistant lets you choose how long you want its responses to be. Before submitting a question, you can select between:
Concise answer – short, to-the-point responses
Medium-length answer – balanced detail (default)
Detailed answer – more thorough explanations
This helps you tailor answers to your task, whether you want a quick confirmation or a more in-depth explanation.
Working with more documents
You can add Word documents, PDFs, Excel files, PowerPoint files, and email files as context for your questions. Use the upload area to drag in files or select them using your operating system’s file selection dialog. You can also fetch documents from LawVu.
Email files include their attachments. For example, you can add a negotiation thread with a previous contract version attached, giving Draft Assistant both the discussion and the attached document as background in one go.
Working with multiple files is especially useful when they relate to the same transaction or matter, such as a contract, a negotiation email thread, and supporting spreadsheets or presentations.
By clicking on Attachments, you can choose which documents are sent to the AI engine for questioning. Only selected files are visible to the AI.
Tip: If paragraph-level navigation across several Word documents or PDFs is important, consider combining them into a single DOCX file using the Bulk Operations module. You can then use Draft Assistant within the combined document and navigate directly to referenced paragraphs.
Blue background answers
Draft Assistant uses different background colours to indicate how answers are intended to be used.
Blue background answers indicate content that can be directly inserted into your open document or email. These answers include a special layout-aware insertion option, allowing you to insert the text directly into Microsoft Word while preserving the existing formatting and layout.
In some cases, you may still want to apply custom styling - for example, to match your organisation’s house style - but for most use cases, the formatting is handled automatically.
If you’d like to apply different numbering, select “Insert with changes” and choose the appropriate numbering level.
If the text isn’t quite right, you can also send it directly to our “Rewrite text” module to refine it.
Source linking and navigation
Answers often include links to the source paragraphs. Clicking a referenced paragraph takes you directly to that location in the document, allowing you to review the surrounding context quickly.
Good to know
Draft Assistant includes a built-in legal filter and will only respond to queries related to legal subject matter (in a broad sense). It will refuse to answer clearly unrelated questions, such as those about sports or pop culture. While there may be edge cases where the filter is either too strict or too lenient, this limitation is intentional and helps ensure that subscriptions are used for professional, work-related purposes.
Tips and best practices
Be explicit in your questions.
Clear, detailed prompts generally produce better results, as the AI can more easily match your question to relevant parts of the document.Ask clearly for insert-ready drafting.
If you want text you can insert directly into your document, explicitly ask Draft Assistant to write or rewrite content. This increases the likelihood of receiving a layout-aware answer.Tell Draft Assistant when to look beyond your selection.
By default, the chatbot focuses on your current text selection. If you want it to consider other sections of the document, say so directly.You can often ask questions in a different language than the document’s language.
For easier navigation across multiple documents, consider combining them into a single DOCX file using the Bulk Operations module. This allows you to click and jump between referenced sections more smoothly.
Recommendations and compliance notes
Draft Assistant is best for getting oriented and moving faster - but it’s not a substitute for professional judgment. Treat it like a very capable assistant: useful, quick, and helpful, but something you should verify.
For compliance, the document content (split into clauses) is sent to Microsoft’s semantic AI services to generate semantic representations. Microsoft states confidentiality protections. Your data will not be reused in any way, neither by Microsoft, nor by OpenAI.