What is Smart Merge

Smart Merge lets you intelligently merge two clauses (or two selections of text) using AI. Instead of manually comparing and rewriting clauses, Smart Merge helps you combine them while preserving the legal meaning you want to keep.

It focuses on substantive legal differences, not just wording, helping you create a cleaner, more consistent result.

How to access it

Smart Merge is not a standalone module. You access it before inserting a clause into your Word document.

You’ll find Smart Merge in pop‑up menus throughout ClauseBuddy, for example:

Quality Library
Samples Hunt
Truffle Hunt
AutoSuggest

When inserting a clause (for example via the + button), select Smart Merge from the pop‑up menu.

Selecting the texts to merge

When Smart Merge opens, you’ll see a dialog with two panels:

Target clause (left) - This is the text currently selected in Word. If nothing is selected, it will use the paragraph where your cursor is placed.
Merge with (right) - This is the clause you selected in ClauseBuddy (for example, an AutoSuggest clause).

You can change either text at any time:

Use selection: replaces the text with your current Word selection
Paste text: pastes content from your clipboard

This means you can fully replace either side, even if Smart Merge initially pre-filled them.

Once both texts are correct, click Analyse to start the AI analysis.

Choosing relevant legal features

Smart Merge analyses both clauses and breaks them down into legal features - key legal elements such as Contract duration, Termination rights or Dispute resolution or arbitration choices.

The AI focuses on content-related legal differences and ignores purely grammatical or stylistic variations.

For example, the two clauses shown in the previous screenshot, were broken down into the following legal features:

Initially, all the legal features of the Target clause will be selected, while none of the Merge with features will be selected. You decide what to keep, remove, or add by clicking the green/red buttons or the feature text itself.

You can click on the eye icon at the right to see the actual text associated with this legal feature:

It may also happen that legal features are "conflicting" with each other. For example, the clause on the left required complaints to be submitted within one month, while the clause on the right requires three months. You can hover over the orange or red Conflicting button to see the label(s) of the conflicting legal feature:

Orange warning: potential conflict detected
Red warning: conflicting features are both enabled

In most cases, you’ll want to disable one of the conflicting features before continuing.

Merging the clauses

Once you’ve selected the legal features you want, click Merge.

Smart Merge will:

Start from the Target clause
Remove legal features you disabled from the Target clause
Add legal features you enabled from the Merge with clause

The AI adapts wording from the Merge with clause to better match the terminology and style of the Target clause. While the results are usually strong, you should always review the merged clause carefully.

Inspecting the merge result

The AI will show you the final result:

You may want to check the difference between this text and the initial Target clause by clicking on the grey Compare button:

Inserting the merged clause into Word

To insert the merged text into Word, click + Insert. You can choose to insert the clause:

As-is: replaces any currently selected text
With track changes:
- If no text is selected, the entire clause is inserted as a new change
- If text is selected, ClauseBuddy compares the original and merged text and
  so that partial insertions and deletions will typically be generated.

For example, when choosing Insert with changes while the initial clause was selected, the following result is generated in MS Word:

ClauseBuddy Integration