In this article:
What is the Quality Library?
When you should use the Quality Library
Creating Clauses
What is the Quality Library?
The Quality Library is a central repository where your organization stores trusted, reusable legal content. It includes clauses, contract fragments, notes, and other text elements that have been reviewed, curated, and organized for repeated use.
Rather than searching through old documents or rewriting the same provisions, the Quality Library gives you a structured way to manage the building blocks of legal documents. Content is organized into folders and can include helpful context - such as titles, explanations, and tags - to make each item easy to understand and reuse..
Multiple libraries, one system
ClauseBuddy supports more than one Quality Library:
A main library shared across the organization
Team or department libraries for specialised content
A personal library for your own clauses and notes
This setup allows teams to share best practices while still keeping flexibility.
When you should use the Quality Library
To save time - Avoid rewriting standard clauses or searching through old contracts. Approved content is always easy to access.
To improve consistency - Everyone uses the same reviewed wording, helping ensure the correct versions are applied and reducing errors or contradictions.
To capture and share knowledge - High-quality legal drafting evolves over time. The Quality Library allows you to preserve that expertise and share it across the organization—especially with junior team members.
To add structure to your content - Clauses are organized using folders, tags, comments, and metadata, making them far easier to navigate than shared Word files or document repositories.
To integrate seamlessly into drafting - Insert clauses directly into your draft exactly where you need them, formatted to match your current document layout.
When you shouldn’t use the Quality Library
If you need to store full contracts or large documents- The Quality Library is not a document management system. It’s designed for reusable content, not entire files.
If there’s no plan to maintain it - An uncurated library with outdated or unclear clauses can slow you down. The Quality Library works best when ownership and quality standards are clearly defined.
Creating Clauses
Creating clauses
Adding clauses to ClauseBuddy is straightforward. You can either create a clause yourself or send useful content to a colleague who acts as a curator.
In both cases, the easiest way to start is by selecting one or more paragraphs in Microsoft Word. ClauseBuddy will analyse the selected text and pre-fill the clause creation form for you.
Adding a clause yourself
When you select New clause, ClauseBuddy analyses the selected text and automatically distributes it across the relevant fields in the clause entry form.
For example, a selected clause in Word may be split into:
A Name (filename)
A Title
One or more paragraphs in the Body
You can review and adjust each field before saving the clause.
Name - This is the internal filename of the clause. Keep it short and descriptive so users understand what the clause is about without reading the full text.
Avoid encoding every legal nuance in the name—attributes and descriptions are better suited for that.Location - Choose the folder (and subfolder) where the clause should be stored. The folder structure provides important legal context, so take care to place clauses thoughtfully. Folder management is described in more detail on the Managing Folders page.
Title - An optional clause title that can be inserted into Word as a (sub)heading. Users can configure whether titles are included when inserting clauses.
Body - The legal content of the clause, divided into paragraphs. Drafting rules are the same as elsewhere in ClauseBuddy.
Attributes - Legal metadata that describes the clause, such as party perspective, level of nuance, or whether it is a standard clause. Attributes make clauses easier to filter and reuse consistently.
Enriching your clause
Click + Augment clause to add additional fields:
Extra keywords - Improves search results by adding alternative terms users may search for.
Description - Internal guidance explaining the context, origin, or intended use of the clause. This text is never inserted into Word.
Comments - Typically used for legal commentary, such as references to case law or doctrine.
Tip:
Users often search by keywords that don’t appear in the clause text itself. Adding these terms to the name, description, or comments (for example, “Texas shoot-out”) makes clauses much easier to find.
Translating clauses
If your clause library supports multiple languages, you can store translations of the same clause side by side.
When adding a new language version, ClauseBuddy automatically proposes a machine translation. You can also add translations manually using the … menu.
Machine translations are a strong starting point, especially for standard legal clauses, but they should always be reviewed carefully. Treat them as a helpful first draft, not a final version.
Sending text to a curator
Instead of creating clauses yourself, you can send selected text to a designated curator. Curators are appointed by your administrator and are responsible for maintaining clause quality and consistency.
This approach is especially useful in larger teams or when strict standards apply.
You can include:
The clause body
An optional title
An internal note for the curator
Tip:
If you are a curator, you can also send clauses to yourself to process later.
Adding clauses as a curator
Curators receive submitted clauses in their ClauseBuddy inbox.
When you open ClauseBuddy, any pending submissions are shown on the home page. Clicking Import transfers the title and body into the clause creation dialog described above. Internal notes are not imported, as they are intended only as guidance.
Once processed, you can delete the message using the trash icon.
Curation in Clause9
Curators can also process incoming clauses directly in Clause9, which is particularly useful for creating advanced or dynamic clauses (for example, conditional text or adaptive terminology).
To access these submissions:
Open the Globo panel (top-right corner)
Select the Curation subpanel
Clicking Import transfers the title and body into the appropriate language fields in the Clause9 clause editor. Once finished, remove the message from the Globo panel.
Editing existing clauses
If you have permission, you can edit any clause found through browsing or search.
Simply click the clause to open the editor, make your changes, and click Save to store them.