Baseline® is a suite of tools which allows a contract reviewer to integrate best practices and shared knowledge directly into a document. The tool is for use by anyone who reviews contracts — controllers, CFO’s, CEO’s, paralegals, contract administrators, contract managers and lawyers.

Baseline works by reading the uploaded contract and then generating a snapshot summary of the contract. With a further click of the mouse, Baseline generates a markup of the document incorporating best practices into the document in Microsoft Word track changes mode. The best practices take the form of inserted clauses, deleted clauses and hyper links to a Knowledgebase with a further explanation of the clauses.

Scott Soloway, founder and President of Baseline Solutions Corporation, has recorded a video demo if you’re interested in seeing exactly what the app does:

The most recent upgrade added software licenses and services agreements to the kinds of documents the application handles, and Jeffrey Gordon of the Software Licensing Handbook gave Baseline a run-through before agreeing to allow his templates to be used as Baseline “playbooks”. Gordon captures neatly the advantage the Baseline application gives to a legal review team (emphasis ours):

You upload your preferred language (the baseline information) and then you can bounce any other proposed agreement off your preferences. The software uses proprietary algorithms to review the wording and match the sections. It looks for common phrasing but also appears to recognize intent. Frankly, I’m not sure how it works, but it does.

… The result is that the first review … is accomplished in a few seconds. The basic review is complete – now I can spend my valuable time reviewing the unique contract issues. I’ve just saved time and produced a better document.

We especially like where he calls it “Pop-Up Video for your contract.” (We do know how it works, and we’re still impressed.)

I gave a presentation last week for the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Law Department Management Committee (there’s a mouthful!) entitled:

Web 2.0 for Contracts: Where to Go, What’s Free, What Costs Money

Anderman provides a list of sites he recommended in his presentation, including BaselineNDA, the application we built for Baseline Solutions Corporation. Here’s what Anderman had to say about BaselineNDA–with our emphasis added.

BaselineNDA (Pretty amazing application, with some limitations, it can read and mark up a confidentiality agreement for you)

Thanks, Jason! We think it’s pretty amazing, too, and we’re not even lawyers.