Compliance & Legal

How to review a vendor contract as Small Legal and Compliance Teams

Compliance & LegalFor Small Legal and Compliance Teams3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

You're a two-person legal team reviewing six vendor contracts a week that sales flagged as urgent three days ago. The MSA lands in Gmail, you pull it into Google Drive, you open a separate tab to check your Notion tracker (which hasn't been updated since Q3), you leave comments in the doc, you chase the business owner on Slack for context, and then you email back and forth with the vendor about the DPA redline. When it finally needs a signature you forward it to DocuSign manually. There's no queue. There's no SLA. There's no way to know which contracts are expiring in 90 days without opening every folder in Drive. Purpose-built CLMs like Ironclad or Evisort would fix this but they cost more than your entire software budget and require a legal-ops hire to run.

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Compliance & LegalFor Small Legal and Compliance Teams3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A live contract review queue that pulls new contract requests from Gmail and Google Drive, surfaces the relevant vendor info, and lets you assign review status and risk flags — all in one Starch app, not scattered across four tools.

An automated expiration and renewal alert workflow that reads your existing contract data and Slacks you 90, 60, and 30 days before a contract expires or auto-renews — no more manually scanning a Notion tracker.

A vendor-risk intake form connected to your review workflow, so every new SaaS tool IT wants to buy comes with a pre-filled questionnaire summary before it hits your desk.

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

Contract Lifecycle Management Knowledge Management

Data sources & config

Starch syncs your Gmail data on a schedule so new contract emails surface automatically without manual forwarding. Google Drive is connected from Starch's integration catalog; the agent queries it live when it needs to pull a specific contract file. Slack is connected from Starch's integration catalog for outbound alerts. DocuSign is connected from Starch's integration catalog so review cards can link directly to envelope status. Notion is connected from Starch's integration catalog so you can pull in your existing contract tracker rows as a starting data set. The Contract Lifecycle Management app is currently in development — request beta access; in the meantime, the custom contract review tracker app above is fully buildable today.

Prompts to copy

Build me a contract review tracker that pulls new emails from Gmail with the subject line containing 'MSA', 'DPA', or 'contract', extracts the vendor name, contract type, and requested sign-by date, and creates a review card with fields for risk level (low/medium/high), assigned reviewer, redline status, and DocuSign link. Show cards in a Kanban view grouped by status.

Build me an automation that runs every Sunday night, scans my contract tracker for any contract with an expiration or auto-renewal date in the next 90 days, and posts a Slack message to #legal with the contract name, counterparty, expiration date, and whether we have a notice-period obligation.

Build me a vendor risk intake app where IT can submit a new SaaS tool request — vendor name, use case, data types accessed, and number of employees who will use it. When a submission comes in, pull any existing Gmail thread with that vendor name and summarize it for me, then create a review task.

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect Gmail in Starch (scheduled sync) — Starch will automatically pull incoming emails flagged with contract-related subject lines into your review queue every time it syncs.

2 Connect Google Drive from Starch's integration catalog — the agent queries Drive live to retrieve the attached contract PDF or doc when you open a review card.

3 Connect Slack from Starch's integration catalog so your renewal alert automation can post directly into #legal without you touching it.

4 Connect DocuSign from Starch's integration catalog so each review card can display the current envelope status and the direct signing link — no tab-switching to check whether the vendor countersigned.

5 Tell Starch to build your contract review queue app using the natural-language prompt above. It will scaffold the intake form, the Kanban board, and the Gmail connection in one session.

6 Import your existing Notion contract tracker by connecting Notion from Starch's integration catalog — ask Starch to pull all rows and map vendor name, expiration date, and contract type into your new queue so you're not starting from zero.

7 Set up the 90/60/30-day renewal alert automation using the prompt above. Starch schedules it to run every Sunday night and posts to Slack — you don't need to remember to check anything.

8 Build the vendor-risk intake form so IT has a structured way to submit new SaaS tool requests. When a request lands, Starch queries Gmail for any prior correspondence with that vendor and includes a summary in the review task it creates for you.

9 During a contract review, open the relevant card and ask Starch to summarize the key risk provisions in the attached document — limitation of liability, data processing terms, auto-renewal clause, governing law. This is a prompt you run per contract, not a separate app.

10 When you're ready to send for signature, Starch updates the card status to 'Sent for Signature' and records the DocuSign envelope ID. The next time the automation runs, it checks whether the envelope is complete and updates the card automatically.

11 At the end of each quarter, run a query inside Starch: 'Show me all contracts signed in the last 90 days, grouped by department and risk level, with total contract value where available.' This becomes your legal team's quarterly report to the CFO.

12 As the Contract Lifecycle Management app moves out of beta, you can migrate your custom tracker into it for AI-powered clause drafting and a built-in clause library — your data and workflow configuration carry over.

See this running on Starch

Connect your tools, describe what you want, and the agent builds it. Closed beta is free.

Try it on Starch →

Worked example

April 2026 — Acme DataCo DPA review under a 48-hour sales deadline

Sample numbers from a real run

Vendor contract request email arrives in Gmail	0
Starch creates review card: Acme DataCo, DPA + MSA, risk level unset	0
Agent queries Google Drive, retrieves the 34-page MSA attachment	0
Legal asks Starch to extract key risk provisions — liability cap ($50K), auto-renewal at 12 months, 30-day written notice required, EU SCCs attached	0
Risk level set to Medium; redline sent back to vendor on data retention clause	0
Revised MSA returned; DocuSign envelope created and linked to card	0
Envelope countersigned; Starch marks card Complete, logs expiration date as April 15, 2027	0
90-day renewal alert scheduled: Slack notification to fire January 15, 2027	0

On a Tuesday morning, Acme DataCo's account executive emails your team a 34-page MSA and DPA with a note that the sales team needs it signed by Thursday. Without Starch, this would mean: someone forwards it to the legal alias, you find it in Gmail, you open Drive to store it, you look up whether you've worked with this vendor before, you spend 40 minutes reading to find the liability cap and auto-renewal clause, and then you manually create a DocuSign envelope. With Starch, the Gmail sync picks up the email and creates a review card automatically. You open it, see the vendor name and requested sign-by date, and type: 'Summarize the key risk provisions in the attached MSA — liability cap, data processing obligations, auto-renewal terms, and governing law.' Starch queries Drive for the document and returns: liability capped at $50,000 (one month's fees), EU SCCs included as an exhibit, auto-renewal at 12 months with 30-day written notice required to cancel, Delaware governing law. You flag the liability cap as low for a $6,000/year contract, note the 30-day notice window, set risk to Medium, and send a single redline back on the data retention clause. When Acme returns the revised version two days later, you link the DocuSign envelope to the card. The moment it's countersigned, you update the expiration date to April 15, 2027 — and the Sunday-night automation will Slack you on January 15, 2027, 90 days before the auto-renewal deadline, with the notice obligation flagged. The entire review took 25 minutes of your time instead of the usual 90.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Contract review cycle time — days from request received to fully executed signature

Contracts at risk of silent auto-renewal — count of agreements with renewal dates inside 90 days and no cancellation decision logged

Vendor risk distribution — percentage of active vendor contracts rated low / medium / high risk

DPA coverage rate — percentage of active SaaS vendors with a signed DPA on file vs. no DPA documented

Open redline age — number of contracts where a redline has been outstanding for more than 5 business days

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

Ironclad

Full CLM with a clause library and workflow builder, but starts at six figures annually and requires a dedicated legal-ops person to configure and maintain — not realistic for a two-person team at a 150-person company.

Evisort / LinkSquares

Strong AI contract analysis and repository search, but you're paying for a standalone platform that still doesn't connect to your Gmail intake flow, your Notion tracker, or your Slack alerts without manual exports.

Google Drive folder + Notion tracker + manual Gmail

Zero cost and zero setup, but your tracker is stale within a quarter, there are no renewal alerts, and every new contract review starts with 20 minutes of archaeology — this is what Starch replaces.

DocuSign CLM (add-on)

Native to your e-signature tool, but the CLM add-on is priced for enterprise procurement teams and doesn't give you the vendor-risk queue or Gmail intake automation you actually need.

OneTrust

Purpose-built for privacy and compliance workflows including DSARs and DPAs, but is a six-figure platform aimed at dedicated privacy programs — overkill for a team that needs a vendor contract tracker and renewal alerts, not a full compliance management suite.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — contract lifecycle management, knowledge management, founder inbox all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Does Starch actually read the contract documents themselves, or does it just track metadata?

Both. Starch connects to Google Drive from its integration catalog and can retrieve the document content when you ask it to. You can type 'Summarize the liability and auto-renewal provisions in the Acme DataCo MSA attached to this card' and Starch will pull the file and extract the answer. It's not a purpose-built contract analysis tool with a pre-trained clause library — that's what Contract Lifecycle Management (coming soon) will add. Today, it's a general AI agent that can read documents you point it at.

We already use DocuSign. Does Starch replace it?

No, and it's not trying to. DocuSign handles your e-signatures; Starch connects to it from the integration catalog and surfaces envelope status inside your review workflow. You still create and send envelopes in DocuSign. What Starch adds is the queue management, the intake automation, and the renewal alerts that DocuSign doesn't do.

What about our Notion contract tracker — do we have to rebuild it from scratch?

You connect Notion from Starch's integration catalog and the agent queries it live. You can ask Starch to pull all your existing tracker rows — vendor name, expiration date, contract type — and import them into a new Starch app as a starting data set. You're not starting from zero.

We use Outlook, not Gmail. Does the email intake automation still work?

Yes. Starch syncs your Outlook data on a schedule the same way it does Gmail — messages, calendars, and contacts. The contract intake automation works identically; just connect Outlook instead of Gmail when you set it up.

Is Starch SOC 2 certified? Our infosec team is going to ask.

Not yet — Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified today. That's an honest limit worth naming. If SOC 2 Type II is a hard requirement for any tool that touches your contract data, you'll need to flag that to your infosec team and decide whether the current trust posture is acceptable for your use case.

You listed Contract Lifecycle Management as a relevant app — can we use it today?

Not yet. Contract Lifecycle Management is currently in development. You can request beta access to get notified when it launches. Everything described in the recipe above — the contract review queue, the renewal alerts, the vendor-risk intake form — is buildable today using custom Starch apps on top of your Gmail, Google Drive, Slack, and DocuSign connections.

Can Starch handle the actual vendor risk questionnaire — sending it to the vendor and collecting responses?

Starch can build the intake form that IT fills out internally before the contract hits your desk. For sending a questionnaire to an external vendor and collecting their responses, you'd typically use a form tool or email — Starch can automate the follow-up emails via Gmail and track response status in your review queue, but it's not a standalone vendor portal.