WorkBuddy Batch Contract Review: Feed Fields Accurately Before Clicking Summary

Recently, I saw an analysis of WorkBuddy stating that three months after launch, its daily active users were around 12 million. This number conflicts with the "over 13 million" I mentioned on 8/17: the former seems to be a third-party sample or daily average at a specific time, while the latter might be a peak disclosed by the platform during a certain phase; statistical periods, deduplication methods, and whether trial team seats are included can all differ. I don't use it as a core argument, just as background. What really made me want to write a separate post is this: after using WorkBuddy for a month, my conclusion is somewhat counter-intuitive: the more a tool acts like it's for beginners, the less you should treat yourself like a beginner when using it. Especially in contracts and billing, it excels at making misaligned things "look smooth".

In the 8/17 post, I wrote about "spending twenty minutes doing one thing right to avoid disasters." This post won't repeat that general process but will address a narrower pitfall: before clicking "one-click summarize," have the fields been fed accurately?

Problem: One-click summarization easily swallows differences

Last Wednesday, I had a batch of contracts: main contracts, supplementary agreements, termination agreements, totaling over twenty documents. Formats included PDFs, Word docs, and screenshots sent by clients via Enterprise WeChat.

Initially wanting to save effort, I opened the WorkBuddy desktop app, created a new task, selected "Document Processing," dragged all files in, and clicked "One-click Summarize." It did produce a table, but "Dispute Resolution" and "Jurisdiction Court" were merged into one column, and some supplementary agreements were identified as main contracts.

This isn't because it's dumb. It's because I didn't tell it the rules.

Solution: Three-step implementation configuration for WorkBuddy

My approach was to clean the fields first, then let WorkBuddy compare.

1. Build a unified field table

On the right side of the WorkBuddy task page, click "Output Settings" and select "Custom Table." Add six columns: Contract Name, Contract Party, Amount, Term, Dispute Resolution, Remarks.

The first column must be a unique key; I used "Contract Name + Version Date." This step tells the AI what you want, rather than letting it guess. The expected result is simple: it won't arbitrarily merge columns later.

2. OCR and batch rename first

Scanned documents go through OCR first, meaning converting images and scanned PDFs into searchable text. I've only tried OCR for a few days recently; reflective pages are prone to errors.

So after uploading scans in WorkBuddy, click "Recognize Text," export the preview, and manually verify only contract numbers and parties. Then click "File Organization," select "Batch Rename," and name them according to ContractNumber_Party_Version_Date.

Once filenames are standardized, subsequent comparisons won't mistake different versions of the same contract for two separate ones.

3. Use document comparison, don't rush to let AI draw conclusions

Open WorkBuddy's "Document Comparison" feature. I've used this for about a month, but I only clicked on Expert Mode yesterday, so I'm still testing it; here I'll only discuss basic comparison. Select the main contract on the left and the supplementary agreement on the right. In comparison mode, enable "Sentence-by-sentence Comparison" first, then "Semantic Comparison."

Sentence-by-sentence comparison marks additions, deletions, and changes by sentence. Semantic comparison judges if different expressions mean the same thing. For example, "jurisdiction by court where Party A is located" and "disputes submitted to People's Court at Party A's domicile": sentence-by-sentence comparison shows differences, while semantic comparison suggests they might be consistent. Whether they are ultimately equivalent is still my judgment.

When exporting, click "Generate Difference Report," selecting both Excel and PDF formats. Excel is for assistants to check clauses; PDF is for partners to review.

Permissions and Daily Maintenance

If your team uses WorkBuddy workspaces, I recommend three layers: lead lawyers can edit, assistants can comment, clients have read-only access. Don't let clients directly modify original texts.

After each task ends, click "Version Management" and keep three copies: original, cleaned, and final. Move old files to archives; don't mix them in the task directory. From my personal experience, this step is annoying, but skipping it makes finding wrong versions ten times more annoying later.

Running this workflow reduced the time for those twenty-plus contracts from about two hours of manual line-by-line checking to forty minutes. It saves mechanical labor, but not judgment.

In the 8/17 post, I mentioned that fixed templates and permission settings might not handle variable formats well. Now my thinking is more specific: templates can be set, but you must first let semantic comparison clean up headers and terminology.

How do you usually use WorkBuddy for document comparison? Do you let AI guess fields first, or define rules manually?