Sullivan & Cromwell has built Agreement Analyzer, a legal document review tool that brings firm experience into a single workflow. For lawyers, reviewing a draft agreement already means weighing terms against precedents, applying the firm’s approach, and keeping client priorities in mind. Agreement Analyzer automates parts of that process: after a lawyer uploads a draft and selects precedents plus a playbook with firm and client positions, the tool runs multiple review cycles from different perspectives, synthesizes the outputs, and returns a memorandum and proposed tracked changes for the lawyer to review, adapt, or reject. It also helps compare corresponding provisions across precedents and track how those provisions interact.

Partner John Savva initially built Agreement Analyzer as a single-user proof of concept using Codex, then worked with OpenAI to improve output quality, add parallel processing, and make the tool usable by multiple lawyers simultaneously. The system integrates Sullivan & Cromwell’s workflows, curated firm precedents, negotiating playbooks, and ChatGPT Enterprise. Savva notes that AI was first used mainly for repetitive administrative tasks, but stronger analytical capabilities have opened up deeper legal work such as complex agreement review.

Transparency is central to the design. Savva argues that if an AI tool claims something about market practice, a lawyer must be able to see the source. He describes an application where specialized agents review an agreement in parallel for market deviations, risk allocation, interactions between clauses, and ambiguities that could affect litigation, while other agents challenge the conclusions. The results distinguish supported findings, dismissed findings, and unverified issues retained with qualifications. Lawyers can inspect the explanations and relevant precedents before deciding what to change.

Sullivan & Cromwell is continuing to explore task-specific tools. Savva credits GPT-6 Astra with improving the quality of reasoning, which he calls the previous bottleneck. For Savva, the goal is not to replace lawyers but to let them focus on questions where judgment matters most and deliver a higher-quality product for clients.