Spellbook has released its inaugural State of Contracts 2026 report, using AI analysis of hundreds of thousands of agreements to reveal how deal terms are evolving globally.
Toronto-based legal AI company Spellbook has released its inaugural State of Contracts 2026 report, offering a rare data-driven look into how contract terms are evolving across industries, jurisdictions, and deal types.
The report draws on AI-powered analysis of hundreds of thousands of contracts reviewed on Spellbook’s platform across more than 30 countries. According to the company, it represents the first time clause-level market intelligence has been generated at this scale—bringing insights that were once available only to the largest law firms to a much broader audience of lawyers and in-house teams.
“The speed and quality of contracts has been constrained by our ability to know what is normal,” said Scott Stevenson, CEO and co-founder of Spellbook. “When lawyers can instantly benchmark their contracts against thousands of similar deals—filtered by industry, deal size, and geography—they negotiate from concrete knowledge, not intuition.”
Spellbook says the report highlights how global economic, political, and technological forces are reshaping contract language in real time. Among its findings: references to tariffs in procurement agreements increased nearly 50% over a four-month period, with parties increasingly allocating risk for anticipated trade policies rather than enacted ones. The data also shows the rapid emergence of standalone AI usage clauses in software agreements, reflecting growing concern over ownership of AI-generated outputs and training data.
The report challenges several long-held assumptions in transactional practice. While many lawyers assume liability caps typically default to 12 months of fees, Spellbook found that half of master service agreements specify no calculation method at all. Non-disclosure agreements also emerged as a source of hidden risk, with one-third imposing perpetual confidentiality and unlimited liability.
Spellbook’s analysis covers more than 250 deal points across 14 agreement types. The company says the insights are powered by its new Market Comparison feature, currently in beta, which allows lawyers to benchmark contract language against anonymized market data through an opt-in “give-to-get” model.
“Lawyers are sick of AI outputs that look correct but aren’t grounded in data they can actually inspect or show to a counterparty,” Stevenson said. “This report is a preview of what happens when AI contract review is paired with real market intelligence.”
Spellbook plans to move Market Comparison into general availability in early January. The full State of Contracts 2026 report is available for download here.