AI vs lawyer
The honest answer: they do different jobs. AI contract review is a fast, cheap first pass that finds and explains the risky clauses; a construction lawyer gives advice you can rely on and negotiates the hard cases. The smart move for most subcontracts is AI first — then a lawyer, if the review shows the contract deserves one.
Reading everything, instantly, without fatigue: every clause of a 300-page contract gets the same attention as page one. ContractorCounter Review flags pay-when-paid terms, uncapped LDs, time bars, and the rest of the subcontract checklist in minutes for US$19 — with each finding pinned to the page and a concrete negotiation ask.
Advice you can rely on, judgment about your specific situation, drafting that will hold up, and representation when it goes wrong. A lawyer weighs the contract against your risk appetite, your leverage, and the law as it applies to your facts — an AI review flags the questions; a lawyer answers the hard ones.
At typical rates, a lawyer reading a subcontract cover-to-cover costs hundreds before any advice happens. Run the US$19 AI review first: if it comes back clean, you've saved the fee; if it finds serious issues, walk into the lawyer's office with the marked-up review and spend their hours on judgment and negotiation instead of reading. The full triage workflow — including when to skip straight to the lawyer — is on the blog.
A practical comparison for contractors choosing a markup and drawing review workflow.
| Category | ContractorCounter | Construction lawyer |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | First-pass review of any contract before you sign — find what to question. | Reliable advice, negotiation, drafting, and disputes on contracts that matter. |
| Cost | US$19 flat per contract. | Hourly rates; a full subcontract read typically runs to hundreds before advice. |
| Turnaround | About 30–90 seconds, any page count. | Days, depending on availability. |
| Output | Every risky clause highlighted on the page, plain-English concern + negotiation ask. | Professional advice, redrafted clauses, and negotiation on your behalf. |
| Reliance | A first pass to guide your questions — not legal advice. | Advice you can rely on, backed by professional duty and insurance. |
Common questions
No — and it shouldn't try. AI review replaces the reading, not the judgment: it finds the risky clauses, explains them, and suggests what to ask for, which is enough to sign routine subcontracts with confidence. For high-value contracts, unusual risk, or terms the other side won't move, you want a lawyer's advice — and the AI review makes that advice cheaper by handing the lawyer a marked-up document instead of a cold read.
Routine subcontracts in your normal line of work, where the review comes back with familiar, negotiable issues — payment terms to tighten, a cap to add, notice periods to widen. If the review surfaces high-severity findings on a contract you can't afford to get wrong (design responsibility, uncapped exposure, unusual indemnities), treat the $19 as triage and take it to a professional.
ContractorCounter Review costs a flat US$19 per contract, whatever the page count — no subscription, no account, no demo call. The AI reads the contract and shows you what it found (how many issues, how severe, on which pages) before you pay anything; the $19 unlocks the full marked-up review with every clause highlighted and a plain-English concern and negotiation ask for each.
The contract PDF never leaves your browser — only its extracted text is processed to produce the review, and it is not used to train AI models. Findings are stored temporarily to deliver your purchase (7 days unpurchased, 30 days after unlock) and then deleted automatically.
No. ContractorCounter Review is an AI-powered first-pass review that flags risky, one-sided, and ambiguous clauses so you know exactly what to question. It is not a law firm and its output is not legal advice — for contracts worth serious money, take the marked-up review to a construction lawyer and spend their billable hours on judgment instead of reading.
Open a plan set, mark it up, and take quantities off the sheet — in your browser, on any device, with nothing to install.
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