Centari turns a firm's deal documents into a structured, citation-backed database of its deal history. A firm's knowledge of deal terms and market trends is its most defensible advantage, yet for most firms it remains trapped in complex agreements and data silos.
Nowhere is this gap more costly than in precedent retrieval. The best inspiration for a clause is usually the firm's own, and even after four years of legal AI platform pilots and rollouts, partners still tell us they’re struggling to find the language they need.
Today, we are launching three new Precedent Intelligence capabilities: Precedent Search, Precedent Capture, and Multi-Doc Compare.
Precedent Search finds the exact provision a deal team needs across every matter. Precedent Capture lets the team refine and own the citations behind each provision. Multi-Doc Compare displays provisions side-by-side across matters.
All three run on the same Deal Reasoning Engine that Centari customers use today to create proprietary deal databases at scale with attorney-grade accuracy. Precedent Intelligence works with the firm's structured data, not an index of documents, so every piece of information an attorney retrieves from the database comes with rich source citations and context.
Precedent Search: find language by meaning, not just by name
Precedent Search brings clause-level retrieval into Centari Intelligence, the same conversational interface where attorneys already query the firm's structured deal data. A deal team can now retrieve an entire provision by describing what it does, not by guessing what words it contains.
A partner is negotiating a deal where the signing may be delayed. The question is what termination rights the client should have if the signing slips. The partner remembers drafting a similar clause, but not the client or the matter it came from. In Centari, the partner can now describe the scenario and Precedent Search will locate the exact provision that matches it.
Institutional memory stops being a matter of who was on the deal.
Precedent Capture turns attorney judgment into a new type of data asset
The Deal Reasoning Engine gives every data point it extracts a pinpointed citation. Precedent Capture gives control of those citations to the deal team, so those who know the matter decide what the firm learns from it.
In the Centari document viewer, users can adjust any citation's boundaries or attach a new one. On a closing date, that might mean extending the citation from the initial closing definition to take in the additional closings, so the next attorney searching for closing mechanics sees the full structure. The adjustment takes seconds.
Edits are visible to everyone with access to the matter, and every change is tracked in the data point's history. Before a heavily used precedent matter circulates firm-wide, a knowledge management lead can curate its citations, so the firm accumulates language its own attorneys have deemed valuable in real world settings. Every refinement sharpens what Precedent Search returns for the next team that asks.
Multi-Doc Compare shows how a provision was negotiated across the firm's deal history
Multi-Doc Compare puts the firm's negotiating history on one screen. Until now, that comparison lived in a partner’s memory: recalling past deals, opening one file at a time, finding the clause in each, and tiling the windows across the screen, with no structured deal data to narrow the search.
Building the comparison set takes seconds. From the database, a deal team narrows by deal type or counterparty and selects the matters to compare. Centari opens the provisions and citations side by side. Which provision fits the active deal remains a judgment for the partner.
A private equity deal team comparing indemnity packages across prior software acquisitions can see how survival periods, baskets, caps, and fraud carveouts were negotiated in similar deals, with each excerpt linked to its source. Centari highlights differences across the set, making variations visible without reading every document.
How has the firm negotiated this provision across its last twenty deals? A knowledge management team reads the pattern in one place, rather than reconstructing it matter by matter. That pattern is the raw material for internal guidance, a client update, or the next pitch, converting the firm’s dormant deal history into value for its attorneys and the clients they serve.
Available now
Precedent Search, Precedent Capture, and Multi-Doc Compare are live for all Centari customers, and across every deal document already in the platform. Finding a provision becomes a quick question rather than an afternoon in the DMS. Verifying the citation behind it takes an edit rather than a workaround.
Every firm now has access to fast, general-purpose AI. What sets a firm apart is its own deal history, which exists nowhere else. Search, capture, and comparison have each existed somewhere in a firm’s tech stack. What has not existed is all three running on the same structured deal data, in one place.
Precedent Intelligence puts those provisions where the firm's deal intelligence already lives. Every provision the deal team captures makes the firm's next negotiation sharper.
To see Precedent Intelligence running on your firm's own deal history, book a demo.
