For Legal Work

Find the clause - see its exact words, highlighted.

Sidenote is a browser extension (Chrome and Firefox) that reads the contract or policy you have open (PDF, Word, SharePoint, Google Docs, scanned agreements via OCR) and answers questions about it, quoting the clause verbatim and scrolling straight to it. It helps you read agreements. It does not give legal advice.

Verbatim quotes only · UK data residency · Read-only access

contracts.example.sharepoint.com · MSA-draft-4.pdfSidenote
Master Services Agreement - draft 4

11.2 This Agreement renews automatically for successive twelve (12) month terms unless either party gives written notice of non-renewal at least sixty (60) days before the end of the then-current term. 11.4 Termination does not affect either party's accrued rights or the clauses expressed to survive it.

Sidenote · How do we stop the auto-renewal?

Written notice of non-renewal at least sixty (60) days before the end of the current term 1. Note that accrued rights survive termination 2.

The problem

In a contract, a paraphrase is not an answer.

The question is never “roughly what does it say” - it's what the words are, exactly, and where they sit. Generic AI tools summarize agreements the way they summarize blog posts: fluently, approximately, and with no way to tell when “may terminate on notice” quietly replaced “sixty (60) days' written notice”.

Sidenote treats the wording as the product: every answer quotes the document verbatim, verified server-side, and one click puts the clause in front of you in its full context.

How it works

How Sidenote works on an agreement.

STEP 01

Open the agreement where it lives.

A PDF in the data room, a Word file on SharePoint, a policy in Google Docs, or an upload. Scanned signed copies are OCR'd so even image-only agreements become searchable.

STEP 02

Ask where it says something.

Chat is clause-finding: notice periods, caps, carve-outs, defined terms. Answers quote the exact language rather than describing it.

STEP 03

Click the citation, read the clause.

The citation scrolls the document to the clause and highlights it, in context - so you verify the words themselves before relying on them.

See how verified citations work under the hood, or try chatting with a document. Comparing two drafts? The free document diff tool shows what changed between versions.

Use cases

The questions every agreement gets asked.

  • “What's the termination notice period?”

    Sidenote finds the termination clause and quotes it word for word, with a click straight to where it sits in the agreement.

  • “Is there a cap on liability?”

    The limitation-of-liability language, quoted verbatim - including the carve-outs sitting two clauses away that change its meaning.

  • “When does this auto-renew, and how do we stop it?”

    Renewal terms and notice windows pulled out and cited, so the diary entry gets made before the window closes.

  • “How does this document define Confidential Information?”

    Defined terms located and quoted exactly - the difference between what a word usually means and what this contract says it means.

  • “What are our obligations in the first 30 days?”

    A cited list of time-bound commitments across the agreement, each one linked to the clause that imposes it.

  • “What survives termination?”

    Survival clauses and their cross-references, quoted and highlighted, instead of hunted for across 60 pages.

Verified citations

Verbatim, verified, and read in confidence.

Every quote in every answer is checked server-side against the document before it reaches you: if the quoted words can't be found in the agreement, the citation is dropped rather than shown. What survives is a quote you can rely on being in the text - and one click away from its context.

And to be plain about the boundary: Sidenote finds and quotes what an agreement says. What it means for your position is legal judgement, and that stays with you and your counsel.

Confidential by architecture.

Document content is stored in a UK (eu-west-2) region behind row-level security, connection tokens are encrypted at rest, and access to your accounts is read-only. Anthropic and Voyage AI run with no-training defaults on the API tiers Sidenote uses; your documents never train anyone's models.

FAQ

Common questions about Sidenote for legal work.

No. Sidenote is a reading tool: it finds, quotes and highlights what a document says, so you can read the actual language faster. It never interprets the law, recommends a position, or replaces review by a qualified lawyer. What the words mean for you remains a question for you and your counsel.
Because in an agreement the exact words are the substance. A paraphrased clause is a risk, not an answer. Sidenote checks every quote server-side against the document before you see it - a citation either matches the text verbatim or it's dropped - and clicking it highlights the clause in place, in its surrounding context.
Yes. Signed copies and older agreements that exist only as scans are run through OCR, and citations still scroll to and highlight the exact line of the scanned page. OCR is a paid feature, included in the 7-day trial.
In the UK: content lives in an eu-west-2 (London) region with row-level security isolating every account, and connection tokens are encrypted at rest. Anthropic and Voyage AI run with no-training defaults on the API tiers Sidenote uses, and Sidenote never fine-tunes models on user content. Access to your documents is read-only.
It can, and you should assume it might. Sidenote is an aid to navigation, not a substitute for reading the agreement you're about to sign or advise on. What it changes is the cost of checking: every answer links to the clause it came from, so verifying takes one click instead of a page-by-page hunt.
PDFs (including scanned ones), Word documents, SharePoint and OneDrive files, Google Docs, Confluence and Notion pages, and web pages - policies, terms and agreements wherever they live. It's a browser extension for Chrome and Firefox; there's a free tier forever, paid plans from £10/month and a Team plan at £18/seat/month.
Try it on an agreement

Read the contract. Quote it exactly.

Add Sidenote to your browser, open a contract or policy, and ask where it says what. Free tier forever, opt-in 7-day Pro trial, no card required.

Reads agreements. Never legal advice. · UK data residency