Summize is now available in Claude

Most legal teams are already using AI assistants in some form – general productivity, drafting, summarizing, getting a first pass on a clause. The gap has always been contracts themselves. Ask an AI assistant a question about your actual agreements, and it either doesn't know the answer or needs the document pasted in first, with no guarantee the response reflects your real contract positions.

That's the gap Summize now closes.

What is MCP?

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard, introduced by Anthropic, for connecting AI assistants to the systems where a business' data actually lives. Rather than an AI assistant working only from what's typed or pasted into a chat, MCP lets it query structured data directly from a connected platform in real time.

For Summize, that means Claude can pull from the same structured, extracted contract data that sits behind the rest of the Summize platform – with the same governance controls already in place. No uploading documents and no separate access model to configure.

What does that actually look like?

Once contracts are in Summize, connecting Claude means being able to ask things like:

• What contract types and folders do we have in Summize?
• List the 10 most recent signed NDAs owned by [email protected].
• Show me all review requests currently in negotiation that I own.
• Open the Acme master services agreement and tell me the renewal date and liability cap.
• What are the payment terms across all our signed MSAs?

Access is read-only and limited to information the user is already authorized to access.

What’s the difference between using MCP and using Claude alone?

Two things separate this from copying a contract into a chat window.

The first is context. Summize's platform extracts and structures contract data as part of how it works, so Claude isn't reasoning from a raw document – it's working from data that's already been organized and validated. That means a more accurate answer, without the token cost or length limits of uploading full contracts every time.

The second is governance. Permissions set in Summize carry across to Claude, so legal doesn't have to manage separate user permissions just because the question came through an AI assistant.

Above all, Claude on its own still isn’t enough for contract management, unlike purpose-built contract intelligence systems like Summize. Claude is genuinely useful for individual tasks – reviewing a clause, drafting a first pass or summarizing an agreement. What it isn't built for is managing a portfolio: tracking obligations, running approvals, reporting to leadership, or answering questions that span thousands of contracts without every query starting from scratch.

That's what Summize is built for. Three sophisticated layers power the Summize system: a Knowledge Layer built on your contracts and playbooks, a Contract Operations Layer running every step from creation to signature, and an Agentic AI Layer, where SIA surfaces the right answers to the right people, instantly.

The Knowledge Layer extracts and structures contract data at the source with a living, validated view across the whole portfolio – something you can act on and report from, not just a chat answer. The Contract Operations Layer applies that contract intelligence throughout your whole contract lifecycle. MCP now lives in the Agentic AI Layer that sits on top, giving AI assistants like Claude access to that same governed intelligence for the in-the-moment questions.

“The conversation shouldn’t be Claude or CLM. The productivity gains from AI are real and legal teams should absolutely be exploring them. But AI assistants don’t replace real contract lifecycle management.”
Bailey Gifford, Product Marketing Manager

What's next?

MCP is live in Claude today, with support for additional AI assistants coming soon. We're also gathering feedback from early usage to shape what comes next – expanding what's possible through MCP.

See it in action

Want to see how Summize structures contract data and makes it accessible through Claude and the rest of your workflow? Book a demo and we'll show you.