Review a Lease and Produce a Redline + Client Summary

Paste a commercial lease into Claude, get a clause-by-clause risk review with severity-rated flags, generate redline-ready language for the key issues, and produce a plain-English client summary — all in one conversation.

The Workflow

1. 1

   Paste the lease and state your side

   Start a new Claude conversation and give it the full lease plus the one fact that changes everything about the analysis: which party you represent. Stating your side up front makes every downstream flag and edit argue in your client's favor instead of giving a neutral readout.

   PromptCopy

   You are assisting a licensed real-estate attorney with a first-pass review of a commercial lease. I represent the [TENANT / LANDLORD]. This is a [office / retail / industrial / mixed-use] lease for premises in [CITY, STATE].
   
   Here is the full lease:
   
   [PASTE FULL LEASE TEXT]
   
   First, confirm you have the complete document and give me a one-paragraph orientation: the parties, premises, term, base rent, and any obvious gaps or missing exhibits. Do not analyze clauses yet — just confirm scope and flag anything that looks incomplete. Treat this as a first-pass review I will verify against the lease and local law.

   What you get: A short orientation paragraph naming the parties, premises, term, and base rent, plus a list of any missing schedules, exhibits, or defined terms it could not find. This confirms Claude ingested the whole document before you rely on its analysis.

2. 2

   Review clause by clause with severity flags

   Now have Claude work through the economically important clauses one at a time and rate each issue by how much it actually matters. Severity ratings let you triage — you negotiate the high-severity items hard and may let low-severity ones go.

   PromptCopy

   Now review the lease clause by clause from the perspective of the [TENANT / LANDLORD]. Cover at least these areas, and any others that carry real risk:
   
   - Base rent, escalations, and percentage rent
   - CAM / operating expenses and pass-throughs (caps, exclusions, gross-up, audit rights)
   - Maintenance, repair, and HVAC responsibility
   - Assignment and subletting (consent standard, recapture, profit-sharing)
   - Default and cure (notice, cure periods, cross-default)
   - Renewal / extension options and how rent is set
   - Holdover (rate and whether it's a penalty)
   - Insurance, indemnity, and casualty/condemnation
   
   For each issue, give me: (1) the clause reference, (2) a plain-English description of the term, (3) why it's favorable, neutral, or off-market/risky for my client, and (4) a severity rating of High, Medium, or Low. Put the highest-severity issues first. Where a term is off-market, say briefly what market is.

   What you get: A triaged, severity-ordered issues list keyed to clause numbers, each explaining the term in plain English and why it helps or hurts your client. Off-market calls are starting points to confirm against your own market knowledge, not settled fact.

3. 3

   Draft redline-ready language for the key issues

   Take the High and Medium issues and ask Claude to draft the actual replacement or insert language you could drop into a redline. Asking for both the revised text and a one-line rationale gives you something to paste and something to say when the other side pushes back.

   PromptCopy

   Take the High and Medium severity issues you identified. For each one, draft redline-ready language from the [TENANT / LANDLORD] perspective. For each issue give me:
   
   1. The clause being revised (reference)
   2. Suggested replacement or inserted language, written to match the lease's existing style and defined terms
   3. A one-sentence rationale I could use to justify the change to opposing counsel
   4. A reasonable fallback position if they reject the primary ask
   
   Keep the drafting tight and consistent with the rest of the document. Flag any edit that depends on a business decision only my client can make (e.g., a dollar cap or a date).

   What you get: For each priority issue: proposed lease language, a negotiation rationale, and a fallback. You must conform every edit to the lease's exact defined terms and verify it against your jurisdiction's law before it goes into a redline.

4. 4

   Write a plain-English client summary

   Now turn the legal analysis into something your client can actually read. A short, non-jargon summary of the deal and its real risks is often what wins the engagement and gets you a fast decision on which points to fight for.

   PromptCopy

   Now write a short plain-English summary for my client, who is the [TENANT / LANDLORD] and is not a lawyer. Keep it under one page. Include:
   
   - A two-to-three sentence overview of the deal (premises, term, rent)
   - The 3–5 most important risks or unfavorable terms, in business language (no clause numbers, no jargon), and what each means for them practically
   - The handful of points I'm recommending we push to renegotiate, and why they matter to the client's bottom line
   - A clear note that this is a preliminary review and we'll finalize our advice after discussing their priorities
   
   Write it in a professional but approachable tone, as if it's the body of an email from me to the client.

   What you get: A concise, client-ready summary in business English covering the deal, the top risks, and your recommended negotiation priorities. Review and edit it before sending — it goes out under your name and reflects your professional judgment.

5. 5

   Verify against the lease and local law

   Before anything leaves your desk, close the loop. This is the step that separates a usable first draft from a malpractice risk — Claude can misread a cross-reference, miss a defined term, or state a market or legal point that isn't true in your jurisdiction.

   What you get: A final work product you have personally checked: every flagged clause re-read in the actual lease, every redline conformed to the document's defined terms, and every legal or market assertion confirmed against controlling landlord-tenant and contract law in the relevant state. Correct any hallucinated clause references or off-base market claims before relying on the output.

Example Output

Illustrative example — names, facts, and figures are fictional.

FIRST-PASS LEASE REVIEW — Representing TENANT
Premises: Suite 200, 1400 Market Street (retail) • Term: 7 yrs • Base rent: $32.00/SF NNN

HIGH SEVERITY
1. CAM (§6.2) — Operating expenses are fully uncapped and include "capital improvements" with no exclusion. Off-market for retail; tenants typically get a 3–5% annual cap on controllable CAM and a capital-expense carve-out. Recommend cap + exclusion.
2. Assignment (§12.1) — Landlord consent may be withheld in its "sole and absolute discretion," plus 100% profit recapture. Market is "not to be unreasonably withheld." Recommend reasonableness standard; tenant keeps assignment profit.
3. Holdover (§15.4) — Holdover rent is 200% of base rent with no cure window. Aggressive; 125–150% is more typical. Recommend reduction.

MEDIUM SEVERITY
4. Escalations (§4.3) — Fixed 4% annual bumps; market is closer to 2.5–3%. Negotiate down.
5. Repairs (§7.1) — Tenant carries full HVAC replacement. Recommend landlord bears replacement; tenant maintains.
6. Cure (§14.2) — Monetary cure period is 3 days. Request 10 days after written notice.

LOW SEVERITY
7. Signage (§19.1) — Landlord pre-approval required; acceptable, but request approval not be unreasonably withheld.

[Illustrative sample only — fictional terms. Verify every reference against the actual lease and your state's law.]

Tips

• •Tell Claude which side you represent before anything else — the same clause reads as a win or a loss depending on whether you're landlord or tenant, and stating it up front colors the whole review.
• •Push Claude on its "off-market" claims. Ask "what's your basis for saying that's off-market?" — market terms vary by asset class, region, and cycle, and you are the authority on your market, not the model.
• •Keep it to one conversation so the lease text and your role persist. If you start a fresh chat for the redline or summary, Claude loses the document and the context.
• •Paste the entire lease, including exhibits and riders — the operative economic terms are often buried in a work letter, rent rider, or exhibit, and Claude can only flag what it can see.

Prompts used in this workflow

Related Reading

• Claude AI for Real Estate Lawyers
• Real Estate Practice
• Review Contracts with Claude in 10 Minutes