Ironclad is the leading contract lifecycle management (CLM) platform for in-house legal teams, processing millions of contracts annually. Its Terms of Service are versioned with a public history — unusual transparency for a legal tech vendor. v3.0 went effective today, May 2, 2026, with expanded AI-related provisions. DriftPatrol tracks legal.ironcladapp.com/terms-of-service continuously — including the 23 documented product description versions Ironclad maintains.
| Section | What it says | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| §8 | Use Restrictions — customers cannot use Ironclad content / metadata for AI/ML training | You are explicitly prohibited from using Ironclad-derived content, metadata, or outputs to train or develop AI/ML models. Relevant if your legal ops team is building internal AI tools that consume contract data exported from Ironclad. Review your AI development workflows immediately. Risk |
| §16 | AI Output Restriction — cannot represent AI output as human-generated; cannot train on AI outputs | Double restriction: (1) do not pass off AI output as human-authored; (2) do not use AI outputs to train your own ML models. Added in v3.0. Second restriction is novel — it means AI-generated contract summaries from Ironclad cannot feed your firm's fine-tuning pipeline. New in v3.0 |
| Ironclad's AI | Anonymized aggregated contract data used for training; ZDR with OpenAI; opt-out available | Ironclad trains its own AI on anonymized aggregated customer contracts. Zero Data Retention (ZDR) agreement with OpenAI governs query processing. Opt-out controls exist — but they are buried in support documentation, not surfaced in the TOS. Find and exercise the opt-out before your next renewal. Verify |
| §17 | Indemnification — broad one-way: you indemnify Ironclad; not vice versa | Standard vendor-favorable clause. No reciprocal indemnification from Ironclad for their platform failures or AI errors. Combined with the $100 liability floor, this leaves you with essentially no contractual recourse for platform-caused harm. Negotiate reciprocal indemnification at renewal. Risk |
| §18 | Liability Cap — GREATER OF $100 OR 12 months fees | The $100 floor is not a typo. For a team paying $50K/year, the cap is $50K — for a team paying $500/year, Ironclad's maximum exposure is one hundred dollars. The worst liability floor in this benchmark set. Enterprise customers should negotiate this clause out entirely and replace with 12 months fees minimum, no floor. Worst in class |
| §20 | Governing Law — California law; San Francisco courts; NO mandatory arbitration | No mandatory arbitration — unlike Harvey, you can take Ironclad to court in San Francisco. California law governs. Court path is meaningfully more accessible than Harvey's JAMS process, but the $100 liability floor makes any dispute economically irrational for small contract values. No arbitration |
| §11 | Confidentiality — same degree of care as own highly sensitive information | Slightly stronger than Harvey's "reasonable care" framing — "own highly sensitive information" implies a higher internal standard. The one clause that tilts in customers' favor. Strong |
| Data Retention | Not in public TOS — governed by Enterprise Services Agreement (ESA) | Retention terms are entirely off the public TOS. If your firm signed an ESA, review it for deletion timelines. If you are on a standard subscription without an ESA, you have no contractual basis to demand data deletion. Request an ESA or DPA addendum. Gap |
Get a plain-English Monday brief the day any of these clauses change. Audit trail to the second.
See plans →Tracked URL: legal.ironcladapp.com/terms-of-service · Currently v3.0 · Effective May 2, 2026 · Informational only — not legal advice.
