of 5— Get the contract text

What you'll accomplish

You'll be able to take any vendor contract — regardless of length or complexity — and have Claude produce a clear, plain-English one-page summary your manager, operations team, or finance department can actually read and understand. No more "just send me the highlights" followed by you summarizing a 40-page document by hand.

What you'll need

A Claude account at claude.ai (free tier handles most contracts)
A vendor contract in text form (copy from PDF or Word)
Time needed: 5-10 minutes per contract
Cost: Free (Claude free tier)

How-To Guide: Summarize Vendor Contracts for Non-Legal Stakeholders

Step 1: Get the contract text

Open your contract file:

Word document: Select All (Ctrl+A), Copy (Ctrl+C)
PDF (searchable text): Use Ctrl+A to select all, then copy. If that doesn't work, open in Adobe Acrobat and use File → Export To → Word
Scanned PDF: Use Adobe Acrobat's OCR feature to make the text selectable first