How to Draft and Sign a Contract in One Place (2026)

You draft and sign a contract in one place by assembling the document in AI Legal Drafting from a fixed clause library, then sending the same draft straight to e-signature without exporting it anywhere else. The drafter is live, it picks library clauses by ID from your answers, and the signed copy comes back with a full audit trail.

Steps

1. Choose the template in AI Legal Drafting that matches the contract you need, from consultancy and employment agreements to founder agreements and NDAs. Our checklist for what a consultancy agreement should include is a useful reference if that is the document you are drafting.
2. Answer the assistant's questions. It asks about the parties, the term, the fee or salary, and other practical terms specific to that document type.
3. Let the assistant assemble the draft. Legal Drafting's assistant selects clauses by ID from a fixed library and puts them together based on your answers. When you draft from one of our templates, it does not generate new legal wording, a distinction covered fully in assembled versus invented clauses.
4. Review the assembled draft. Check names, figures, dates and any unusual term before moving on. A drafted document is a starting point, not a finished agreement you can skip reading.
5. Send it for signature from the same screen, rather than downloading it and uploading it into a separate e-signature product.
6. Collect the signed document with its audit certificate. It records each signer, their stated intent to sign, timestamps for each step, a privacy-protected network location and a SHA-256 fingerprint of the final file, detailed in our guide to the e-signature audit trail.
7. Track it in the Contracts register with its renewal or expiry date. Exporting a draft registers it, and reminders arrive 30, 7 and 1 day before the date by default, or on the days you choose from 90, 60, 30, 14, 7 and 1.

Edge cases and tier requirements

Every plan includes monthly Legal credits for drafting. Starting and editing a draft are free. It costs 5 credits the first time you export each format or send it to a room or to Contracts, and each time you send it for signature; Free's 20 monthly credits cover up to 4 of these. Plus (£19 a month) raises the allowance to 150 credits, and Pro adds Word export. E-signature starts on Plus, with five requests a month and up to two signers, and Pro adds more signers and unlimited requests. If two people need to sign in order, set the signing order when you send it, so the second signer only receives it once the first has completed their part.

Electronic signatures are admissible for most commercial documents under England and Wales law, a position confirmed by the Law Commission in 2019 (see Sources), and covered in full in are electronic signatures legally binding. A short list of documents needs extra formality: a deed can be signed electronically but needs a witness who is physically present, which this e-signature flow does not record, and wills, certain land transfers and lasting powers of attorney have their own formal requirements. If the contract you are drafting falls into one of those categories, treat the platform's signature as a step in the process rather than the whole answer, and check the specific formality that document type requires. If you are outside England and Wales, the audit-trail checklist below still applies, but check your own jurisdiction's rule on witnessed or deed-style documents before you rely on an ordinary e-signature for one.

Uploading a contract you already have, rather than drafting a fresh one, works for PDFs on every plan, and Word, Excel and PowerPoint uploads need Pro and above. Sending it for e-signature starts on Plus, so a Free account can store and share the contract but not send it for signing.

If your current tool cannot do this

Two separate products, one for drafting and one for signing, is the default setup for most businesses, and it creates a specific, avoidable failure: the version you signed is not provably the version you reviewed, because the file moved between systems in between.

• If you have to export the draft as a file and upload it somewhere else to sign it, ask what stops someone editing the file in that gap. A drafting tool with no chain of custody to signature cannot answer that question.
• If the signing tool has no visibility into where the document came from, it cannot tell you whether the clauses were written by a lawyer, generated, or copied from somewhere else entirely.
• If the audit certificate on the signed copy does not record a fingerprint of the exact file signed, you cannot later prove the signed document matches the one everyone reviewed.
• If reminders for renewal or expiry live in a separate calendar you maintain by hand, the contract's key dates depend on someone remembering to check, rather than the platform telling you.

A single platform that drafts from a fixed clause library, signs with a proper audit trail, and stores the result with its own renewal reminders clears this bar without asking you to trust a handoff between two vendors. AI Legal Drafting and e-signature sit in the same product for exactly this reason, hosted on the same security infrastructure as the signed documents themselves.

Frequently asked questions

Is AI Legal Drafting available for contracts beyond NDAs? Yes. The template library spans people and founder agreements, consultancy and employment contracts, board resolutions, IP assignment, and residential tenancies in England and Wales, among others. Our guide on drafting an employment contract with AI covers one specific example in detail.

Can I sign a contract I drafted elsewhere? Yes. On Plus and above you can upload an existing PDF contract and send it for signature, whether or not it was drafted in the platform. Word, Excel and PowerPoint uploads need Pro and above.

What does the audit certificate actually record? It records each signer, their stated intent to sign, a timestamp for each step in the process, a privacy-protected network location and a SHA-256 fingerprint of the exact signed file, so the document can be tied to a specific act of signing rather than just a name typed at the bottom.

Are all contracts valid once e-signed? Most commercial contracts are, under England and Wales law. Deeds, wills, certain land transfers and lasting powers of attorney need extra formality that an ordinary e-signature flow does not automatically satisfy. Readers outside England and Wales should check their own local position on witnessed documents.

Draft it, review it, sign it

Assemble your next contract from a fixed clause library in AI Legal Drafting, review it, and send it for e-signature without leaving the platform. E-signature starts on Plus at £19 a month, and the free tier gives three rooms, twenty-five active links and Legal credits for the drafter, with no card. Start free and take a contract from a blank page to a signed copy in one place.

Sources

• Electronic signatures, including for deeds, and the requirement that a deed's witness is physically present: Law Commission, Electronic execution of documents (Law Com No 386, 2019), https://lawcom.gov.uk/project/electronic-execution-of-documents/ ; HM Land Registry Practice Guide 82, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/electronic-signatures-accepted-by-hm-land-registry-pg82

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