By Irfan Dadabhai
Ask ChatGPT, Copilot or Claude to write you a freelance contract and it will hand one back in under a minute. It looks the part — headed clauses, defined terms, a signature block at the end. For most people, that’s where the checking stops, because it reads like a real contract.
I build AI contract tools for a living, so I’ve spent a lot of time looking at what generic AI actually produces when you ask it for a UK contract — and where it quietly goes wrong. None of it is obvious unless you know what you’re looking for. That’s the real problem: the mistakes are the kind a non-specialist would never spot, because the document doesn’t look broken. It looks finished.
What generic AI is genuinely good at
Structure and speed are real strengths. If you need a starting point — headings in a sensible order, defined terms, standard boilerplate like confirmation of parties and a signature block — AI will get you there faster than starting from a blank page or hunting down a free template online. For low-stakes agreements between people who already trust each other, that might be enough.
The trouble starts when the contract actually needs to hold up — when real money is involved, a dispute becomes possible, or one side is more exposed than the other.
Three places generic AI gets the UK context wrong
The first is governing law. Ask a general-purpose AI model to write a contract and, more often than you’d expect, it defaults to language shaped by US contract norms — because most of its training data is American. A UK freelance agreement needs an explicit governing law clause stating that English law (or Scots law, where relevant) applies. Without it, if a dispute ever escalates, you can end up arguing about which country’s courts even have the right to hear the case, before you’ve got anywhere near the actual disagreement.
The second is IP ownership. Under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, the default rule is that a freelancer or contractor owns the copyright in what they create — unless the contract explicitly assigns it to the client. Generic AI models frequently skip this clause entirely, or write something vague like “all work product belongs to the client,” which isn’t a real legal transfer. The fix is one clear sentence: intellectual property in the deliverables transfers to the client on full and final payment, not before. That single line prevents the argument that comes up constantly in freelance disputes — who actually owns the logo, the code, or the copy once the invoice is settled.
The third is payment terms. The Late Payment of Commercial Debts Act 1998 gives UK businesses the right to charge statutory interest and a fixed compensation fee when an invoice goes unpaid past the agreed term. Generic AI contracts almost never mention this, because it’s a UK-specific right most training data doesn’t surface. You still technically have the right under the Act even without it written in — but most people don’t know that, and even fewer know how to word the clause so it’s unambiguous if you ever need to invoke it.
What to check before you sign anything AI wrote
Three lines, in this order. A governing law clause naming England and Wales (or the relevant UK jurisdiction) explicitly. An IP assignment clause that says when ownership transfers, not just that it does. A payment terms clause that references the Late Payment Act, with a specific number of days for payment and what happens if that date passes.
If any of those three are missing or vague, that’s not a nitpick — it’s the difference between a contract that protects you and one that just looks like it does.
This is exactly why UK-specific contract tools exist alongside general-purpose AI. Generic models are trained on the whole internet, most of it American; a UK-specific tool like lexpact.co.uk is built only on UK statute and case law, so the governing law, IP, and payment clauses are there by default rather than by luck. You don’t need a specialist tool for everything. You do need to know when a general one has quietly left a gap.
About the Author
Irfan Dadabhai is the founder of LexPact (lexpact.co.uk), a UK-specific AI contract platform for freelancers, recruiters, and consultants.
Photo: Unsplash.