Why drafting matters
Templates and AI generators are fine — until they aren't
There is nothing wrong with using a template as a starting point. The problem is that the people most likely to rely on one — early-stage founders, ops leads, agency principals — are the ones least equipped to spot what's missing for their specific deal.
A template NDA, for example, will almost always include a definition of 'Confidential Information' and an obligation not to disclose it. What it usually does not address: residual knowledge by the receiving party's engineers, exclusions for information independently developed, return-or-destroy obligations that match your data-protection commitments, or a survival clause that actually protects trade secrets beyond the contract term.
Generative AI tools have made this worse, not better. They produce confident-looking prose that often blends US, English and EU drafting conventions in the same document — which is fine when nobody is reading the fine print, and catastrophic when someone is.
