August
Getting Started

Personalization

Personalization is core to August's value. Unlike generic AI tools, August learns from your firm's specific language, standards, and precedent—so outputs match how your team actually works. Configure once, and every lawyer in your firm benefits from consistent, firm-specific AI assistance.

This video shows how to personalize August for your firm's specific needs.

What Personalization Means in August

Personalization in August covers four areas:

  • Firm knowledge: Ingest templates, precedent agreements, and guidelines so AI understands your preferred language and approaches.

  • Review standards: Build Playbooks that capture preferred positions, fallback language, and red flags for recurring document types.

  • Automated workflows: Set up Workflows for repeatable tasks like diligence reviews, contract extraction, or weekly status updates.

  • User preferences: Configure notification settings, workspace defaults, and collaboration preferences to match how you work.

Together, these capabilities let August operate as an extension of your firm's expertise rather than a generic assistant.

Ingesting Firm Templates and Documents

August learns from the materials you provide. Upload representative precedent to give AI context for how your firm handles specific clause types, deal structures, or practice areas.

What to Upload

  • Precedent agreements: Well-negotiated deals that reflect your firm's preferred positions.

  • Template libraries: Standard forms your team uses as starting points for drafting.

  • Guidelines and memoranda: Internal guidance on how to handle specific issues or jurisdictions.

  • Sample matters: Representative deal folders or case files that show how your firm structures work product.

How Uploading Works

Upload documents directly to Assistant or organize them in Projects and folders for ongoing access. August indexes content and uses it as context for drafting, analysis, and review.

Your documents are never used to train AI models. August maintains contractual agreements with all language model providers (Llama, Anthropic, and OpenAI) to not train on or retain user data. See Security and Privacy Overview for details.

Configuring Playbooks

Playbooks convert your firm's standards into operational review rules. Each playbook captures preferred positions, acceptable fallbacks, and terms that require escalation—so AI applies your standards consistently across every agreement.

You can build playbooks two ways:

  • Generate via AI: Upload precedent agreements to Assistant and ask August to extract standards. Review, refine, and save the resulting playbook.

  • Build manually: Navigate to Playbooks in the sidebar and add rules directly—preferred position, fallbacks, unacceptable language, example clauses, and guidance notes.

Once created, apply playbooks in Assistant, in the Word Add-In, or embed them as steps in automated Workflows.

Best Practices for Playbooks

  • Start with your strongest precedents—well-negotiated agreements that reflect your firm's actual positions.

  • Keep rules specific: "Liability cap should not exceed 12 months of fees" produces better results than "limit liability."

  • Create separate playbooks for NDAs, MSAs, settlement agreements, and other document types.

  • Update as positions evolve and version your playbooks to track changes over time.

Setting Up Workflows

Workflows automate repetitive legal tasks. Define the task in natural language, configure steps and playbooks, and run on demand or on a schedule. Build once as an admin or power user, then share with your entire team.

Common Workflow Patterns

  • First-pass diligence: Upload a data room, extract key terms across all agreements, and generate an executive summary.

  • Document triage: Scan incoming documents for specific provisions and flag items requiring attorney attention.

  • Status updates: Schedule weekly workflows to summarize matter developments and produce team or client updates.

Workflows can also be initiated directly from uploaded documents—useful when you want to apply a workflow to a specific file without navigating to the Workflows panel.

Saving Custom Prompts and Templates

August supports reuse of effective prompts and extraction templates:

  • Tabular Review templates: Save column configurations from Tabular Review and reuse them across document sets. Templates store recurring questions and column structures so teams don't rebuild the same extraction framework each time.

  • Playbook rules: Once a playbook is created, it's available firm-wide for consistent review workflows.

  • Assistant conversations: Effective prompt structures can be replicated across similar matters. Use chat history to revisit and continue earlier work.

Genius Mode in the Word Add-In can also draft from your firm's templates—attach your standard NDA or agreement template and describe what you need.

User Preferences and Settings

Configure how August works for you personally:

Notification Preferences

Control how you receive updates about collaboration, artifacts, and integrations:

  1. Go to Settings from the left navigation menu.

  2. Select Notifications.

  3. Toggle preferences for in-app notifications, email alerts, or both.

  4. Choose which activities trigger notifications—artifact shares, comments, Outlook sync updates, and more.

For high-volume matters, consider disabling email notifications for minor updates while keeping in-app notifications active.

Workspace Organization

Each user starts with a personal workspace and can create Projects to organize matters. Within projects, use folders to group related documents. User profiles are fully siloed from one another unless you proactively share work or create shared workspaces.

Collaboration Settings

Share workspaces, playbooks, and tabular reviews with colleagues. Shared workspaces preserve full context—documents, chat history, and outputs stay together so collaborators see the complete picture. See Collaboration and Notifications for details.

The Personalization Workflow

Follow this three-step approach to configure August for your firm:

1

Train

Securely ingest sample matters, templates, and guidelines that reflect how your firm handles specific work. This gives August context for your preferred language and approaches.

2

Configure

Work with August's team to co-build playbooks and workflows until they exceed your standards. Define preferred positions, fallback language, and automated processes for recurring tasks.

3

Deploy

Launch from chat or email and receive polished Word or PDF documents. Your team runs the configured workflows, applies the playbooks, and benefits from firm-specific AI assistance.

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