Docusign's New AI Translates Legalese and Does Your Contract Busywork

New eSignature features bring clarity for signers and efficiency gains for businesses

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 13, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Docusign (NASDAQ: DOCU) today announced new AI-powered eSignature features that make agreements easier to understand for signers and dramatically faster to prepare for businesses. Powered by the Docusign Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM) platform, the new experiences tackle two persistent challenges in the agreement process: dense legal language that slows signers down and the manual, error-prone work of document preparation that takes valuable time away from teams.

By reimagining the eSignature experience with contract-specific AI, Docusign brings more clarity, confidence, and speed to one of the most essential agreement workflows in business.

For signers, truly understand what you're signing
For most people, understanding what they're agreeing to has often been a challenge. Dense legal text slows signers down. Docusign's new AI-assisted signer experience changes this by offering a simple, easy-to-understand summary of the agreement along with the key terms. Signers can also ask questions like, "What happens if I need to cancel?" or "When does this warranty expire?" and get direct answers without digging through pages of legal text. Complex agreements are now easier to understand, and people can sign faster, with confidence.

For business, less prep work with fewer mistakes
Behind every agreement is a lot of preparation work like formatting documents, manually placing signature and information fields, and double-checking all the data entered is correct. The latest version of eSignature uses AI to automate this tedious work by identifying agreement types, verifying recipient details, and intelligently placing signature and information fields into agreements. This means faster preparation, cleaner documents, and more time back for teams.

These new capabilities address real pain points in the agreement process. A recent survey of Americans who regularly review or sign contracts found:* 

• A confidence gap: nearly 75% of signers would feel more confident with an AI-powered, plain-English summary of their contracts.
• Widespread confusion: nearly 60% of respondents admit to agreeing to terms they didn't fully understand.
• An emotional burden: complex contracts cause negative emotions for nearly half of signers, with 29% feeling frustrated and 19% feeling anxious about missing details.

Built for trust, powered by contract AI
Unlike general-purpose LLMs, Docusign is powered by an AI engine called Iris that leverages contract-specific data and our IAM platform to deliver more accurate insights and automation across the entire agreement process with enterprise-grade security.

"AI is transforming the way people work, but agreements demand an extra level of clarity and trust," said Mangesh Bhandarkar, GVP of Product Management at Docusign. "Our customers tell us manual agreement preparation is time consuming, and signer confusion causes delays. We're applying AI to solve both challenges by removing the contract busywork for preparers and using features like AI-powered summaries to eliminate signer hesitation. This directly drives faster completion rates and a more trustworthy process."

Availability
The new eSignature signer capabilities and agreement type detection is available in the US, UK, and Australia, and automated field placements for agreement creation will be available in the US in the coming weeks.

*Source: OnePulse Survey of 1,000 Americans, December 2025

About Docusign
Docusign brings agreements to life. Nearly 1.8 million customers and more than a billion people in over 180 countries use Docusign solutions to accelerate the process of doing business and simplify people's lives. With intelligent agreement management, Docusign unleashes business critical data that is trapped inside of documents. Until now, these were disconnected from business systems of record, costing businesses time, money, and opportunity. Using Docusign's IAM platform, companies can create, commit, and manage agreements with solutions created by the #1 company in e-signature and CLM. Learn more at www.docusign.com.

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SOURCE Docusign, Inc.