Thinking of uploading your employment contract to ChatGPT, Claude, or another AI tool for a quick legal review? You're not alone – but you could be putting yourself at serious risk.

Pasting your real contract into generic AI tools might seem harmless, but it could violate confidentiality clauses, breach UK data protection laws, and expose sensitive personal and business information. Worse still, many of these tools may train on your data, meaning your contract details could end up helping train future AI models.

The good news? There's a simple way to get AI insights while protecting yourself.

Here's how to anonymise your contract before any AI review – and why this extra step could save you from legal trouble.

The Anonymization Solution

The key to using general AI tools more safely is removing all personally identifiable information (PII) from your contract before uploading it. This way, even if your data gets stored or shared, it can't be traced back to you or your employer.

Think of it as creating a realistic but fake version of your contract that keeps the legal structure intact while removing the identifying details.

What Information Needs to Go?

When anonymizing your contract, you'll need to replace:

Personal Details:

• Your full name → "April Blues"

• Home address → "123 Sample Street, Generic Town, GT1 2AB"

• Phone number and email → "07700 900123" and "april.blues@email.com"

• National Insurance number → "AB123456C"

Company Information:

• Company name → "BlueTech Solutions Ltd"

• Office addresses → "456 Business Park, Example City, EC1 5XY"

• Specific department names → "Digital Services" (instead of your actual department)

• Manager names → "Sam Carter"

Business-Specific Details:

• Specific project names → "Project Phoenix" (instead of actual project names)

• Client names → "MegaCorp Industries"

• Proprietary systems or software → "CompanyFlow System"

Example: Instead of "Sarah Jones will report to Marketing Director Michael Brown at TechCorp's London office," write "April Blues will report to Marketing Director Sam Carter at BlueTech Solutions' Manchester office."

The LibreOffice Draw Method: Your Free PDF Anonymization Tool

We recommend LibreOffice Draw as the perfect tool for this job. It's free, works offline (so your original document never touches the internet), and has a simple find-and-replace feature that makes anonymization straightforward. Most importantly, it can directly edit PDF files, which is how most employment contracts are shared.

Here's how to do it:

📌 Step 1: Download LibreOffice (completely free) and open your PDF contract directly in LibreOffice Draw

📌 Step 2: Use the find-and-replace feature (Cmd+Alt+f or Ctrl+Alt+f)

📌 Step 3: Work through each identifier systematically:

• Find: "Sarah Jones" → Replace: "April Blues"

• Find: "TechCorp Limited" → Replace: "BlueTech Solutions Ltd"

• Find: "Michael Brown" → Replace: "Sam Carter"

• Find: "London office" → Replace: "Manchester office"

📌 Step 4: Save your anonymized version with a clear filename like "Contract_Anonymized_AprilBlues"

📌 Step 5: Upload only the anonymized version to your AI tool

Pro tip: Review the document manually after find-and-replace to catch any identifiers you might have missed in headers, footers, or embedded text.

What This Approach Protects

Anonymization significantly reduces your risk because:

Legal Protection: You're no longer sharing identifiable confidential information, making it much harder to argue you've breached confidentiality clauses

Privacy Protection: Even if the AI tool stores your data, it can't be traced back to real people or companies

Business Protection: Your employer's specific terms and business information remain protected

The Limitations of DIY Anonymization

While anonymization is much safer, it's not perfect:

🔹 Time-consuming: Thorough anonymization takes effort and attention to detail
🔹 Risk of missing details: Easy to overlook embedded identifiers
🔹 Still using general tools: You're getting generic AI advice, not specialist contract analysis
🔹 No legal guarantee: The AI tool's privacy policy still applies to your anonymized data

The Better Alternative: Purpose-Built Security

This is exactly why tools like Ookulli exist. Instead of spending time anonymizing documents and still accepting some risk, you get:

Built-in Security: Your actual contract is processed safely without need for anonymization Specialist Analysis: Purpose-built for employment contracts, not general AI chat Legal Compliance: Designed to work within confidentiality requirements

With Ookulli, you can upload your real contract with confidence, knowing your data won't be used for training, nothing gets shared with third parties, and the analysis is jurisdiction-specific and legally informed.

Bottom Line

If you're determined to use general AI tools for contract review, anonymization with LibreOffice Draw transforms a risky practice into a much safer one.

But ask yourself: if you're going through all that work to stay safe, wouldn't it be easier to just use a tool that's built for the job from the start? Purpose-built solutions like Ookulli let you skip the anonymization process entirely while getting better, more relevant analysis of your actual contract terms.

Your employment contract deserves specialist attention – and you deserve peace of mind that your confidential information stays that way.