Printed and typewritten text
Reads best. A smudge, a stamp or a handwritten note can leave a word uncertain, and a poor scan can be read wrongly without anyone noticing.
Guide
Convert a scanned legal document to Word without retyping it.
A scanned lease, deed or contract is a picture of a page. It cannot be searched or edited until someone turns the picture back into words and structure. Firms have paid people to retype them, or used basic converters that left the page hard to edit.
This page sets out what a scan actually contains, the three ways firms deal with one today, what LexForge returns, and what you should still check by hand.
Last updated
What is in a scan
A scan holds the picture, not the structure.
Optical character recognition (OCR) can read printed and typewritten text from a scan. It cannot see that a line is a heading, that a paragraph is clause 1.1, or that a note at the foot of the page belongs with the body text. Those things have to be rebuilt before the document is useful in Word again.
Headings and numbering
Not in the file. A converter that keeps the page as positioned boxes leaves them for you to redo by hand.
Footnotes, definitions, tables
Structure that has to come back as editable Word structure, not as a picture of the page.
Three ways firms do it today
Retype it, convert it, or rebuild it.
Retype it
Careful retyping is accurate but slow, and every retyped word is a new chance for a mistake. Nothing marks the words a tired reader misread.
Run it through a basic converter
Fast, but pages may remain as positioned boxes, damaged text is left in the page, and whether the wording is checked varies by tool. See the comparison.
Rebuild it with LexForge
OCR reads the words, AI rebuilds headings, numbering and structure, the draft is checked against the source reading, and uncertain words are flagged for a person to review rather than guessed.
What LexForge returns
An editable Word draft, ready to review.
Upload your house style once
Optional. A Word template or a well-formatted document teaches LexForge your headings, numbering and footnotes. How House Styles work, and what a house style is.
Upload the scan
A scanned PDF or a Word (.docx) file, up to 100 MB; a PDF can contain up to 500 pages. Documents are stored and read in the UK, structure analysis runs inside the EEA, and nothing you upload is used to train AI models. Security page.
Download the draft
Headings, numbering, definitions and tables come back as editable Word structure. Footnote text is kept and returned as editable text in the body rather than as Word's linked footnotes. Every draft is checked against the words read from the source.
Before you rely on it
Review the highlighted words. Then the rest.
Words the reading leaves uncertain are highlighted in the draft for a person to check rather than guessed. The wording check confirms that the draft matches what was read from your file; it cannot prove that a poor scan was read correctly, so a smudged word can be consistently wrong in both.
AI can make mistakes. LexForge uses AI for layout and reads words with OCR. Review the finished document before relying on it.
Source scans leave active storage two hours after upload, and finished files stay for the retention period your firm sets, from seven to 30 days.
See it on a real page
A 1987 lease, before and after.
Fictional specimen. Every name, party and clause is invented, and no client data is used.
Try it on your own scan
Bring the scan. Get your draft.
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