Title commitment review with AI: a Schedule B-II workflow and QC checklist

Why title review is the first place to try AI

On an ALTA/NSPS land title survey (the American Land Title Association and National Society of Professional Surveyors standard survey used for title insurance), someone in your office reads the title commitment, finds every Schedule B-II exception, pulls the recorded documents behind them, decides which affect the property and can be plotted, and writes the notes. It is careful, repetitive document work, which is exactly what AI drafts well and exactly where a missed item hurts.

Practitioners notice. Title review drew the most interest in an April 2026 RPLS.com thread on AI in survey work (RPLS.com, Apr 2026), and a June 2026 thread launching a title-reading tool drew about 1,691 views (RPLS.com, Jun 2026). One vendor puts the traditional review at 3 to 5 hours per survey (vendor figure, V7 Labs, undated). Time your own; it varies with the commitment.

Below is a workflow you can run with a business AI account or an off-the-shelf title tool, plus a QC checklist. It assumes your surveyor makes every judgment call.

The workflow, step by step

1. Intake: get clean files

• Save the commitment and every linked exception document as separate PDFs, named by exception number.
• Note anything illegible or missing before AI sees it. Older or poorly scanned title documents are a known weak spot (RPLS.com, Apr 2026).
• Use a business account whose terms keep your files out of model training. Texas's board says licensees should understand how an AI tool uses and stores data (TBPELS PAO 71, Nov 2024).

2. Draft the exception table

Ask the tool for one row per Schedule B-II exception with these columns:

• Exception number, exactly as printed
• Type (easement, right of way, covenants, mineral reservation, lien, standard exception, other)
• Recording reference (book/page or instrument number) copied verbatim
• Page of the commitment where it appears
• Whether the document is attached, linked, or still needed
• "Possibly plottable: yes / no / unclear" as a draft flag only

Tell it, in writing, to leave a cell blank rather than guess, and to quote the source text for each row. This is the single most useful instruction for cutting made-up references.

A title-specific tool such as AECFirmAI's Title Reader does much of this step for $49 a run and also plots easements (AECFirmAI, viewed Oct 2026). A general model can do the table if you give it the documents.

3. Build the retrieval checklist

From the table, list every recording reference whose document you do not yet have, grouped by county recorder. Your research tech works the list; the AI does not fetch documents on its own.

4. Summarize each exception document

For each pulled document, ask for a short summary: what it grants or restricts, who benefits, any described location (with the description quoted, not paraphrased), and whether it references a plat or another document. Again, quote rather than paraphrase anything with a bearing, distance or width.

5. Surveyor review: the judgment step

This is where the PLS decides, for each exception, whether it affects the property, whether it is plottable, and how it will be shown or noted. AI's "possibly plottable" flag is a starting point. Michael Clifford, PLS, puts research of the title report among the office tasks AI can help with, while boundary judgment stays with the surveyor (LidarNews, updated Feb 2026).

6. Draft the notes and the crew brief

Once the surveyor has marked each item, have AI draft:

• Plat notes for each exception, in your firm's standard wording (give it three or four past jobs as examples)
• A one-page crew brief: easements to look for on the ground, monuments called for in the documents, and any conflicts the surveyor wants checked in the field

7. Log the sign-off

Keep a simple log: exception number, what AI drafted, who verified it, against which page, date, and any correction. North Carolina's board asks licensees to keep records of data inputs, processing methods and validation procedures, and to use only data they have verified (NCBELS guidelines, Jul 2025). A log like this is one practical way to keep those records and show your process if a question ever comes up.

QC checklist before anything reaches the plat

• Every Schedule B-II exception in the commitment appears in the table (count them both ways)
• Every recording reference was compared to the commitment text by a person
• Every quoted description matches the source document word for word
• No blank cell was "filled in" without a source
• Plottable / not plottable is the surveyor's call, recorded in the log
• Any bearing or distance in a note was checked against the recorded document, not against the AI summary
• Missing or illegible documents are listed, not silently skipped
• The sign-off log is saved with the job file

Prompts that help

• "Use only the attached documents. If a value is not in them, write NOT FOUND."
• "Quote the exact sentence you relied on for each row, with the page number."
• "List anything you could not read clearly."

What this does not do

It does not decide what is plottable, resolve conflicts between a commitment and the recorded document, or certify anything. Those stay with the licensee in responsible charge. For what each state board has said, see the board-rules post; for tool choices, see the tools comparison.

If you want help setting this up on your own commitments, Lunan's free conversation walks through one recent ALTA job with you. Start it here.