Harvey AI

What does Harvey AI do?

• Domain-specific legal AI: Harvey AI is built on top of large language models (LLMs) from OpenAI, with additional fine-tuning using legal reference materials, case law, and—critically—private firm data such as templates and work products. ^{[aaux2l] [k12ara]}
• Automated legal tasks: Core functionality includes contract analysis, due diligence, litigation support, regulatory compliance checks, research, drafting of documents, and automated intake/population of legal forms. ^{[aaux2l] [k12ara] [1p2qc8]} See for an overview.
• Customizable to each firm: Law firms can further train Harvey with their own proprietary documents, enabling nuanced contextual accuracy similar to onboarding a new team member. ^{[aaux2l] [k12ara]}
• Integration and workflow: Harvey can be embedded into existing legal tech stacks, with support for integration into platforms like Microsoft Azure and advanced workflow automation. ^{[aaux2l] [k12ara]}
• Specialization for practice areas: Offers tailored models for different legal specialties (e.g., corporate, IP, litigation), adapting outputs to local jurisdiction and specific practice needs.

Why is Harvey winning the Scale-Up?

• Product-Market Fit in a High-Stakes Vertical: Legal services involve high-value, high-stakes, and data-intensive workflows. Automating even a small portion delivers immense time and cost savings, which translates to high willingness to pay among top-tier clients. ^{[8gmm9f] [aaux2l] [trm60z] [1p2qc8]}
• Focus on Security and Customization: Harvey allows training on highly sensitive, firm-specific data while maintaining data privacy—a critical requirement for legal workflows. ^{[aaux2l] [k12ara]}
• Elite Customer Base: Adoption or piloting by "elite law firms and professional service providers" signals trust and strong defensibility in this vertical, boosting investor confidence. ^[1p2qc8]
• Founders' pedigree and strategic investment: The founding team combines deep AI research (ex-Google Brain, DeepMind, Meta AI) with practical legal expertise, and the company is backed by OpenAI, Sequoia Capital, and other premier investors. ^{[8gmm9f] [trm60z] [1p2qc8]}
• Early market leadership: Harvey’s role as an early mover with a specialized, legally aware AI differentiates it from generic LLM solutions, giving it a defensible position as legal adopts AI at scale. ^{[aaux2l] [trm60z] [1p2qc8]} See illustrating Harvey automating contract review.

What kind of Vertical Wrapper did they create?

• Vertical Wrapper: Harvey created a "vertical wrapper" by embedding general-purpose LLMs within a domain-specialized environment for law firms. This means:
  • The foundational LLM is tuned with vast amounts of legal data (case law, precedent, regulations).
  • Firms add their own proprietary documents, ensuring contextual outputs that meet firm standards—a process akin to onboarding a new associate’s workflow patterns. ^{[aaux2l] [k12ara]} could depict this multi-layered model training pipeline.
  • Harvey provides UIs, workflow automation, security, and integration specifically for the legal sector, rather than generic AI outputs.

Feature Set

• Legal Research: Fast, accurate answers to legal queries based on a synthesis of internal and external legal documents.
• Contract Analysis: Automated review, risk identification, and clause extraction/highlighting.
• Drafting Support: Creation and revision of contracts, filings, and briefs in firm-adapted language.
• Due Diligence Automation: Document review and data extraction for faster, more comprehensive diligence.
• Regulatory Compliance: Automated checks for adherence to relevant laws and industry best practices.
• Workflow Automation: Intake forms, pre-population of documents, task assignment, and more.
• Integrations/API: Plugs into existing document and matter management systems, with secure enterprise deployment options.

Citations