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Harvey (software)

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Harvey
Developer(s)Counsel AI Corporation
Initial release2022
Websitewww.harvey.ai

Harvey is a generative artificial intelligence (AI) product developed by the Counsel AI Corporation for the legal industry. The product has been described as a provider of customised large language models (LLMs) for law firms and in-house legal teams. It is named after the lead character of the legal drama Suits.

History

Harvey was founded in 2022 by Winston Weinberg, who was formerly a securities and antitrust litigator at O'Melveny & Myers, and Gabriel Pereyra, who was a research scientist at Google DeepMind. Weinberg had been an associate at O'Melveny for a year prior to founding the company.

In November 2022, it was reported that the Harvey team comprised of five persons and that the company had USD 5 million in funding led by the OpenAI Startup Fund, together with other investors such as Jeff Dean, the head of Google AI, Elad Gil, the founder of Mixer Labs, and other angel investors. Harvey raised another USD 23 million in April 2023 in a funding round led by Sequoia Capital.

Gordon Moodie, a corporate partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz also joined Harvey in July 2023 as the company's chief product officer.

Harvey announced in December 2023 that it had raised USD 80 million in a Series B funding round led by Elad Gil and Kleiner Perkins which valued the company at USD 715 million. Other investors in the round included Sequoia Capital and the OpenAI Startup Fund.

In March 2024, Harvey had 82 employees and stated that it intended to double that figure by the end of 2024. The company has reportedly hired a large number of lawyers, including from White & Case, Latham & Watkins, Skadden, Gunderson Dettmer, Katten Muchin Rosenman, and Paul Weiss. Harvey CEO Weinberg explained that many members of the company's sales team were formerly attorneys at 'Big Law', i.e. large US law firms, and that the sales team's experience was useful in convincing attorneys to trial the company's software

It was reported in June 2024 that Harvey was seeking an additional USD 600 million in funding at a USD 2 billion valuation, and was hoping to acquire legal research company vLex.

In July 2024, Harvey announced that it had raised USD 100 million in a Series C funding round that valued the company at USD 1.5 billion. The round was led by venture capital firm GV, and other participants included OpenAI, Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, Elad Gil, and SV Angel. The law firm, Cooley, acted for Harvey in the funding round.

In January 2025, it was reported that there were discussions between Sequoia Capital and Harvey about a USD 300 million funding round for Harvey that would value the company at USD 3 billion.

Features

In May 2024, Harvey launched its products on Microsoft Azure and stated that it would offer a Harvey on Azure version of its product going forward. It was also reported that Harvey would begin offering general commercial access to some of its products, such its case law models, as well as product bundles that included its AI assistant, specialised models, and its Vault feature for running prompts on large document collections.

Applications

Various law firms around the world are customers of Harvey.

US law law firm Paul Weiss began testing Harvey within the firm in January 2023, and became a client of the company later that year. Gina Lynch, the firm's chief knowledge and innovation officer explained that the firm was not using hard metrics, such as time saved, to assess productivity gains because the time and effort needed to carefully review the output made efficiency gains difficult to measure.

In February 2023, the UK law firm, Allen & Overy (now A&O Shearman), announced that it had been trialing Harvey since November 2022 within its Markets Innovation Group. This was reported to be the first known use of a generative AI product within the UK magic circle law firms.

According to Allen & Overy, during the trial, 3,500 lawyers had used Harvey for around 40,000 queries in the course of their day to day work. The firm's press release stated that "Whilst the output needs careful review by an A&O lawyer, Harvey can help generate insights, recommendations and predictions based on large volumes of data". David Wakeling, head of the Markets Innovation Group, also cautioned that "You must validate everything coming out of the system. You have to check everything". The law firm did not provide Harvey with access to any client data during the trial due to client confidentiality concerns.

The Irish law firm, A&L Goodbody, announced in February 2024 that it would be working with Harvey to enhance its services in relation to document analysis, due diligence, litigation, and regulatory compliance.

In September 2024, PwC announced that it would be adopting Harvey to empower its lawyers in Singapore. Singapore law firm WongPartnership also announced that month that it had become the first Southeast Asian law firm to test Harvey's generative AI solutions.

Reception

Harvey has not demoed its product at trade shows or to the press. According to news reports, many in the legal and legaltech industry "have never seen what Harvey does". Weinberg and Pereya acknowledged that the company has been "stealthy" and explained that they would rather their clients "speak for themselves".

As of 2023, Harvey was reportedly built on top of OpenAI's GPT-4. Some users have complained that the product would break when OpenAI updated its GPT models, and described the product as "OpenAI's legal wrapper".

Notes

  1. 'Harvey' is often used to refer to both the product and the company which develops and operates the product (i.e. Counsel AI Corporation).

References

  1. ^ Marathe, Isha (13 June 2024). "The Hype Behind Harvey: How the Stealthy Startup Is Raising Industry Eyebrows". Legal Tech News. Retrieved 2025-01-22.
  2. ^ Clark, Kate; Roof, Katie (17 January 2025). "Legal AI Startup Harvey Set to Double Valuation to $3 Billion". Bloomberg.
  3. Wiggers, Kyle (2022-11-23). "Harvey, which uses AI to answer legal questions, lands cash from OpenAI". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2025-01-22.
  4. Baxter, Brian (18 July 2023). "Wachtell Partners Take Jobs at Salesforce, AI Startup Harvey (1)". Archived from the original on 2023-09-25. Retrieved 2025-01-22.
  5. Gottlieb, Isabel (20 December 2023). "Legal Tech Harvey.ai Valued at $715 Million in Latest Funding". Archived from the original on 2024-02-14. Retrieved 2025-01-22.
  6. Baxter, Brian (11 March 2024). "Harvey Eyes 'All Sorts' of Lawyers in AI Legal Hiring Spree (1)". Bloomberg Law.
  7. Louise, Nickie (2024-06-10). "AI startup Harvey in talks to raise $600 million in funding at $2 billion valuation - Tech Startups". Retrieved 2025-01-22.
  8. Palazzolo, Stephanie; Clark, Kate. "AI Startup Harvey Targets $2 Billion Valuation and Mulls Buying a Legal Research Company". The Information. Retrieved 2025-01-22.
  9. Marathe, Isha (14 October 2024). "What the Rumored Harvey and vLex Deal Says About Today's Legal Research Market". Legal Tech News. Retrieved 2025-01-22.
  10. Merken, Sara (24 July 2024). "Legal AI firm Harvey raises $100 mln in new funding round". Reuters.
  11. "Harvey Launches AI-Powered Professional Services Platform on Microsoft Azure". Harvey. Retrieved 2025-01-22.
  12. ^ Ambrogi, Bob (1 May 2024). "Harvey AI To Move Out Of Early Access Phase, Release More Affordable Versions Of Its Custom AI Models". LawSites. Archived from the original on 2 May 2024. Retrieved 2025-01-22.
  13. Gottlieb, Isabel (14 May 2024). "Paul Weiss Assessing Value of AI, But Not Yet on Bottom Line". Bloomberg Law. Archived from the original on 2024-09-19. Retrieved 2025-01-22.
  14. Beioley, Kate; Criddle, Cristina (2023-02-15). "Allen & Overy introduces AI chatbot to lawyers in search of efficiencies". Financial Times. Retrieved 2025-01-22.
  15. Hill, Caroline (2023-02-16). "Allen & Overy breaks the internet (and new ground) with co-pilot Harvey". Legal IT Insider. Retrieved 2025-01-22.
  16. Womack, Jack (6 March 2023). "How's Harvey? The Pro and Cons of A&O's Audacious AI System". Law.com International. Archived from the original on 21 July 2024. Retrieved 2025-01-22.
  17. Merken, Sara (16 February 2023). "OpenAI-backed startup brings chatbot technology to first major law firm". Reuters.
  18. Stokel-Walker, Chris. "Generative AI Is Coming For the Lawyers". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2025-01-22.
  19. "A&O announces exclusive launch partnership with Harvey - A&O Shearman". www.aoshearman.com. Retrieved 2025-01-22.
  20. "Law Society of Ireland Gazette". www.lawsociety.ie. Retrieved 2025-01-22.
  21. Yeoh, Cherlyn (11 September 2024). "PwC announces exclusive alliances with Harvey and ContractPodAi". The Edge.
  22. "PwC first to bring legal Generative AI solutions to clients in Singapore". PwC. 2024-09-11. Retrieved 2025-01-22.
  23. "Singapore's WongP inks deal with AI startup Harvey | Asian Legal Business". www.legalbusinessonline.com. 2024-09-06. Retrieved 2025-01-22.
  24. Ambrogi, Bob (2023-04-26). "Harvey AI Raises $21M In A Series A Round Led By Sequoia | LawSites". www.lawnext.com. Retrieved 2025-01-22.
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