Harvey on Thursday confirmed it closed a round of funding, led by Andreessen Horowitz, that values the legal AI startup at $8 billion after reports of the funding leaked in October. The startup raised $160 million in the round. This latest capital infusion came just months after it raised a $300 million in a Series E round at a $5 billion valuation in June. And that was just months after raising a Sequoia-led $300 million Series D at a $3 billion valuation in February.
Today, I'm talking with Sean Fitzpatrick, the CEO of LexisNexis, one of the most important companies in the entire legal system. For years - including when I was in law school - LexisNexis was basically the library. It's where you went to look up case law, do legal research, and find the laws and precedents you would need to be an effective lawyer for your clients.
"Our partnership with vLex is a natural fit: Its legal data and workflows will enrich our environment, amplifying our ability to deliver intelligent, transformative solutions for clients," said Katherine Lowry, Chief Information Officer at BakerHostetler. "We're entering a phase where AI isn't just a tool - it's part of operations. We're focused on connecting AI to the data we already trust, both internally and externally, to drive better decisions and outcomes."
"A lot of the tasks junior [associates] do are going to get automated," Weinberg says. "That doesn't mean their job's going to get automated. It's just going to be a different job." Built atop language models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, Harvey's platform streamlines legal workflows by helping lawyers with drafting, contract analysis, legal research, due diligence, regulatory compliance, and case law review.
Some lawyers have learnt that the hard way, and have been fined for filing AI-generated court briefs that misrepresented principles of law and cited non-existent cases. The same is true in other fields. For example, AI models can pass the gold-standard test in finance - the Chartered Financial Analyst exam - yet score poorly on simple tasks required of entry-level financial analysts (see go.nature.com/42tbrgb).
Imagine a day focused on strategic, meaningful legal work instead of tedious, manual tasks. In this guide from our friends at Litify, you can move past the hype and explore the practical ways to use AI throughout your workflow, from intake to billing. Whether itʼs analyzing documents to identify the most important information or leveraging data to determine the next best step, legal AI can help unleash your full potential.
* Google avoids having to spin off Chrome. [Law360] * Lawyers using time saved by AI for more work. [Legal Cheek] * Charging documents for former Biglaw associate arrested in D.C. say someone said hostile things to National Guard troops and a day later they decided it was him. We might have another no bill on our hands. [National Law Journal]
