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Meet Harvey, BigLaw firm's artificial intelligence…

Practice Technology Meet Harvey, BigLaw firm's artificial intelligence platform based on ChatGPT

By Debra Cassens Weiss

February 17, 2023, 9:50 am CST

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Allen & Overy has adopted an artificial intelligence platform dubbed “Harvey” to help its lawyers generate and access legal content.

According to a law firm press release, Harvey can help with legal work such as contract analysis, due diligence, litigation and regulatory compliance. Reuters and Law.com have coverage.

“Whilst the output needs careful review by an A&O lawyer,” the press release says, “Harvey can help generate insights, recommendations and predictions based on large volumes of data, enabling lawyers to deliver faster, smarter and more cost-effective solutions to their clients.”

Harvey operates in multiple languages for A&O’s 3,500 lawyers across 43 offices. The platform uses language processing, machine learning and data analytics to help automate legal work.

Allen & Overy has been testing Harvey since November 2022. The platform was developed by former lawyers, engineers and entrepreneurs using $5 million in seed money from the OpenAI Startup Fund, according to Reuters coverage. The platform was adapted from OpenAI’s ChatGPT software.

David Wakeling, an Allen & Overy partner who heads the law firm’s markets innovation group, told Reuters he believes Harvey can save lawyers “a couple hours a week-plus.”

Baptiste Aubry, Allen & Overy’s Luxembourg-based head of regulatory, gave Law.com International an example of how the program would work. He could tell Harvey to prepare a 10-slide presentation for a U.S. client about how to set up a bank in Luxembourg. “And the tool would be able to do it,” Aubry said.

Gabriel Pereyra, one of Harvey’s founders, told Reuters that the startup is starting to work with other law firms that will use Harvey’s custom tools.

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