Charles Russell Speechlys adopts Harvey

Charles Russell Speechlys today announces its adoption of Harvey to roll out a generative AI solution for all lawyers and legal professionals at the Firm after coming first in every category of a rigorous, multi-vendor evaluation.

Harvey is a leading legal AI platform designed to increase efficiency for professionals in the legal sector. The adoption follows a comprehensive review of the market by the Firm’s Advanced Client Solutions (ACS) team to identify tools that could not only replicate the functionality of its existing generative AI tool but also satisfy additional requirements that have emerged over the past year. This evaluation was informed by feedback from the Firm's most frequent generative AI users from across the legal professionals at the Firm.

Following the review, five vendors were chosen to participate in a Generative AI “Bake Off”. The initial sessions took place over three days and included legal professionals from all practice areas, seniorities and offices. Over the Vendor Selection Days, 45 participants were involved, comprising of a balanced representation from across transactional, disputes and advisory practices to ensure they were testing tools for varied purposes. Each vendor demonstrated their product and provided trial access to their tools over the course of a week.

The use cases were derived directly from the Firm's experience with its current generative AI tool, highlighting the most prevalent and impactful tasks in fee earners’ daily work, such as drafting, summarisation, document review, legal queries and translation. Ease, accuracy and speed were also evaluated, and each vendor was also allocated an overall score, with over 6,000 individual pieces of feedback captured across the process.

Joe Cohen, Director of Advanced Client Solutions, comments:

It’s fantastic to be proceeding with Harvey. Our objective was to identify a generative AI solution that would genuinely enhance the efficiency and capabilities of our legal professionals and provide capabilities beyond what we already have. The direct input from our lawyers, all of whom are real superusers of the current Sidekick platform, was fundamental in shaping our criteria, ensuring the chosen platform would directly address their operational needs and support the high standards of our client service.

"It’s critically important that we work with a provider that is at the forefront of legal AI and able to keep up with the incredibly fast pace of change we are seeing in the industry. Harvey has an impressive platform and track record and scored extremely well across all metrics in our selection process. We are confident that Harvey is right tool for Charles Russell Speechlys and will allow us to meet our AI objectives whist enhancing our client offering."

Winston Weinberg, CEO and co-founder of Harvey:

Charles Russell Speechlys approached this decision with a high bar and a deep focus on feedback from their lawyers. We’re thrilled to see them move forward with Harvey after such a comprehensive evaluation. Their ambition to raise the bar on how lawyers work aligns with our mission, and we’re excited to help them get there.

The Firm successfully rolled out its ‘Sidekick’ tool in the first half of 2024, and the tool currently sees usage of more than 93% by staff, including its lawyers and business services teams.

Harvey will replace the Firm’s incumbent provider, and there will be full continuity of the systems and services currently in place across the Firm.

Related coverage:

The Lawyer, Artificial Lawyer,  Legal IT Insider,  Law 360,  Legal IT Professionals and eprivateclient