Robert Ambrogi Blog
The generative AI legal startup Harvey has entered into a strategic alliance with LexisNexis Legal & Professional by which it will integrate LexisNexis’ gen AI technology, primary law content, and Shepard’s Citations within the Harvey platform and jointly develop advanced legal workflows.
As a result of the partnership, Harvey’s customers working within its platform will be able to ask questions of LexisNexis Protégé, the AI legal assistant released in January, and receive AI-generated answers grounded in the LexisNexis collection of U.S. case law and statutes and validated through Shepard’s Citations, the companies said.
“Harvey users can ask complex legal questions in natural language and receive citation-supported answers from primary sources of law, refine their queries through follow-up questions, and seamlessly continue their research,” the companies said in a statement announcing the partnership.
“Answers are generated using LexisNexis fine-tuned models within a proprietary infrastructure that anchors responses in legal content, metadata, and case law relationships, powered by Shepard’s Knowledge Graph and Point of Law Graph technology.”
The companies said the integration will become available later this year.
Harvey customers will not need to be a LexisNexis Protégé subscriber to receive U.S. primary law and Shepard’s Citations in Harvey.
The two companies also said they will work together to develop sophisticated legal workflows built on the latest generative AI technology. Initially, these co-developed workflows will include:
- Motion to dismiss workflow to generate arguments for motions to dismiss and related client communications using legal research content from LexisNexis.
- Motion for summary judgment workflow to automate the drafting of summary judgment motions supported by legal research from LexisNexis.
The companies said they will begin developing those workflows immediately but did not say when they will be available to customers.
“Our customers trust LexisNexis for authoritative legal content, and we’re excited that they will benefit from LexisNexis capabilities within the Harvey experience,” Winston Weinberg, cofounder and CEO of Harvey, said in a statement provided by the company. “Together, we’re delivering seamless access to reliable, citation-backed answers and custom workflows, making legal work faster and easier than ever.”
Founded in 2022, Harvey has seen rapid growth and become one of the most high profile gen AI startups focused on the legal industry. It was recently reported to be in talks to raise some $250 million in new funding at a valuation of $5 billion, after having been valued at $3 billion just a few months ago.
When I spoke to Harvey’s cofounders last year, they discussed their plans to develop their own legal research solution in partnership with generative AI company OpenAI. They said they had already done that for U.S. law and would be adding other jurisdictions.
I asked Harvey how this news comports with the plans they discussed last year. I received this response from CEO Weinberg, via a public relations representattive: “To keep pace with how rapidly our industry is growing, we’ll need to both build and partner to get our customers what they expect from our platform. Lawyers have trusted LexisNexis for centuries, so this alliance allows us to provide our customers with data sources they know and rely upon while collaborating with on AI systems that make daily life for our joint customers significantly easier.”