Lawnext.com and The Financial Times report that Allen & Overy, one of the largest law firms in the world, announced its integration of an artificial intelligence (AI) product known as Harvey into its global practice. The product is set to be used by more than 3,500 lawyers across 43 offices worldwide. Harvey relies on GPT-3, the large natural language model by OpenAI. The goal is to enable lawyers to create legal documents or perform legal research with simple instructions.
Other law firms are bound to follow into A&O's footsteps. Harvey's founders, Gabriel Pereyra and Winston Weinberg, formerly of DeepMind and O'Melveny & Myers, respectively, are working with other law firms getting ready to deploy Harvey. Although they are yet to mention names, some firms will be using it for particular practices, while others, like A&O, will be deploying it for the whole company.
Harvey was trialed by A&O last November, and the trial resulted in:
- ~3,500 lawyers inquiring from Harvey
- ~40,000 queries for their day-to-day client work
- 250 practice areas
- 50 different languages across all A&O offices
Harvey's ability to work across diverse practice areas and in multiple languages has been described as "unprecedented efficiency and intelligence." It's almost a fourth of the firm's daily work and about 80% of the their monthly work. David Wakeling, A&O partner, and head of its Markets Innovation Group that spearheaded the Harvey trial, called it a "game-changer" in the legal industry.
Pereyra and Weinberg noted that Harvey would be rolled out on a firm-by-firm basis as the product requires fine-tuning for each firm. They develop specific systems for particular firms, so you will have the specific model for A&O, which becomes fine-tuned for the firm. There's also the possibility of specializing in it more, where you can get specific models for cases. That is, you can have a case where you can have a specific client matter or particular litigation, and the model is fine-tuned for that litigation or transaction.
Image: Screenshot of Allen & Overy Home Page, February 17, 2023
