Harvey made its name from day one by cutting deals with major law firms, but today a medium-size firm from Baltimore – Whiteford – which is outside the AmLaw 200, announced it was embracing the legal genAI pioneer across its business.
The deal with Whiteford, a commercial firm with around 200 lawyers and according to American Lawyer data ranked 217th by revenue in the US, clearly shows that Harvey is not just about BigLaw any longer, but is cultivating a ‘MidLaw’ client base as well.
That said, for Whiteford, this is a big deal. As the firm’s announcement states: ‘In a landmark move that underscores its commitment to innovation and excellence in the delivery of legal services, Whiteford, a leading Mid-Atlantic law firm, has entered into an enterprise license agreement with Harvey…The new strategic partnership gives Whiteford’s nearly 200 lawyers… an unmatched ability to generate and develop legal content efficiently, intelligently and securely. In doing so, we are joining some of the world’s leading firms. This is an exciting step forward at every level of service delivery.’
So, there you go. Harvey is not only going after the largest or most elite firms. This would also suggest that comments about becoming more flexible on pricing have been followed through.
In terms of how we got here, Whiteford, which has several smaller offices across the US, undertook a pilot of Harvey beginning in January. Now, in July, they have decided to go all-in, and will use the legal genAI platform for ‘contract analysis, due diligence, litigation, regulatory compliance, legal research, case law analysis and prediction of legal outcomes’ – in short, multiple use cases across most of the firm.
The last bit ‘prediction of legal outcomes’, this site has not heard about before from Harvey. They don’t go into how this happens, but it’s an interesting capability given that many other legal tech companies have tried to make progress in predicting the future outcome of cases as well.
Whiteford Managing Partner, Martin Fletcher, said: ‘This is a new era for Whiteford and the legal profession generally. We are thrilled to be an industry leader in deploying this exceptionally innovative technology. By rolling out Harvey to our lawyers, we are empowering them with cutting-edge legal AI, and it is abundantly clear that substantial value for our clients will follow.’
Winston Weinberg, CEO and Co-Founder of Harvey, concluded: ‘Today’s announcement highlights the innovative mindset of the team at Whiteford. We are honoured by their trust in Harvey and look forward to the significant impact we can achieve together.’
One last word. If you are planning to scale-up fast as a legal tech company one challenge you soon meet is the reality that there are only a couple of hundred really large law firms globally. Despite data shouting that the legal market is worth 100s of billions of dollars, the actual number of buyers with substantial innovation teams and a strong desire to invest a lot of dosh in the latest legal AI tech is limited – at least at the prices many companies want to charge.
So, this expansion move into MidLaw can also be seen as a practical step for a legal tech company that wants to build up its revenue rapidly, which is understandable given its backers, which includes OpenAI’s own startup fund, Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia, among others.
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Pic: Baltimore, Maryland.