Harneys has become the first offshore law firm to roll out Harvey across all of its offices and to all employees, we can reveal, following an in-depth selection process last year. The selection demonstrates a belief that Harvey will deliver value to the whole firm, not just it’s fee-earners.
Harneys in the summer last year began its AI journey, looking at a number of different tools including Thomson Reuters CoCounsel, before narrowing the trial down to Harvey and Legora. The firm, which is headquartered in the British Virgin Islands and has 12 offices globally, formally started trials of the two finalists in November.
Senior knowledge manager (technology) Sharmila Rangasamy said that in lead up to the trials, Harneys spent a significant amount of time selecting who would trial the products, observing: “What we did that might be a bit different to other firms is that ahead of the trials we didn’t just say we wanted to look at Harvey and Legora, we actually spent quite a lot of time interviewing and selecting who will be trialling the product.
“We interviewed each of those people to get an understanding of what their baseline was going to be, so what their exposure to AI was and how they felt about it. We used that to produce interview summaries, which we were then able to give to both Harvey and Legora to really tailor our trial and help make it successful.”
The process was headed by global managing partner William Peake and Singapore managing partner and AI project sponsor Lishi Fong, together with Rangasamy. Harneys had a number of different criteria that it was looking to meet and Rangasamy says: “The first thing was getting the lawyers that were on the trial to vote on which product they preferred, and the numbers were in favour of Harvey.”
Also compelling was the offer that Harvey gave Harneys, with Rangasamy observing: “Harvey allowed us a firmwide offering. That was quite important because as a firm, we do AI for everybody, not just for our lawyers.”
Every week during the trial Harneys collected feedback from participating fee-earners around metrics such as how long a task would normally take and how long it takes with the tool they were trialling. Rangasamy said: “We had established like how long something took prior to the trial and then when we were able to note, for example, that let’s say summarization took 30 minutes before we could see that the lawyer has used it three times this week and therefore we’re seeing a saving of an hour and a half. We went quite detailed into that feedback and we also asked them to give us any examples of blockers and any wins they had had. We had quite a few blockers on the Legora side that helped us in terms of like our decision making for Harvey being the right fit for us.” She adds: “Harvey came out much more accurately for us.”
Harneys is now in the process of going live with Harvey and training staff worldwide, which Harvey will be assisting with. Harneys is currently creating an AI literacy programme, which contains its AI policy. Rangasamy says: “Everyone will have to sign that to say they understand the risks and the benefits of AI. Then the rest of the training on how to use Harvey will be compulsory for everyone. We’ll then go into practise area-specific sessions and with those sessions we are working quite closely with Harvey to deliver that in a way that resonates with our lawyers.”
Harneys is producing weekly summary reports to the leadership team in terms of how staff are using or not using Harvey. Rangasamy said: “That’s just to help improve and provide training where it’s required and speak to teams to help drive this AI initiative forward.”
Commenting on the news, Peake said: “It’s great to be able to announce finally our partnership with Harvey after a number of months trialling it. We want our people to be equipped with the best tools to provide timely, efficient and impeccable legal advice and we feel we can do that alongside Harvey. How legal services are being provided is changing in the most profound way I can remember during my career. Each week brings new texture and colour to the AI discussion. Harvey is an essential plank in our overall AI strategy and today is a really significant one for Harneys.”
Fong added: “Our AI strategy at Harneys is to harness technology responsibly to enhance client value, empower our people and build a future-ready firm. We use AI to remove friction from legal work so our lawyers can focus on what clients value most: judgement, expertise and trusted advice. The outcome is higher-quality, more timely and more commercially focused advice, delivered by the same lawyers our clients trust.”
The post Exclusive: Harneys to roll out Harvey to all employees globally appeared first on Legal IT Insider.