We speak with Eversheds Sutherland’s global co-CEO and International chief executive Keith Froud about the selection and planned roll out of Harvey, and how that fits in with the global firm’s technology strategy and ambitions.
Eversheds Sutherland (International) at the start of February announced that it has agreed a strategic partnership with Harvey as its GenAI legal assistant, building on a new global strategy put in place last year.
An initial cohort of 350 lawyers will have access to Harvey with immediate effect, with full rollout across the Eversheds Sutherland business commencing in May.
While Eversheds Sutherland has worked with AI tools for a long time, what’s interesting, albeit perhaps not surprising, is the shift in emphasis now. Speaking to Legal IT Insider, global co-CEO and International CEO Keith Froud (pictured above), says: “Technology – including but not just generative AI – is an underpinning part of our new global strategy announced last year. We have a focus around clients and talent and market leading capability and operational excellence. Previously we had a technology ‘limb’, but now technology underpins everything, and the work that we have been doing on this side of things with our GenAI assistant is a massive part of that.”
The Harvey selection was led by service excellence partner Rachel Broquard (pictured above), a former senior M&A partner who Froud describes as “gold dust”. “She’s a lawyer who gets technology,” he says. “We put the team in place way before GenAI and Rachel has long been focusing on technology. She has a huge team to make sure that this selection was undertaken in a very focused way, and it was a brilliant exercise.”
General counsel and chief governance officer Simon Crossley was also a key part of the selection process and Froud observed: “I would go way back to when we started to introduce generative AI around Copilot: the huge exercises around risk we did then, we have continued to apply.” Copilot is still being used “heavily” by the wider business, but at Eversheds Sutherland, Harvey will be a tool specifically for lawyers.
Froud says that the firm had looked at Harvey and other GenAI assistants “from day one” but “took the view that we couldn’t push the general roll out until the technology got to this point.”
In terms of what that means, he says: “Now the technology has got to a point where material benefits can be released for our team and in terms of the value we can provide to clients , which is why we focused on this in the second half of last year and why we’ve got to where we are now.”
That assessment, Froud says, is based on feedback from Eversheds Sutherland’s own people in terms of the difference that the technology will make to them (for speed and efficiency, for example), and a “step change” among clients in terms of their expectations. “The time is right,” Froud says.
In terms of assessing and measuring return on investment, that is, interestingly, not the foremost priority. Lawyers will be feeding back any gains in the likes of efficiency, effectiveness and time savings but Froud says that while the technology is there to release material benefit, “that is still evolving in terms of what we measure and how. I’m not hammering that ‘metrics have to be hit otherwise the investment won’t stack up.’ Of course we will be monitoring it, but the bigger picture is that there is no going back and we have to make sure we adopt and embed it. What the benefits are and how we measure that, we will see in the fullness of time, and there are lots of ways to do that. The key thing now is that we know there are material benefits and it’s key that we ensure the technology is embedded and we take our people on the journey as well.”
One material benefit that is hard to measure but significant is that AI helps to overcome ‘fear of the blank page’ and getting started. “We know that’s something where you get really positive people from feedback, but how do you measure that? That’s from feedback and making sure people are on the journey. We will be assessing qualitative and quantitative feedback but in a year’s time, what we’re measuring might be different.”
Will this selection impact pricing models and bring the billable hour under renewed scrutiny? “It’s a constant conversation,” says Froud. “Twelve years ago a legal journalist interviewed me and said ‘the billable hour is dead.’ ‘I’m not sure it is’, I said. We welcome those conversations around innovative pricing approaches and are engaging closely with our clients on all aspects.”
Eversheds Sutherland has long had an alternative legal services arm, Konexo, that has been a vehicle for tech-first, alternative pricing, and is no stranger to pricing conversations.
“It’s difficult to think that the change we’re looking at won’t provoke more conversations around that,” Froud says. “Conversations with clients are more prevalent and will increase, and we need to be ready for that. I don’t think there has been a sea change just yet but there will be a change, and there will more of an emphasis on value billing. You speak about risk to clients and where they want risk to lie and the benefit of outside counsel, and that’s an important part of the conversation too.”
The big focus right now, is the roll out and adoption of Harvey. “We think carefully about strategy and implementation, and my view is that the winners are the ones that implement technology well,” says Froud. “When we launch something important like this, it’s important how it is rolled out and embedded across our large organisation and I’m determined we do that in a very effective way to give us a competitive advantage. It’s a huge amount of hard work for lots of people our end and I’m very grateful for that.”
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