The magic circle firm announced it on Wednesday February 15: Allen & Overy is now working with a new AI, christened Harvey, and financed by the company OpenAI, via its start-up fund. Developed on the same technology as the now famous ChatGPT, Harvey is described by its UK users as “agame-changer that can unleash the power of generative AI and transform the legal industry“. So, palace revolt or revolution in the trade? Although the outcome is still uncertain, the appeal has been heard.
Harvey. This name, which has nothing to do with Harvey Specter, even though they both work for a law firm, became the law firm hot topic of the year in a matter of days. The long-awaited, long-feared AI that was supposed to transform the legal industry once and for all, but in reality never delivered on its promises, has finally arrived. Or at least, “seems” to have finally arrived.
But who is Harvey?
In concrete terms, Harvey is a Chatbot developed using generative AI, enabling it to converse in natural language with its user and provide a “spoken” response, drawn from its dataset and formulated using its natural language processing technology (developed by OpenIA). If you’ve already tried your hand at ChatGPT, you’ll instantly understand how Harvey works, as the technologies are very similar in every respect.
On the operational side, Harvey is able to automate numerous tasks, such as contract analysis, due diligence, litigation or regulatory compliance, and offers targeted recommendations and forecasts, thanks to the titanic documentary resource at its disposal (thanks to open data).
The young AI is obviously multilingual (read, spoken, written), a globetrotter across numerous jurisdictions, both national and international (although its real scope still remains a mystery), full-service in multiple fields (ditto) and, above all, constantly up-to-date.
While he doesn’t predict the future, Harvey takes into account current legislative procedures and “guarantees” (with a lot of quotation marks) access to the most up-to-date legal information: a decisive asset for a profession one of whose greatest fears is to lose track of ever-increasing regulatory inflation.
Conquering legal reasoning
While it’s possible to over-multiply Harvey’s possible applications (although none of them have really been verified), the breakthrough he represents lies elsewhere. In the words of Baptiste Aubry, Head of Financial Services Regulation at A&O in Luxembourg, in an interview with Paperjam, Harvey “demonstrates a
true legal logic
“.
This expression may seem insignificant, even meaningless. But in three words, it sums up all the power of generative AI compared with previous technologies. Today, imitation is joined by reflection. In other words, a technology whose creative force would not be limited to “imitating” a type of content, according to a certain formalism, but would actually be capable of conducting legal reflection and formulating a strategy or recommendation that is both contextualized to the initial request and compliant with its applicable framework. More than ready-to-eat, Harvey provides users with grist for their mill.
A revolution already in the making?
Obviously, the answers formulated require (still?) assiduous revision on the part of the lawyer: a safeguard that the British firm has emphasized in its communication. No, Harvey is not intended to replace the lawyer. The image in vogue to define him leans more towards the sparring-partner, the Jiminy Cricket of the lawyer: he challenges his reasoning, optimizes his research time and invalidates or confirms his choices in the light of all the accessible data, which his tentacular intelligence covers.
But if this revolution has indeed begun, where is it now? For the moment, on the computers of 3,500 Allen & Overy lawyers(worldwide all the same), but more than that, on the lips of everyone in the legal industry.
For while the technology used is certainly a source of curiosity, it’s the launch communication that commands respect. Rarely has an announcement taken so much by surprise. And rarely has its content been so compelling. “I’ve been at the forefront of legal technology for 15 years, but I’ve never seen anything like Harvey.“This quote from David Wakeling, Head of the Markets Innovation Group at Allen & Overy, resonated in editorial offices around the world. And whatever reservations there may be (notably on the thorny issues of confidentiality and cybersecurity), all observers agree that, even if they haven’t seen anything yet, they’ve never seen anything like it.
Kevin Hoffschir
