Harvey has announced a pro bono programme, which will see the company dedicate existing resources and grow its headcount to develop legal AI tools specifically focused on improving pro bono work.
The pilot, which went live on Tuesday (September 22), involves Ashurst Perkins Coie, DLA Piper and Nelson Mullins – firms selected for their existing relationships with the company, their strong pro bono practices and their diverse geographic footprint.
The pilot is running in the UK, the US and Australia.
During this initial phase, which will run for 8-12 weeks, the company will focus its time on building new pro bono products before taking stock of progress and pitfalls, Harvey’s head of responsible business Christopher Hook explained.
‘The most consistent pain point,’ Hook said, ‘is that legal aid that is often focussed on submitted paperwork to authorities is not necessarily complex but is repetitive, and so lends itself well to standardization.’
In the US, 1.4 million civil legal problems brought to legal service providers are not addressed due to lack of resources, Harvey said in a statement. The pilot will help tailor workflows and agents to these specific matters, will help the company learn how to embed these systems in a law firm, and build a repository of knowledge sources for the AI to draw on.
While firms have dedicated pro bono practices, Harvey wants to ensure other lawyers working pro bono hours can ‘make those transitions seamlessly so they can have an impact straight away,’ Hook said, citing formatting housing complaints and organising investigations for veterans’ services as examples of work that lawyers often spend time remembering how to format.
‘Pro bono work has been a thread from the beginning. These tools must provide a better way of accessing justice’
Harvey chose to develop its core products and capabilities for pro bono – rather than donating cash, for example – because it believes this will create an alignment with its commercial incentives.
‘It is in the company’s interest to make the models higher and higher performing tools so there will be strong alignment between the commercial side of the business and what it can support on the pro bono front,’ Hook explained.
As well as utilising existing teams, Harvey will bring in ‘some dedicated new headcount’ in both the US and the UK to focus full-time on pro bono, Hook said, with hiring already in progress.
Hook joined Harvey in April to head up global responsible business, after it became the first legal AI company to establish a responsible business offering.
He moved from Uber, where he worked for over six years, including as global sustainability lead.
‘When I joined Uber, the company hadn’t started work on this topic,’ he said, ‘so there’s overlap building from the ground up. For example, how do you begin to understand the company’s environmental footprint? That’s an exercise I did at Uber, and one we have kicked off here.’
‘As legal technology gets more widely adopted, and it gets more capable of having a meaningful impact on the work that lawyers do across society, we have a chance to engage that ecosystem,’ he continued.
The company intends to roll out its new products to existing clients and ‘frontline organisations’ once the full pilot process is completed.
Harvey was founded by junior lawyers Winston Weinberg and Gabe Pereyra in 2022. Part of their motivation, Hook explained, was Weinberg working on pro bono matters and believing that there was a more efficient way to do this work.
‘The pro bono work has been a thread from the beginning. Ultimately these tools must provide a better way for accessing justice,’ Hook said. ‘But we can’t assume it is the nirvana, but it can be deployed and tailored and brought into relationships with existing programmes in a way that has huge potential.’
Earlier this month, Harvey raised $550m at a $15.5bn valuation – its highest valuation to date.
