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After months of company courtship and NDA-flavored flirtation, LexisNexis and authorized startup Harvey are lastly placing a label on it: they’ve launched a “strategic alliance.”
The partnership lets Harvey customers who additionally subscribe to LexisNexis entry its deep trove of authorized content material and citations straight inside Harvey’s app — a hookup that strengthens Harvey’s declare because the go-to supplier of authorized software program. The combination launches later this yr.
Harvey’s software program assists legal professionals with authorized drafting and evaluation. Nonetheless, its product had a gaping gap. It offered customers with entry to public case regulation databases however not LexisNexis or Westlaw, which management a majority share of the marketplace for authorized data companies.
With LexisNexis information baked into its interface, Harvey has a stronger case to make to regulation corporations and a greater shot at defending its early lead within the authorized tech arms race.
Based in 2022, Harvey shot to stardom within the authorized tech house with backing from OpenAI and Sequoia. As we speak, over 1 / 4 of the nation’s 100 largest regulation corporations depend themselves as customers.
Ropes & Grey — the seventh highest-grossing agency — rolled out Harvey firmwide in June after a yr of use with a smaller take a look at group, in line with Ed Black, the agency’s know-how technique chief. This got here on the heels of Paul Weiss saying it co-developed a customized workflow builder with Harvey.
These strikes replicate a broader development in Large Legislation as extra corporations shift from cautious pilot packages to full-scale deployments. The change may ratchet up strain on startups like Harvey, Legora, Hebbia, and Eudia, all vying for a similar budgets and a spotlight from prime corporations and authorized departments.
Sean Fitzpatrick, CEO of LexisNexis North America, UK, and Eire, stated the thought for the partnership got here from prospects, lots of whom had been toggling between the 2 platforms as a part of their common workflow. He famous that almost all of Harvey’s massive regulation agency shoppers are additionally LexisNexis prospects.
Whereas LexisNexis affords its personal instruments for drafting and authorized analysis, Fitzpatrick stated prospects nonetheless noticed worth in getting access to each platforms.
Harvey is “compensating” LexisNexis for the information, however declined to share any additional particulars
In a transfer that hinted at deeper ties, Relx, the mum or dad firm of LexisNexis, invested in Harvey in February by means of its company enterprise arm, Rev Ventures, which invests in early information and analytics firms throughout industries. The $300 million spherical was one of many largest in authorized tech historical past, catapulting Harvey’s valuation to $3 billion.
However LexisNexis’ intentions weren’t at all times so clear. Only a month later, on the Legalweek convention in New York Metropolis, Fitzpatrick supplied little love for authorized tech startups. Throughout a panel, he appeared to downplay the specter of firms like Harvey and Legora whereas touting his personal firm’s items.
He stated that whereas he could not converse for the competitors, LexisNexis had one key benefit: information. The corporate was centered on ensuring its chatbot solutions had been grounded in “authoritative content material” — the sort that, in his phrases, gave the system credibility in a subject the place “veracity issues … lots.”
Harvey CEO Winston Weinberg, in a press release, described the partnership as a step towards extra environment friendly authorized workflows. Legal professionals will have the ability to ask Harvey questions in plain English, observe up with clarifying prompts, and get responses linked to main sources — assuming they’re additionally Lexis subscribers.
How seamlessly this works in observe stays to be seen.
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