Harvey's CEO says AI agents are picking up more work that human lawyers used to do

In the legal profession, the art of delegation has long been a staple, with partners passing tasks down to associates, junior lawyers, and paralegals. However, Winston Weinberg, CEO of Harvey, envisions a new player entering this chain: artificial intelligence agents. This vision is at the heart of Harvey's latest initiative. The $11 billion legal tech firm first gained recognition with its innovative software that facilitated communication between lawyers and legal documents. Now, Harvey is venturing deeper into the realm of AI agents, which are designed to execute tasks on behalf of users. According to exclusive insights shared with Business Insider, the company has launched 500 AI agents within its software, designed to enhance legal workflows across various practice areas. Harvey has also revamped its Agent Builder tool, enabling lawyers to tailor their own AI agents without the need for coding expertise. Weinberg reports that user engagement with these agents is rapidly increasing, even as the company is still in the early stages of educating law firms on their applications. Users of Harvey's platform are reportedly conducting over 700,000 agent-driven tasks daily, with average monthly usage per user soaring by 75% in the last four months, a trend attributed to the adoption of these agents. The impact of agents is already evident in the coding sphere, where software engineers are now guiding AI agents to write and test code instead of doing it manually. Harvey is among the pioneering startups pushing this transformation into the legal industry. Established in 2022, the company was among the first to demonstrate the capabilities of large language model-powered software for legal research and drafting. Currently, Harvey's tools are utilized by over 100,000 legal professionals across 1,500 law firms and enterprises. The advent of such technology has sparked discussions about the future of hourly billing in the legal field, especially as software increasingly streamlines time-consuming tasks. Concerns are also rising regarding the fate of junior lawyers, whose careers often revolve around the foundational tasks that AI agents are now equipped to handle. Harvey's preconfigured agents are crafted to accomplish specific objectives—such as memo drafting, negotiation preparation, or merger diligence—while lawyers oversee and guide the process. This means that lawyers will need to spend more time initially outlining tasks and providing direction. Weinberg noted, "An agent might take 20 minutes to complete a task that would typically require 10 to 20 hours of work." Harvey operates on a subscription model, which includes access to its software and the agent customization feature. Facing competition from firms like Legora, which is also developing legal agents, Weinberg emphasizes that as agents take on more intricate tasks, human oversight becomes increasingly crucial. For example, if an agent is tasked with reviewing a million documents and generating a comprehensive report, significant verification processes must be integrated within the software. To address performance consistency, Harvey is developing standardized evaluations to assess agent effectiveness on specific tasks, alongside quality-control agents to review the work performed by other agents. The big question remains: what role will corporate lawyers play in this evolving landscape? Weinberg believes that while agents may reduce the number of lawyers needed for each case, they will also lead to an increase in overall workload due to the rise of complex products and contracts linked to AI advancements. "You might need fewer lawyers on each case, but there will be more cases to handle," he concluded, hinting at a potential growth in opportunities for legal professionals. Harvey aims to ensure its agents claim a substantial piece of this burgeoning legal pie.