Allen & Overy

A&O Shearman identified legal processes consuming disproportionate attorney time—including drafting, summarization, clause comparisons, and precedent searches—that detracted from high-value client work. The firm needed to modernize routine, manual workflows to free attorneys for strategic advice.

A&O Shearman deployed Harvey starting with a sandbox environment for a limited group of attorneys, establishing use cases, risks, and governance protocols before scaling. In December 2022, they became the first law firm to implement Harvey at enterprise level, rolling it out to 4,000 staff across 43 jurisdictions for summarization, legal analysis, and translation tasks.

Staff save an average of 2–3 hours per week on routine tasks such as summarization, analysis, and translation. Harvey generates initial document drafts within seconds, and processes vast datasets to equip attorneys with quality insights for client advice.

• Starting with a sandboxed pilot and robust governance protocols enabled safe, confident scaling to enterprise-wide deployment.
• Automating routine tasks (summarization, translation, analysis) frees attorneys for higher-value strategic work and accelerates professional development.
• Being an early enterprise adopter positioned A&O Shearman as an industry innovator, winning the FT 'Most Innovative Law Firm in Europe' award.