Ashurst

Global law firms face mounting pressure to improve lawyer productivity, accelerate deal and matter delivery, and retain talent who expect modern tooling. Ashurst, operating across 33 offices in 21 countries, needed to address two converging demands: equipping a multilingual, geographically dispersed workforce with AI capabilities while maintaining the security and quality standards that legal work requires. A particular friction point was 'blank page syndrome' — the time lost by lawyers and business services staff before producing even a first draft. Selecting and scaling a GenAI tool across a firm of this complexity, without a proven playbook, posed significant adoption and governance risk.

After publishing a structured five-month pilot in June 2024 — evaluating multiple platforms across Value, Accuracy, Quality, Scope, and Adoption — Ashurst selected Harvey, one of the few large language model platforms purpose-built for legal and professional services. Unlike general-purpose LLMs, Harvey was trained by and for lawyers, making it suited to complex legal drafting and research tasks. Ashurst extended access beyond fee earners to Business Services teams, broadening the impact surface. Rollout was supported by rigorous security guardrails, extensive virtual and in-person training covering GenAI fundamentals and prompt engineering, and a structured network of early adopters who guided peer adoption. Harvey's multilingual capabilities were specifically prioritised given the firm's non-English-speaking offices.

Ashurst became the first global law firm to deploy a GenAI platform firm-wide across all offices and staff from day one — a scale and speed of adoption described internally as unprecedented. The rollout covered lawyers, consultants, and business professionals simultaneously across 33 offices in 21 countries. Key outcomes included:

• Reduction in time spent on initial drafting through GenAI-assisted first-draft generation
• Translation capabilities enabling high-quality cross-language output across the firm's non-English markets
• Efficiency gains that freed teams to focus on high-value, strategic work
• Broad adoption across both legal and business services functions, not just fee earners

• A structured pilot phase — five months, multiple platforms, documented findings — is essential for building leadership confidence before committing to firm-wide investment.
• Extending GenAI access to Business Services as well as lawyers materially broadens adoption and return on investment.
• Security guardrails and training are prerequisites, not afterthoughts — confident, safe adoption at scale requires both.
• A network of experienced early adopters is one of the most effective levers for driving sustained peer adoption in a professional services environment.
• For global firms, multilingual capability should be a primary evaluation criterion, not a secondary feature.