CMS reaches 95% AI adoption across 3,000+ lawyers firmwide

CMS leadership recognized that generative AI would reshape legal work and that clients already had access to these tools, creating competitive pressure to understand and apply them in practice. Simply granting lawyers access to a new platform would not be enough — the firm needed secure, legal-specific capabilities and a deliberate approach to adoption. Client data sensitivity also required a partner that could meet high security and governance standards.

After evaluating several generative AI platforms, CMS selected Harvey for its legal-specific capabilities and support for real workflows. The Legal Tech and Innovation teams ran an initial trial and a twelve-month pilot with 300 lawyers across practice areas, using Harvey on live matters for contract review, document summarization, and knowledge extraction. Practical enablement — onboarding, sharing real use cases, and embedding the tool into active work — drove rapid uptake, after which CMS scaled Harvey firmwide for contract review and issue spotting, knowledge synthesis, and large-scale document analysis.

By summer 2025, more than 3,000 lawyers were using Harvey, with over 95% active adoption during the initial rollout. The firm then scaled to 7,200 lawyers across 50+ countries — described as one of the world’s largest GenAI deployments in legal. Lawyers now review larger document sets faster, take on work that was previously impractical, and treat AI as a daily habit that supports higher-value client work.

• • Treat GenAI rollout as a transformation program with enablement and live-matter pilots, not a simple tool launch.
• • Peer-shared use cases and early wins accelerate firmwide adoption across jurisdictions and practice groups.
• • Legal-specific capabilities plus strong security/governance are decisive for law-firm selection and client trust.