Cuatrecasas

Cuatrecasas needed to drive deep, sustainable AI adoption across 26 offices spanning multiple countries and practice areas, without compromising client confidentiality or legal quality. The challenge was not finding a capable AI tool but building structured, grassroots adoption at scale.

The firm launched the CELIA Project (Cuatrecasas Legal Expert in AI), embedding AI champion groups of knowledge lawyers, engineers, and practice leads in each office. Harvey was selected as the core platform, validated through an initial pilot of 150 lawyers before a full firmwide rollout, with custom due diligence workflows built on 3,000+ curated firm templates to auto-extract key contract terms like change of control clauses, assignment provisions, and guarantee structures.

Over 80% of the firm's 1,900+ lawyers now use Harvey daily, generating 3,300+ prompts across the firm. Approximately 25% of users create more than 30 prompts per week, and partners report that prompt engineering itself sharpens legal thinking by forcing more precise problem articulation.

• Embedding AI champions (knowledge lawyers, engineers, practice leads) in each office drives sustainable grassroots adoption better than a top-down mandate.
• Piloting with a smaller group (150 lawyers) before firmwide rollout helped validate the approach at scale.
• Building custom workflows on curated firm templates lets AI handle rote extraction (contract terms) while freeing lawyers for risk analysis and strategic judgment.