Latham & Watkins

Latham & Watkins, one of the world's largest law firms with offices spanning 30+ cities across North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, faced the challenge of scaling AI capabilities consistently across a globally distributed workforce. Legal professionals increasingly needed AI support for high-volume tasks — research, document analysis, and drafting — but fragmented or pilot-scale tools could not deliver uniform capability across all practice groups. Without a firmwide platform, the risk was uneven adoption, inconsistent output quality, and falling behind peer firms already embedding generative AI into core legal workflows.

Latham signed an enterprise license for firmwide deployment of Harvey, a generative AI platform built specifically for legal work and powered by large language models. The deployment makes Harvey's full suite of AI solutions available globally to all lawyers and related business professionals — not a limited pilot, but an immediate firm-wide rollout. Lawyers use Harvey for legal research, contract and document analysis, and drafting across practice groups. The initiative was led by CIO Rene Mendoza and COO LeeAnn Black, who framed it as a core element of the firm's comprehensive innovation strategy, accelerating ongoing AI integration across both legal service delivery and internal business operations.

The firmwide Harvey deployment adds a sophisticated AI layer to Latham's already-established suite of legal technology tools, extending generative AI access to every lawyer and business professional in the firm. Key outcomes include:

• Global access: Harvey available across all 30+ offices to lawyers and legal professionals firm-wide
• Scope of use: Covers research, document analysis, drafting, and additional legal workflows
• Strategic positioning: Reinforces Latham's standing as a technology leader among BigLaw peers

Harvey CEO Winston Weinberg confirmed the selection followed an extensive evaluation process, indicating Latham applied rigorous due diligence before committing at scale.

• Enterprise-wide AI licensing — rather than practice-group pilots — is becoming the standard approach for large law firms seeking consistent capability across all lawyers simultaneously.
• Involving both the CIO and COO as named champions signals that successful firmwide AI deployments require alignment between technology leadership and operations leadership.
• Selecting a legal-specific AI platform (rather than a general-purpose LLM) reflects the legal industry's preference for purpose-built tools with appropriate guardrails.
• Framing generative AI as an accelerant to an existing innovation strategy, not a standalone initiative, is key to sustaining executive commitment and firm-wide adoption.