Hey there, I’m Zach Abramowitz and I am Legally Disrupted. On episode 55 of 🎙️Zach Abramowitz is Legally Disrupted, I wasn’t interested in interviewing another founder of an AI first firm. Instead, I wanted to put on the goggles of a lawyer who actually made the leap.

Luckily for me, I knew someone on the inside.

Batya Nadler and I started our legal careers around the same at Schulte Roth & Zabel almost twenty years ago. She spent eighteen years in Biglaw and, by her own admission, fully expected to finish her career there. Batya wasn’t sitting around unhappy, waiting for a startup to rescue her. She liked her firm. She wasn’t looking for another trad firm. In fact, she told me there was basically no chance she would’ve left for another legacy law firm. She’d already started experimenting with AI because, like a lot of lawyers, she could see that parts of her practice (especially funds work) were incredibly repetitive. She wasn’t looking to stop practicing law, but she saw the opportunity to use AI to make practicing law a better user experience.

Then Norm slid into her DMs.

A recruiter convinced her to take the meeting and she was fascinated by the concept, enough that she set a Google Alert for Norm. At this point, there was no Norm Law, just a tech company selling software to legal departments. Norm came back on her radar six months later when Mike Schmidtberger, the former global chairman of Sidely, joined Norm Law. Norm recently made headlines again when they raised $120M at a $1.2B valuation.

My take: if AI-first firms really are going to become a meaningful part of the legal industry, they’re going to have to convince a more lawyers like Batya to leave firms they genuinely like. One of the things that makes that pitch credible are Biglaw legends like Mike (and more recently David Fox, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, who was the managing partner at Kirkland) getting behind these neo-firms. I expect we’ll see more big names joining these ranks.

So what does that pitch actually sound like? What is it like working at Norm? What does she recommend to attorneys about improving AI fluency? And what has convinced her that firms like Norm entering the AmLaw 100 is inevitable? Check out the full conversation with Batya and please like, subscribe share and all that good stuff.

If you’re into the audio version only, you can check out the conversation on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Zach Abramowitz is Legally Disrupted will continue to feature top founders, but as AI in legal becomes more real expect to hear from more lawyers as well.

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As in 50%.

Some distant time in the future? Nope.

End of 2027. Boom.

Hey there, I’m Zach Abramowitz and I’m Legally Disrupted, and I too got caught off guard by this prediction. You can see that shock on my face very clearly in this 30-second clip from Episode 54 of 🎙️Zach Abramowitz is Legally Disrupted with Wordsmith.ai CEO Ross McNairn.

Ross said two very important things.

1. The prediction itself: by end of 2027, a majority of departments will reduce outside spend budgets by 50%

2. His observation that some of his customers have already cut their spend by 40%

My reflex was to disagree with his conclusion. And, sure enough, when I put this out to the audience on X, many of them disagreed sharply.

Here is what is driving my thinking. Generally speaking, I think AI tends to create more, not less. My experience with AI is that it is simply a better way to work and was, frankly, long overdue. Because of AI, I get more done, I create better work product and I enjoy the process more. When people have better ways to work, it leads to greater economic output.

Furthermore, industry surveys like the 2026 ACC CLO Survey do not indicate that most departments are cutting outside spend to law firms (ALSPs like Axiom are another question).

But here’s the thing: Ross isn’t reading this off a McKinsey slide or a vibes-based LinkedIn post. He’s just talking to his customer base which includes more than 500 corporate legal departments. Perhaps, Ross and the Wordsmith team are simply living in the future. Meaning this isn’t a prediction so much as an observation.

There’s already some evidence that Ross is living in the future. Along with the team at Sandstone (I’m an investor) and Chamelio (just friends), Wordsmith.ai has pioneered an entire new category of software, which has been a huge hit with legal departments. I didn’t hear that from Ross or team Wordsmith. I heard it through the grapevine from multiple trusted contacts, especially in the UK and the EU, the place where the company first went to market. They kept telling me that GCs (not head of legal ops, innovation lawyers or something like that) were raving about Wordsmith. Those kinds of reviews were part of what got me so excited about Sandstone.

In his 2007 essay “The Only Thing That Matters, Marc Andreessen writes the following:

"In a great market—a market with lots of real potential customers—the market pulls product out of the startup."

Chamelio, Sandstone and Wordsmith all came to the market — which I would argue has now become a “great market” — around the same time. They arrived at the same product design because they were all listening to the market. This is what it looks like when the market pulled the product out of them. What’s new about this product category?

1. Designed specifically for legal departments

2. Covers all review and requests from the business, not just contract review

3. Intelligent routing of requests to the right in-house attorney along with all the context they will need to give an answer

4. Connective tissue: it’s connected with and embedded in all your current tech stack

It’s like a sidekick or a show producer for the entire department.

So why is anyone still buying clunky legacy technology like CLM? Well according to Ross, more legal departments are graveyarding decommissioning their CLM.

But CLM has one advantage: a recognizable name and an established product category. Gartner and Forrester (not to mention the decades old consultants and implementation partners) will continue to promote CLM because their job is to make things plain-ass dumb and simple for buyers. They’re not incentivized to tell you about new categories, especially when the legacy tech companies are willing to pay to play.

What this category lacks right now is the catchy name that catches on. If you’ve got any ideas for what this product category should be called or have experience using one of these solutions, please share in the comments.

You can watch the full conversation here right inside this newsletter.

Oh, and one more thing: make sure to stay disrupted, legally disrupted.

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Hey there, I’m Zach Abramowitz and I am Legally Disrupted!

And I’m not quite outraged by AI-first firms, but I’m starting to sense that others have had enough. But, if you’d like to learn about the aforementioned AI first firm that just got valued at $750M, allow me to present to you Episode 53 of Zach Abramowitz is Legally Disrupted with Manifest OS founder Dan Mishin.

I learned about Manifest about six weeks ago when they announced their first round of financing ($60M) from Kleiner Perkins, Menlo Ventures, Quiet Capital and First Round Capital that valued the AI first corporate immigration firm at $750M. As Dan tells me on the podcast, that round came together in 48 hours and there was no pitch deck. There are a lot of takeaways in this conversation for people who are thinking about building or investing in AI first firms. The blueprint seems to be:

1. Find a niche where there is high volume process driven work

2. Automate as much of the admin and legal workflow as possible

3. Empower attorneys to give greater attention to clients and the work that relies more on human judgement

Now, while there are a lot of very savvy investors, attorneys and clients who are very enthusiastic about AI infused service businesses, not everyone is as jazzed about this model.

I think there are good answers to Mitch’s question. For one, there are many examples of highly successful companies that simply took two things that were now economically feasible and combined them to make a new even better thing.

But, the reaction itself is a data point: the market may be growing a bit tired of the AI first firm marketing talk. About a month ago, Crosby founder Ryan Daniels (who I like btw) was appropriately roasted on X for positioning the AI first firm as some lofty, socially conscious, mission-driven company.

Matt wasn’t the only one.

Oh, and if AI firsters claiming to be “mission driven” bothers you, prepare yourself to be triggered because Dan talks a lot about mission. Check out the following clip from our interview.

And more recently, I’m noticing more backlash to the term “AI first.” ChatGPT even mentioned to me recently that it’s lost all meaning because everyone is using it.

My take: I would argue the term “AI-first” (or its cousin native) was quite useful for introducing a new category of firms built from the ground up with the understanding that (1) AI exists and (2) because AI exists you wouldn’t build the same kind of firm today that you might have built five years ago. And I, myself, remain bullish on the opportunity to build a new kind of firm, but I get the cynicism. I also don’t quite understand why everyone of these firms needs to raise capital. If the AI is here, why not just start?

If you prefer audio format, you can listen to Zach Abramowitz is Legally Disrupted on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. Another way to never miss an episode is to subscribe to this newsletter.

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Hey there, I’m Zach Abramowitz and I am Legally Disrupted!

After my recent interview in episode 50 with Harvey founder Winston Weinberg, I had an epiphany: while many people following the legal AI space are aghast at the valuations of Harvey ($11B) and Legora ($5.5B), my impression is that their teams and investors believe that Harvey and Legora are seriously undervalued. Like, by a lot.

So, during 🎙️Episode 52 of Zach Abramowitz is Legally Disrupted, I asked Legora founder Max Junestrand point blank whether he thinks Legora could be worth a trillion dollars. You’ll have to watch the episode to get the answer. Or, I suppose you could cheat and use NotebookLM to just upload the link and ask. But, hopefully, the podcast has become entertaining enough that you’d experience all kinds of FOMO and ultimately feel compelled to listen to the full conversation anyway. Either way, if you think Harvey and Legora are overvalued and will have to pivot into an AI-first firm that competes with their current customers, Max’s answer could be quite triggering.

We covered a lot of ground in this episode, including Kirkland & Ellis's $100 million AI flex, Legora's "professional swimmer" strategy for ignoring the Harvey rivalry, how Legora used its own AI agents to close an M&A acquisition in just 11 days and Max's brutal admission that 90% of their current product will be obsolete in two years.

Episode 53 with Dan Mishin drops this week. Dan is the founder of AI first immigration law firm Manifest OS, which was valued at $750M in its first round of financing, so make sure you’re subscribed to the podcast on YouTube or Apple/Spotify. Another good way to stay up to date with the fast moving legal AI market is to subscribe to this newsletter, which I highly recommend.

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Please connect with me on some other platforms as well:

X https://x.com/ZachAbramowitz
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachabramowitz/

Want to meet me in person? I’ll be keynoting the annual meeting of the North Carolina Bar Association this coming Friday. Make sure to come say hi if you’re in Charlotte.

Hey there, I’m Zach Abramowitz and I am Legally Disrupted, and I’m back on the road.

Before I left my studio, I recorded several podcasts, the first of which was with Will Chen. Attention is All You Need is the foundational paper about LLM architecture. But, it has also been descriptive of a major challenge in a noisy space that’s moving fast: there’s a premium put on standing out and the ability to capture attention. Will has done exactly that.

There are two things about Will’s recent notoriety that are deeply interesting to me:

1. Building and releasing a product is a new way to gain attention in legal. That’s super new. While most critics stop at tweeting or posting cringy safeposts on LinkedIn, Will actually used “vibe coding” tools to build a functioning application layer in just two weeks.

2. Taking aim at Harvey and Legora specifically. Right now, lawyer attention has been on Harvey vs. Legora with lawyers questioning both “which tool should we buy” as well as “should we build our own.” By building an open source version, Will was able to tap into the two questions lawyers are paying attention to the most and demystify both by showing, not telling.

In this episode, we talk about his goal in building the product, the news that Kirkland & Ellis is setting aside $500 million to invest in their own AI as well as Will’s advice for lawyers and law firms who want to start building AI.

My take: I don’t find myself agreeing with Will’s level of critique for Harvey and Legora. I have much more conviction that these two businesses have massive upside beyond their current valuations and have been executing at very high levels. I also reject the idea that Harvey and Legora have plans to pull the rug out from under their customers and turn into an AI first law firm.

But, I’m still impressed and intrigued by folks like Will or Jamie Tso and Raymond Sun from Legal Quants as well as the wave of other lawyer builders that aren’t content to buy off the shelf products.

Whether you’re building or buying or just trying to keep up, the podcast with Will is a great way to get further AI-pilled. If you’re into the audio only experience, you can get listen to our conversation on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify. Another way to stay ahead would be subscribing to this newsletter. Episode 52 should be out in the next day or so.

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X is an amazing place to stay ahead on AI, so consider following me there.

If you’re more of a LinkedIn type, follow Killer Whale Strategies on LinkedIn.

“Thanks,” I said, “here’s the thing though — and I don’t mean to sound like an arrogant prick — but sales are not really my challenge.”

My inviter was taken aback. “So then, what is your biggest challenge?” they asked.

I replied, “Staying 6 months ahead of everyone else.”

Hey there, I’m Zach Abramowitz and I am Legally Disrupted! If you want to know what that little tête-à-tête has to do with Winston Weinberg and Harvey, keep scrolling. If you just want 🎙️Episode 50 of Zach Abramowitz is Legally Disrupted injected straight into your veins, I feel you, so go ahead and click play.

One of the things that we talked about in this wide ranging conversation was the importance as well the challenge of looking six months ahead. No one understands that better than the team at Harvey. Gabe’s proximity to transformer models from his time at Google, Winston’s proximity to the law from his stint at O’Melveny and their proximity to each other gave Harvey a six month head start. So when I was playing around with ChatGPT in December of 2022 and having my mind blown, the guys at Harvey had already seen GPT 4.0. And it’s not just about what tools they had. It’s that access to the models allowed them to start wrapping their heads around AI and all of its implications. Early adoption compounds, so does being first. As Winston said in the podcast, they have had plenty of time to make mistakes and learn from failure.

And, as a result, sales at Harvey are not their biggest challenge at the moment.

The biggest challenge at Harvey is planning for what’s coming six months down the line: model breakthroughs, changing user behavior (e.g. can’t we just build this in Claude?), new market entrants, token pricing and scaling compute, just to name a few.

Staying ahead is the challenge for anyone in this market, whether you’re an $11B company like Harvey or whether you’re someone like me who is advising companies on AI strategy. No one is going to pay the Killer Whale Strategies team for strategic advice if we don’t stay at least six months ahead.

If you are interested in staying ahead, the podcast with Winston is a great place to start. If you’re into the audio only experience, you can get listen to our conversation on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify. Another way to stay ahead would be subscribing to this newsletter.

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Why should you be only the one to stay ahead? Do the right thing and share this post with someone who is in deep need of some good old fashioned legal disruption.

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This wasn’t my most viewed tweet of the week, but it was certainly my favorite.

You can also stay in touch by connecting with me or following Killer Whale Strategies on LinkedIn.

Hey there, I’m Zach Abramowitz and I’m Legally Disrupted, and the podcasts are coming in hot just in time for summer.

Frequent readers of this newsletter know that, in addition to Zach Abramowitz is Legally Disrupted, I also co-host the AAAi Podcast with Bridget McCormack, President and CEO of the American Arbitration Association and former Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court. The goal of the podcast is to introduce the AAA’s audience to some of the most interesting builders, thinkers, and operators shaping the future of legal AI.

Over the last two and a half years, we’ve hosted guests including Richard Susskind, David Lat, Darth Vaughn, Whitney Stefko Dover, and many others. Just as importantly, the podcast also gives listeners a window into the AAA’s own transformation as it positions itself at the center of the future of dispute resolution.

Our conversation with Ariel Deshe from TrialKit.ai stood out because it highlighted something that still isn’t discussed enough in legal AI: there’s a big difference between building AI for a lawyer and building AI for a law firm.

Ariel explains in the podcast how a particular criminal case exposed a core problem in modern litigation: the sheer volume of digital evidence had become impossible for small defense teams to process effectively. Months later, he left public defense and started TrialKit to solve that problem.

That’s what makes the company interesting.

For years, prosecutors had access to increasingly sophisticated investigative and forensic technology while many defense attorneys lacked the resources to keep up. Since the rise of tools like Cellebrite, the imbalance has only grown more pronounced. TrialKit represents something different: for the first time in years, many criminal defense lawyers are finally gaining access to tools powerful enough to help level the playing field at a price point they can actually afford.

The broader point here matters.

One of the persistent myths about AI is that it only works for large enterprises with giant budgets. TrialKit is evidence that AI can also expand access to high-quality legal work for smaller firms and solo practitioners. In that sense, access to justice no longer has to mean “doing more with less.” It can mean giving lawyers better tools in the first place.

AI will not reshape the legal system all at once. It will happen lawyer by lawyer, workflow by workflow, and case by case — especially among practitioners who historically had the fewest resources. That’s part of what makes this moment in legal tech so fascinating. Subscribe to the AAAi podcast if you haven’t already — you can also subscribe on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Another very good idea (if I may say so myself) is to subscribe to this newsletter. I’ll be writing about Episode 50 of Zach Abramowitz is Legally Disrupted later this week plus there is more legally disruptive content is on the way.

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You can also connect with me on LinkedIn if that’s your thing.

Hey there, I’m Zach Abramowitz and I am Legally Disrupted. And, I am still dragging a bit from a long road trip and, like Willie Nelson, I’m about to be on the road again.

Lately, I’ve noticed a pattern. Law firms are incredibly obsessed with how they should be using AI. They are focused on buying the right tools, tracking adoption rates, and training associates on platforms like Harvey or Legora. But they aren’t spending nearly enough time asking what their business needs to actually become now that AI exists.

For example, what happens when your top-tier lawyers master these AI tools, connect the dots, and realize they don’t actually need the massive Big Law infrastructure to build a highly lucrative practice?

Well, we don’t have to guess. On episode 49 of the podcast, I sat down with Logan Brown, who followed that exact journey.

Logan was an associate at Cooley using Harvey when she realized there was an entirely new business model waiting to be built to service an untapped market of early-stage startups. She left to found Soxton.ai, an AI-first law firm that acts as an outside, AI-powered GC.

Instead of the traditional billable hour, they charge flat fees like $100 for a contract review or $50 to ask a lawyer a quick question via chat. She’s already got over 40 attorneys on the platform. And in a departure from the traditional partnership track, she actually chose to raise venture capital so she could scale the firm like a tech company and tackle the access-to-justice gap.

Naturally, not everyone is thrilled about this disruption. Since coming out of stealth, Logan has been receiving a surge of hate mail from existing lawyers, including a Biglaw partner who emails her once a month just to tell her how horrible she is. Despite the blowback, Logan is making a massive bet on the AI-first model, predicting that in five years, traditional Big Law firms will be looked at like the Yellow Pages.

I’m not sure I agree. And I think you’re more likely to come to that conclusion if you’ve been an associate but not a partner — especially a rainmaker. But I do think the AI first firms have a compelling proposition. I’m also biased. Many of the AmLaw 200 firms are clients of mine, and I specifically am working with them on staying current and not turning into the Yellow Pages. But, Logan was a great guest and a lot of lawyers who are thinking about stating or converting a practice into “AI first” will find this conversation really useful.

Make sure you subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribing to this newsletter is also a really good idea.

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This wasn’t my most popular post on X this week, but it was my personal favorite. I’m still giggling over it. And yes, I frequently laugh at my own jokes.

Hey there, I’m Zach Abramowitz and I am Legally Disrupted. I’m finally back home from an 11-day road trip with stops in Colorado for ILTA EVOLVE, followed by Arizona, Napa, Reno, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and everywhere in between. It was great to be on the road and get the opportunity to meet so many of you, and I should have an update soon on my next “in-personing.”

Now, back to investing in Legal AI startups.

After hitting pause on legal AI investments right after ChatGPT launched, I’ve been jumping back in. Earlier this year, I invested in Sandstone (which is already showing hockey stick growth), I’m actively evaluating several other deals, and frankly, I have some serious FOMO. When I spoke to Jonathan Levy from Y Combinator last year, he told me YC doesn’t invest in verticals, they invest in the best talent. And right now, the absolute top startup talent is flocking to legal.

But it is a dangerous game out there. Yes, the products are incredible, but they’ve also never been easier to replicate, as I showed on stage at ILTA EVOLVE this week:

Just look at Cursor. Even before its acquisition by SpaceX, people were already declaring it dead despite billions in revenue because of the rapid improvement of base models like Claude Code. So what does that mean for application-layer legal companies like Harvey and Legora, especially when we’re seeing litigators at firms like Quinn Emanuel bypassing them entirely to build proprietary tools directly on top of Claude?

To figure out where the smart money is actually going, I sat down with Keith Rabois on 🎙️ episode 48 of Zach Abramowitz is Legally Disrupted. Keith who is a Managing Director at Khosla Ventures, is one of the most successful investors of the last 25 years, and, fun fact, a former litigator at Sullivan & Cromwell who clerked on the Fifth Circuit.

Keith does not pull his punches. We dug into why he is emphatically not an investor in Harvey or Legora. His contrarian take? Trying to improve the productivity of the AmLaw 100 runs completely counter to their bill-by-the-hour business model, which will just lead to fee compression rather than a massive new market. You’ll have to listen to the podcast to see which previously hot startup reminds him of Harvey.

To be fair, Keith does have a horse in this race as an investor in Spellbook. But he distinguishes Spellbook from Harvey because he doesn’t see Spellbook as #legaltech; he sees Spellbook as contract tech.

And because it’s Keith, we didn’t just stick to legal tech. We got into his prediction that the Iran conflict would be over in just three days, the massive economic boom happening in Latin America, and why he strongly disagrees with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang about chip export controls. In fact, Keith points to the recent crash of DeepSeek as a prime example that American export controls are working exactly as intended.

It’s a fascinating, unfiltered conversation that you do not want to miss. Podcast 49 with Soxton founder and CEO Logan Brown drops this week as will podcast #50 with a very special mystery guest. So make sure to subscribe on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Another very good option is subscribing to this newsletter.

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Tweet of the week:

Hey there, I’m Zach Abramowitz and I am Legally Disrupted. It was lovely getting to meet so many folks in person at ILTA EVOLVE and elsewhere who subscribe (or now subscribe) to the newsletter.

Speaking of lovely, right before I hit the road this week, I sat down with my pal Richard Tromans from Artificial Lawyer for another Excellent Legal AI adventure. And right now, lawyers want to know about Claude for legal.

We went deep on whether Claude is going to steal Harvey and Legora’s lunch. We are already seeing top-tier litigators bypass off-the-shelf products to build directly on base models. For example, Quinn Emanuel built their own proprietary system (the “Kerch Bench”) entirely on top of Claude. Instead of relying on an application-layer company, they are structuring their own case data, distilling depositions, and building custom Claude “skills” to draft briefs and conduct early case assessments. If litigators can achieve an order-of-magnitude productivity gain just by directly prompting Claude as a thought partner, what does that mean for companies like Harvey and Legora?

We also unpacked Freshfields’ announcement that they’re partnering with Google, followed by their announcement that they’re partnering with Anthropic. We talked about why someone would use Claude for legal workflows, both if they’re in a law firm or an in-house legal department.

We also got into the recent buzz about suspicious ARR numbers and bookkeeping by some startups. And finally, we discussed why lawyers are blowing AI hallucinations out of proportion. As we’ve discussed before on this show, human lawyers and judges hallucinate all the time. In fact, the entire appellate court system is predicated on the fact that humans make errors and hallucinate facts or law, which is exactly why we need a system to correct them.

Since I’m on the road, I’m a bit behind with updates on the podcast, but if you can keep a secret, episode 48 with legendary startup investor, founder, operator and currently Khosla Ventures MD Keith Rabois is out as well. Episode 49 with AI First firm Soxton.ai founder Logan Brown will be out this week as well (and that one was super fun). So make sure you subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribing to this newsletter is also a really good idea.

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Hey there, I’m Zach Abramowitz and I am Legally Disrupted.

In 2025, one of the biggest trends we tracked was the widespread adoption of AI by lawyers. According to a spat of surveys from Wharton, Law360, Thomson Reuters, and the ACC, AI usage in the legal profession officially flipped from a minority to a clear majority.

But in the courts, AI has been something of a blooper reel. Just this week, a prestigious litigation partner at Sullivan & Cromwell had to grovel before the court about an emergency motion the firm submitted that was filled, nay riddled, with AI hallucinations.

This brings us to an admitted, glaring double standard between lawyers and judges. Lawyers are totally fine with lawyers using AI, but those same lawyers become apoplectic at the thought of judges or arbitrators using AI. It is very much “AI for me, but not for thee.” A survey last year from White & Case and Queen Mary University of London School of Law showed that nearly 90% of lawyers were deeply supportive of AI for their own research and analytics, but that support drops to just 23% when it comes to a judge or arbitrator using it to make a decision.

It’s not just vibes, there is also a regulatory double standard. Under Annex 3 of the EU AI Act, AI used in the administration of justice or alternative dispute resolution is explicitly classified as “high-risk,” and requires different disclosures than ordinary AI use cases.

So, what is really going on here? This isn’t just about the law; it is about public sentiment towards AI. For the last few years, we’ve been taught that AI is just a “copilot” or a helper. But now, in 2026, we’re talking about AI acting as an agent that takes actions and makes decisions. Giving a machine that kind of power is anxiety producing, and most people want products that are anxiety reducing.

Yet, despite that hullabaloo, there is a massive need for alternative forms of intelligence in our courts. Right now, the system is drowning. We have state court trial judges disposing of 2,500 cases a year, meaning they have barely half an hour to spend on a single case. We are simply not going to lawyer our way out of this 50-year backlog. If we just use humans, we have a massive demand for intelligence but a severely limited supply. AI could step in to give these judges the capacity they desperately need for the courts to actually function.

Now, skeptics will say, “But what we must preserve the human element.” Do we, though? I thought Lady Justice is blind. Think about that. We explicitly acknowledge that judges can’t be too human because the “too human” part gets in the way of making a fair, unbiased decision. Plus, human judges make plenty of mistakes, which is exactly why our entire system requires appellate courts to correct them.

The two people who understand this better than anyone else are my guests on Episode 🎙️ 46 of Legally Disrupted: Shlomo Klapper and Bridget McCormack. Shlomo is the founder of Learned Hand, which is building an AI decision-support tool specifically designed to give judges that desperately needed capacity. Bridget is the former Chief Justice of the Michigan State Supreme Court, who is now the CEO and President of the American Arbitration Association. (And by the way, Bridget and I cohost the AAAi Podcast, so make sure to check that out!). You can watch the full episode right here in the embedded link.

If you prefer your podcasts in audio find Zach Abramowitz is Legally Disrupted on Apple and Spotify. Subscribe to this newsletter is also highly recommended, especially by me!

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Want to be disrupted in person? Come see me in Colorado next week, I’ll be the opening keynote at ILTA EVOLVE. A number of readers have already reached out to let me know they will be there. If you have plans to attend, please make sure to find me.

PS AI for legal talk on X has new life. You may be missing out. Here’s the X post of the week to entice you. Click it and come join the conversation.

Hey there I’m Zach Abramowitz and I’m Legally Disrupted! Happy Easter 🐇 for those celebrating.

Today I want AI to give you a better job. That’s why I invited Kyle Poe, the VP of Legal Innovation and Strategy at Legora, to be a guest on the podcast last week. He is uniquely credible on this topic.

Kyle is a Harvard Law grad who spent over a decade at Morgan Lewis, where he eventually made partner. But that’s not why Legora hired him. Early in his career (and long before it was a popular career track) he was partnering with his firm’s IT department to build a custom matter management platform.

When ChatGPT launched, Kyle realized the ultimate paradigm shift had arrived: computers had finally learned to speak language. He knew he had to go all-in on AI, which eventually led him to Legora.

In 🎙️Episode 45 of Zach Abramowitz is Legally Disrupted, Kyle and dive into why building tech workflows and writing AI prompts should absolutely be considered billable work. We also explore why AI commoditizing the legal “grinders” and “minders” means old-school social skills are about to become your single biggest competitive advantage. Finally, Kyle goes into great detail about how exactly how he landed a top role at Legora and how others can do the same (hint: merely dropping your resume into a web portal is not enough).

If you prefer your podcasts in audio find Zach Abramowitz is Legally Disrupted on Apple and Spotify. I also approve of those who choose to subscribe to this newsletter.

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If you’ve been pod-binging Legally Disrupted to help you get a job in legal AI or for any other reason then I’d like to hear from you. Get in touch by replying to this email. And, finally, please enjoy the tweet of the week:

Hey there, I’m Zach Abramowitz and I am Legally Disrupted here with your boiling hot cup of Sunday disruption.

Josh is a personal injury attorney who started his own firm with a partner right out of law school. Over the years, his firm became massively successful, even cementing a unique niche as the go-to dog bite lawyers in the state of Maryland. But as the firm grew, they hit a major bottleneck: reading and analyzing unstructured medical records was slowing down their ability to take on more cases.

When ChatGPT launched, Josh and his brother Jeremy realized large language models could completely change the game. They built LawPro.ai, which has now been serving personal injury firms for about two and a half years. It’s also had a profound impact on his firm Zirkin & Schmerling Naturally, I had to bring him on for 🎙️Episode 44 of Zach Abramowitz is Legally Disrupted.

The results speak for themselves: prepping for an expert deposition used to take Josh hours, but with his own product, it now takes him just 15 to 20 minutes. Because AI handles the drudgery of document review, paralegals and case managers have more time to actually speak with clients, resulting in happier clients, more repeat business, and increased referrals. We also discussed the results of a massive new study LawPro.ai conducted with Morgan & Morgan, which found that 92% of personal injury law firms are now using some form of AI.

Finally, we got into a major trend that many law firm owners are trying to ignore: Private Equity is coming to the legal space. Josh shares his mental model for why firms need to implement AI now to improve their EBITDA, making them capable of either competing against PE-backed behemoths or becoming highly attractive buyout targets themselves.

So grab a hot beverage, and treat yourself to a dose of Sunday disruption by watching the embedded YouTube link or find Zach Abramowitz is Legally Disrupted on Apple and Spotify.

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Would you like to be legally disrupted in person? I will be keynoting the upcoming ILTA EVOLVE conference in Colorado April 30-May 2, and you can learn about the agenda and register here. I always try to prioritize newsletter subscribers, so let me know if you’re planning to attend and we can meet up.

Also, make sure to follow me on X for zingers like this one

Hey there, I’m Zach Abramowitz and I am Legally Disrupted!

If you remember back to Episode 37, I talked about how I had invested in Sandstone. Investing in AI startups now is risky as hell, but if there’s a team that’s going to figure it out, it’s the Sandstone crew. They recently picked up a big check from Sequoia Capital and SV Angel and have been adding top talent to their team. Right before I recorded this conversation, Sandstone co-founder Jarryd Strydom had just gotten back from a cross-country road trip hitting up California, Seattle, and Texas just to sit down with in-house counsels and get a real pulse on the market.

Naturally, I had to bring him on to debrief for 🎙️Episode 43 of Zach Abramowitz is Legally Disrupted. We covered a lot of ground in this episode, diving into why legacy CLMs are drifting away because they require lawyers to work for the tool, rather than the tool working for them. We also talked about how AI is finally giving in-house teams the infrastructure they need to shift from reactive risk mitigation to proactive commercial strategists.

We also got into a massive vibe shift: Jarryd’s impression is that over 50% of the in-house market is now actively paying attention to AI and many are even “vibe coding.” Jarryd and I discussed the C-suite mandates pushing legal to keep up with the speed of sales and engineering, and how AI might actually revive the “Renaissance man” model for junior lawyers by allowing them to act as true legal generalists.

So, grab a hot beverage, curl up on the furniture piece of your liking and treat yourself to a dose of Sunday disruption by watching the embedded YouTube link or find Zach Abramowitz is Legally Disrupted on Apple and Spotify.

Episode 44 with Josh Schmerling from LawPro.ai has already been recorded and will drop soon as has Episode 45 with Learned Hand founder Shlomo Klapper and AAA President and CEO Bridget McCormack on AI as a judicial decision maker. So, make sure to subscribe to the podcast or follow the Legally Disrupted YouTube channel. Subscribing to this newsletter is also a good idea.

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Would you like to be legally disrupted in person? I will be keynoting the upcoming ILTA EVOLVE conference in Colorado April 30-May 2, and you can learn about the agenda and register here. I always try to prioritize newsletter subscribers, so let me know if you’re planning to attend and we can meet up.

Hey there, I’m Zach Abramowitz and I am Legally Disrupted! And my head is still spinning from an action-packed Legalweek. Before Legalweek, I recorded a conversation with one of my absolute favorite people in the industry.

In addition to this newsletter, our team regularly briefs clients about AI and the state of the market. But, ultimately, our content is only as good as our sources. One of my trusted insider sources is Cosmonauts founder Timo Karakashev. Timo runs conferences all over the world, giving him a front-row seat to exactly what both buyers and sellers are thinking and what they are actually adopting.

A big part of my podcast push over the last six months has been to open source our research process. So, naturally, I had to bring Timo on for 🎙️Episode 42 of Zach Abramowitz is Legally Disrupted. We covered massive ground in this episode, trying to figure out if the AI space will continue this same crazy growth trajectory. We also dove into why the intellectual property market feels about three years behind the rest of the industry, and why so many legal teams are complaining about Microsoft Copilot (Timo’s blunt take: “because it’s shit”) while praising alternative tools like Gemini. We also discussed the massive, untapped opportunity in building AI tools for the business and operations of law firms, rather than just focusing exclusively on the practice of law. I’ve been aiming to release newsletters every Sunday morning Eastern Time, so you can schedule your disruption like clockwork. This week, however, with travel and work getting particularly hectic, I had to push to Tuesday evening. So, if your week has felt off balance since Sunday, please accept my apologies and this fresh, new episode to set things right.

Episodes 43 (Jarryd from Sandstone) and 44 (Josh from LawPro.ai) have already been recorded and will drop soon, so make sure to follow the podcast on Apple/Spotify and/or the Legally Disrupted YouTube channel. Subscribing to this newsletter is also a good idea.

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Would you like to meet and hear me in person? I will be keynoting the upcoming ILTA EVOLVE conference in Colorado April 30-May 2, and you can learn about the agenda and register here. I always try to prioritize newsletter subscribers, so let me know if you’re planning to attend and we can meet up.

The final stanza reads:

Then sitting there in the cold dark air, he started to nibble his feet,
Then his legs, then his hips then his neck, then his lips
Till he sat there just gnashin' his teeth
'Cause nothin' was nothin' was nothin' was nothin' was nothin' was left to eat.

Hey there, I’m Zach Abramowitz and I am Legally Disrupted! And I’m starting to think that AI has an overeating problem. Prediction-flex alert: all the way back in March of 2023 and long before SaaSpocalypse, I wrote about AI replacing incumbent #legaltech software.

But it’s really getting out of hand these days as AI begins, like Hungry Mungry, to eat itself. The AI application layer has always been threatened by the foundation model. But the vibe is beginning to shift.

Maybe the out of the box model cannot do what the fancier legal application does, but what if a lawyer could simply code those features themselves? What if they could make it look and feel exactly like they wanted it to.

The new poster child of “Code it yourself counsel!” is Jamie Tso, the Hong Kong based lawyer and founder of the Legal Quants community who began replicating features of some of well known legal AI tools and open sourcing them. Other lawyers began taking inspiration from Jamie, something we began immediately flagging to KWS clients.

I reached out to Jamie on LinkedIn late last year to learn more about what he was doing. Crickets.

But the joke is on him because that just made me more interested.

Since then, this series of LinkedIn posts has blossomed into a highly exclusive community of over a hundred lawyer coders called Legal Quants. Finally, after some mild begging polite nudging, I was able to connect with Jamie and get him on the podcast with Legal Quants founder Raymond Sun. I learned during this conversation about the secret WhatsApp group that is home to this grassroots community (my request for admission was of course denied). Several listeners reached out to tell me that I sound giddy in this podcast. They’re right, I am giddy. That’s why we went close to an hour and a half in this episode. Jamie and Ray have real conviction about where the AI train is headed, namely that “The cost of developing software applications is going to zero.” They also have an open and creative mind about what that will mean for the profession. This is serious AI 2.0 second order effects thinking, and I’m here for it all. So grab a hot beverage, and before anyone else wakes up, treat yourself to a dose of Sunday disruption by watching the embedded YouTube link or find Zach Abramowitz is Legally Disrupted on Apple and Spotify.

Podcast 42 (Timo from Cosmonauts), 43 (Jarryd from Sandstone) and 44 (Josh from LawPro.ai have already been recorded and will drop soon, so subscribe to the podcast or follow the Legally Disrupted YouTube channel. Our audience on YouTube alone has grown by over 200% since September and more than doubled since November. Subscribing to this newsletter is another good way to keep up with the content.

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Hey there, I’m Zach Abramowitz and I’m Legally Disrupted.

Whenever I bump into Damien at a conference (or on redeye flight), he always has a unique take on the market to share. I always leave the interaction thinking “Man, I wish I had been recording that.” That’s why I decided to bring him on for 🎙️Episode 40 of Zach Abramowitz is Legally Disrupted. We got right down to it, discussing why we haven’t actually hit the peak of profitability for lawyers just yet. He argues that the law firms and lawyers who decouple time from value and shift from hourly billing to flat fees are going to make significantly more money. I think we could be headed for a $10,000 billable hour before we see the elimination of the billable hour.

In the course of our discussion, we also dove into why in-house counsel is currently ahead of law firms when it comes to AI adoption, and how the combination of AI-first law firms, Arizona Alternative Business Structures (ABS), and the removal of ABA accreditation moats in Texas and Florida are setting the stage for massive disruption. We also explored the wild future of plaintiff bots battling defense bots, and why the “humanity” of rainmaking will remain the ultimate competitive advantage for lawyers.

Episode 41 with Jamie Tso and Raymond Sun from Legal Quants drops early this week so make sure to subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcasts and/or Spotify. Subscribing to the newsletter will also work.

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The folks leading AI rollouts are going to start getting questions about impact and ROI. Just falling back on adoption metrics isn’t going to be enough in the current AI zeitgeist (the “zAItgAIst”). Which is why I would encourage folks to listen 🎙️episode 39 of Zach Abramowitz is Legally Disrupted with Ivo founder Min-Kyu Jung. Ivo has seen exponential growth and counts brand names like Uber, Pinterest and Reddit amongst its customer base. In the course of our discussion, he outlined an interesting framework for measuring different dimensions of ROI that, while intended for in-house legal, serves as a good starting point for just about any business. We also talked about how he had to pivot hard when LLMs emerged and how he’s thinking about current threats to AI startups and legacy companies.

Episodes 40 and 41 are in the queue so make sure to subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcasts and/or Spotify. Subscribing to the newsletter will also work.

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Hey there I’m Zach Abramowitz and I’m Legally Disrupted. And it’s been a minute.

In the coming weeks, I will share how I’ve been investing more energy into video podcasts, why I’m doubling and tripling down on this format and how that will show up in this newsletter and everything else I do. What I will say now is that we are starting to feel really good about the content and we are already seeing it in the data. Audience and subscribers have started to grow organically and more importantly, people really like it. Some are reaching out to me and telling me how much they enjoy the podcasts (especially on YouTube) and how it has helped them separate signal from noise. Others frequently tell me they are preparing for interviews for law firm/in-house AI roles as well as startups by binging my podcast, and it’s working. Others (from C-suite down to the front line) are using it to learn about which products they should be demoing or trying to replicate in Google AI Studio. Some people (cough, cough CLM companies) get in touch to challenge one of my takes. And I appreciate all of it.

But, the thing we are hearing the most is that people laugh when they listen, including unconfirmed reports of beverages going through the nose (our most important KPI).

If AI-first soda-snorting laughter sounds like something you need in your life, then I encourage you to subscribe on YouTube or find us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Search “Zach Abramowitz” and/or “Legally Disrupted” on your app and we’ll come up.

Scott and I went deep for nearly an hour, and it was one of my favorite episodes to date. In addition to challenging the Harvey/Legora narrative, we talked Claude for Legal, SaaSpocalypse, the advantage of selling direct to lawyer, the risk of AI to software startups, the reason evals are BS, the real metric to measure and the number of talented teams (all human) entering the AI for legal market. Shout outs in the episode to Jonathan Levy from YC plus the folks at Sandstone, TrialKit and Learned Hand.

One of the ways you can keep up with select content from YouTube and my podcasts is by subscribing to this newsletter. You won’t get everything you would get by also subscribing on YouTube, Apple and Spotify, but you will get some of the key highlights.

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**Note to Readers: critical rant incoming. If you want to skip down to where I talk about the Reddit thread, I won’t be deeply insulted. But, just know you’re missing out.**

</START RANT>

I feel like I need to make this clear because a number of people have asked me directly whether I’m getting paid by Harvey or if I have some relationship with them. When I’ve mentioned it to others in my network, their reaction is usually “Yeah, I thought that too, but I didn’t want to say anything.” My guess is that some of you have come to that conclusion as well.

So, let me be quite plain: I don’t get paid by Harvey. I have never been paid by Harvey. I own zero stock in Harvey or any SPVs that have invested in Harvey.

The fact that I’m not on the dole from Harvey is important, in particular, for today’s dose of legal disruption because I’m going to get into the now vaunted Reddit thread in which someone purporting to be a recently fired Harvey employee decided to go nuclear (the post has since been deleted). In the course of discussing the content of that thread, I might end up defending or, Heaven forefend, even saying something nice about Harvey. But, I need to go on this rant not just over the Reddit thread but because it is fundamental to the Killer Whale Strategies business model.

I’m an aligned incentives extremist. I never want clients wondering if I’m recommending a tool because I get a kickback. Early in my career I tried referrals, and it felt queasy and totally off-brand for what we do now at KWS. Our value is often in saying the hard-to-hear stuff, and that only works if clients know we’re focused solely on their long-term success.

That said, to be in the dealmaking business, you need some skin in the game. That’s why I invest my own personal money in legal startups. It signals confidence, shows clients I understand what’s coming, and gives me insight you can’t get from the outside.

Sometimes I recommend portfolio companies to clients — but only when the ROI is undeniable. Other times I don’t. And the value I provide to clients has actually increased because I see both sides of the table: the Davids and the Goliaths. That dual empathy makes me a better advisor.

Furthermore, the value we provide to clients has increased dramatically from my experience as an operator-investor. Investing in and helping startup founders is like the gym work that gives me an edge on the field of client services. By sitting on all sides of the table and getting into the weeds with a handful of top teams, I’m able to get unique insights about the ecosystem. It’s given me a kind of two-sided empathy, and that’s made me a better dealmaker and strategic advisor. I understand the mindset of the Davids and Goliaths because I work with both.

The only startups I have ever worked with on retainer are the ones with whom I’ve invested, and that’s only after a cool off period following my initial investment. Every startup CEO I invest with will tell you that as part of my investment with them, I give them strategic counsel and coaching, not just after I invest but while I’m evaluating them.

And I don’t charge them anything for it.

During the evaluation process, I open doors for them with clients for whom there could be a fit. KWS clients see this is a major value add, because it often means they’re seeing hot companies before the rest of the market. In some cases, these intros have led to huge deals for both sides. I introduced Baker McKenzie to SparkBeyond before they launched an exclusive partnership; I helped TermScout secure investments from James Currier at NFX and David Stark at Ground Up Ventures; I introduced LegalMation to one of their first major automotive OEMs (they have since secured deals with more than half of the big automakers). I could go on.

In some instances, portfolio companies will ask me to dedicate more time and attention to helping them win. When the opportunity makes sense, we will do that, often in exchange for more equity, but sometimes cash. We will NEVER do it on commission. There are tech and companies outside my portfolio (but almost always mature companies) that engage us to brief them periodically throughout the year on the key trends we are seeing in the market. Harvey has done neither.

In previous newsletters, I have said unequivocally that I had never spoken with anyone from Harvey, and I even admitted to being “butt-hurt” re: the non-reach-out. In the last year, I have spoken with people from Harvey, but we’re just friends. But, listen, I am not shy. Trust me, if I had invested in Harvey, you’d know about it from my nonstop flexing. Not only do I not work for Harvey, but on at least one occasion I introduced the Legora team to a Harvey customer, hosted Legora’s head of community Chris Williams on my podcast and have plans to do the same with Max Junestrand (although we’ll have to see after this newsletter ). Plus, I’ve specifically looked at investing in companies I believe can compete with both Harvey and Legora. There are more than a few.

As a broader cultural point, we’ve become suspicious of anyone who takes a spicy position online. And, to be fair, I’ve definitely not been vanilla in my Harvey takes. I’ve written newsletters indicating that Harvey was, well, kind of awesome (something I still believe). But, in my defense how can you not be in awe of a three year old startup generating over $100M in ARR and $5B valuation based on investments from some of Sandhill road’s finest, all while making inroads with customers that were previously impenetrable for startups? That would have been impressive in its own right, but it’s even more impressive that the founders were a couple of guys in their 20s who had never launched a startup, and the one who was supposed to be the “domain expert” had only worked for six months in Biglaw.

So what do I think about Harvey?

I admire Harvey as a company and, yes, even have a bit of FOMO: I didn’t come up with the idea myself and that I didn’t invest in their seed round. For someone who’s as active in the space as I am, it was a real miss on my part. I think Harvey is a force with which to be reckoned. They have real vulnerabilities, but I think there is a strategy in place to address those vulnerabilities. Even the Death Star had that one spot.

This is one of those “Two things can be true at the same time” scenario. I can be both in awe of Harvey, as well as deeply on the lookout for the next Harvey, including investing with credible competitors, of which I believe there are a few.

I can even write these opinions publicly without Harvey being the Qatar to my Tucker Carlson.

</END RANT>

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Breaking down the Reddit thread.

Now, as far as the r/legaltech thread goes, there’s the actual content of the post, which I think is less interesting, and the reaction to the post, which I think is the real story here. So, that’s what I want to address first.

Harvey sparks some strong emotions.

Harvey gets people talking. That’s what a powerful brand does. You saw that in this instance for sure. Everyone on LinkedIn felt compelled to weigh in on this all-important AMA, as if they hadn’t just learned ten minutes ago that r/legaltech is even a thing.

Our team read the thread, but that’s because my partner Nina reads every single r/legaltech thread, despite her complaint recently that it’s become way too salesy. I honestly didn’t make much of it at first. This isn’t the first time that r/legaltech commenters dunked on Harvey (as well as other vendors).

So, now, let’s do the following mental experiment. Imagine for a moment that the r/legaltech thread had been about Legora, instead of Harvey.

Do you think every Legal Innovation Linkedfluencer would be hot-taking all over themselves to explain why they felt obligated to share their perspective on this all important thread?

Methinks not.

The Reddit thread is a byproduct of a strong brand, with some real kick.

Here’s the real story: Harvey has become the Dallas Cowboys of AI for Legal. The Cowboys are the iconic team so many love, and even more love to hate. All that energy gives the Dallas Cowboys their $13B value, $2.5B more than the next team that you don’t care about because they’re not the Dallas Cowboys.1 It doesn’t matter that they haven’t won the most Super Bowls or that they don’t have the newest stadium, their brand makes them the most valuable franchise in American sports. Given Harvey’s Dallas Cowboys vibe, it’s no surprise that they are valued more than 5x their closest competitors.

For years, ESPN’s Skip Bayless (another polarizing brand) built his audience on this dynamic. I worked at ESPN during Law School, and, amongst the other talking heads, Skip was easily the most polarizing on-air personality. But his audience made him one of the highest paid pundits both at ESPN and later at Fox. His genius was realizing two simple truths:

1. Fans either love the Cowboys or hate them.

2. What fans loved, and what haters couldn’t stand, was how much extra attention the Cowboys got.

So Skip gave them both exactly what they wanted: more Cowboys talk. He didn’t mind being hated, as long as there was love in the mix.

The reason I write about Harvey so much, is because that’s what you want to hear about, whether or not you love them or hate them (yikes! does that make me Skip Bayless of legaltech?). When I speak to lawyers and VCs, they both ask me about Harvey. When I write about Harvey, everyone shares it (as some of you surely will share this insanely long newsletter). I noticed this for the first time when my podcast with Edward Bukstel about whether Harvey was overhyped, quickly became my most downloaded episode. At this year’s ILTACON, the session on Harvey was quite literally standing room only and had the palpable buzz of a real media event. I’ve never seen anything like that at legaltech events. Legaltech has never had a brand that drove this much engagement. We’re bigtime now.

And, like the Cowboys, iconic brands can be divisive. They can even platform competitors. Almost every firm I know that has chosen Legora has mentioned to me that they were getting pressure to buy Harvey, but couldn’t stand the thought of working with “those guys.” By the way, that’s totally reasonable. But, it indicates that one of the most important reasons to buy Legora is (1) Harvey exists and (2) Legora isn’t Harvey. I think they understand this too, and it would explain why they would change the company name from Leya to Legora. Rather than have a name that puts you in the same box as Harvey, be as different from Harvey as possible.

I am willing to bet that every firm decision maker that went with Legora has been sharing the Reddit thread internally. Because, what validates their decision is not that Legora is awesome (which I’ve heard it is btw), but evidence that Harvey is now tainted.

Take Goodwin for example. Earlier this year they announced they were going with Legora, with Mary O’Carroll as the spokesperson on the release. Fast forward to her more recent LinkedIn post where, instead of talking up Legora, she pointed at Harvey and the Reddit thread.

That’s the dynamic I’m talking about and Mary, who is quite clever, knows what she is doing. Firms don’t validate their decisions by saying, “look how great Legora is.” They validate them by saying, “Look at Harvey’s shortcomings, aren’t we smart for holding out for a better option?” That’s not because there’s something wrong with Legora, it’s because Harvey is in everyone’s heads just that much.

Okay, but what about the actual claims made in the Reddit post?

The Reddit post itself didn’t tell us anything new. It was catnip for Harvey-haters: Harvey = ChatGPT, buyers regretting it, juniors are the only users (this is straight bull$%it btw), toxic culture. Here’s the reality: usage varies by firm, sure, and working at Harvey is no one’s model of work-life balance — but that’s true of every successful hyper-scaler. The real point is: the haters just heard what they wanted to hear. That’s why I was skeptical that this person actually worked at Harvey.

The lesson from Harvey is that to win in the age of AI, you need to develop a core insight about your market — what Peter Thiel calls the contrarian take — plus an iconic brand that lands with your customers. Harvey has that in spades, and not just because they have a great name or a pretty logo. Harvey understood that, at least at first, AmLaw 200 firms and their biggest clients were not going to want the standard consumer ChatGPT, they were going to want a special-made-for-lawyer model. That doesn’t necessarily make firms rational. As an example, I was advising firms at the time to just sign up for an enterprise plan with OpenAI. Today, everyone has realized was probably the right direction to go two years ago. But, at the time, they wanted something professionally customized and that’s become table stakes for most big firms. Harvey’s team understood how to message and design for that. And they’re reaping the rewards.

The power of harmonizing core insight, product design and brand.

Harvey hasn’t necessarily been winning deals on their tech. Harvey has been winning deals on their execution on brand and product design, which are really two sides of the same coin. To the r/legaltech shitposter’s point, how much difference is there really between Harvey and ChatGPT? But I think that misses the point. Drink Coca-Cola from an off label bottle, and tell me if it makes you feel the same.

By onboarding top firms, raising a war chest from the likes of Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins and making the decision makers at Harvey-adopting firms look like pioneering innovators, Harvey created a permission structure for sophisticated lawyers to use AI, and the Harvey team embedded that in every part of their brand.

Did they really need all that money just to build an application layer product? Probably not. But they’re selling more than their product. They are selling the idea that AI is fast moving, things are going to change and you’re going to need a partner to power you through that transformation. They are telling customers, we’re going to have to pivot, budget for compute and acquire other players along the way. But customers can rest assured because Harvey has the resources to do all of that and more, as do their backers who are the most trusted names in Silicon Valley. They are telling firms, ride with us.

Here’s another place where extra capital will come in handy: some firms are going to cut ties with Harvey. They’re going to look at their modest usage stats and decide to replace it with ChatGPT or they’re going to prioritize other products whose ROI shows up more clearly on a P&L. This will likely create a herd mentality where other firms cut bait with Harvey. This will happen to other products as well. Does that mean the company will go bust? No. I would still bet on them to be the clear leaders in Biglaw and Fortune 500 legal departments one year from now.

What can startups and incumbent firms learn from Harvey and “r/legaltech-gate?”

If your takeaway, then, is that Harvey is vaporware or Legal AI Theranos, you’re going to be disappointed. And you’re going to miss out on the more important takeaway that is deeply pressing to both incumbent law firms and startups.

So many of the companies we are working with right now, whether it is firms, service providers and tech companies, have been moved by the AI revolution to reevaluate their organizational structure, their services and, yes, their brand. There is a major shift taking place right now which is going to impact just about every professional services business. Disruption will create new opportunities for firms to capture business from their competitors as well as capitalize on new opportunities in an economy that is changing rapidly. That realization has them breaking and redesigning, in some cases from scratch. The challenge is that everyone has access to the same underlying models. So, therefore, the winners will be those who move first, develop key insights about their clients and execute on a brand and design that lands with their target users. Even if it means getting a healthy dose of hate along the way.

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