In a major turning point that was first signalled earlier this year with Harvey’s $300m raise, LexisNexis Legal & Professional and Harvey today (18 June) announced a strategic alliance to integrate LexisNexis generative AI technology, primary law content, and Shepard’s Citations within the Harvey platform and jointly develop advanced legal workflows.
Within Harvey, users will be able to ask legal questions in natural language and receive citation-supported answers from primary sources of law. Harvey and LexisNexis will also co-develop legal workflows starting immediately Motion to Dismiss and Motion for Summary Judgments workflows. LexisNexis legal technology and content will be integrated in Harvey later this year.
Harvey is a global leader in providing lawyers with GenAI tools for tasks such as data extraction, analysis, summarisation and drafting but has been looking for ways to access the missing piece of the puzzle – a legal database. It was rumoured in 2024 to be looking to raise $600m to buy global legal intelligence platform vLex.
In fact, Harvey announced a $300m raise earlier this year with an eyebrow raising participator- Rev Ventures, which is funded by LexisNexis’ parent company RELX. This raised the possibility – now realized – that LexisNexis and Harvey could collaborate and the products could become combined.
“Our customers trust LexisNexis for authoritative legal content, and we’re excited that they will benefit from LexisNexis capabilities within the Harvey experience,” said Winston Weinberg, CEO of Harvey.
Excited he well should be. LexisNexis has historically tightly controlled access to its data as a core competitive moat.
Giving Harvey access will be regarded on one level as capitulation by LexisNexis that it can’t win the GenAI race alone. For end users, which is where our attention should lie, it is nothing short of a great outcome.