Hi and welcome to the June Orange Rag, where the past month we have spent writing repeatedly about one vendor in particular – Harvey. With LexisNexis and its parent company RELX investing heavily in Harvey’s $300m Series E raise in June (its second investment), the organisation is looking less like a strategic partner and more like a suitor.
The size of the investment—and the deepening integration with Lexis+ AI—points to an increasingly desirable outcome for LexisNexis: Harvey becoming part of the RELX empire.
Harvey has become a poster child for GenAI in legal and locking it in would cement Lexis’s AI credentials while securing exclusivity at a time when competitive differentiation is everything. For RELX, it would be a classic move: absorbing a fast-scaling technology that complements and protects the core content business.
Would it be good for end users? That’s more nuanced. On one hand, acquisition could bring Harvey the scale, infrastructure and compliance support needed for widespread enterprise adoption. On the other, users might worry about reduced openness, interoperability, and innovation, particularly if Harvey ends up tightly tied to Lexis content and workflows.
All of this is, of course, pure speculation. But the rest of the market—competitors and customers alike—should be watching closely. See inside the Rag for all the other news about Harvey’s tie ups and integrations.
It’s not all about Harvey, and we have plenty of other wins and deals for you, including a deeper look into the partnership between Flank and Simmons Wavelength, where they are leveraging agentic AI as part of a client legal managed service offering. It’s fun times here in legaltech land.