• by Kaila Colbin , Featured Contributor, August 9, 2024

A couple weeks ago, @emilyinvc tweeted(xeeted?), “calling it now: Harvey (the legal AI co) will end up being roadkill on the side of the highway. complete smoke and mirrors company.”

She went on: “in the DMs from a biglaw partner that ‘uses’ Harvey: ‘Harvey has an insane amount of inactive “customers” that will churn. Big law firms want to tell clients they use AI sign up and then no one uses it.’”

The “Harvey” in question is a “trusted legal AI platform” that lets law firms “augment their workflows using domain specific models trained by and for professional service providers.”

And the conversation overall is part of the general question of whether AI, specifically generative AI, is actually going to disrupt everything.

At first, it certainly seemed like it would.

ChatGPT went from zero to a million users in five days. Midjourney got 6 million members in less than 6 months. McKinsey estimated that generative AI could add the equivalent of up to $4.4 trillion to the economy. (For context, the United Kingdom’s entire GDP in 2021 was $3.1 trillion.)

So surely generative AI is going to DESTROY the legal profession, right?

Maybe -- if what we buy from lawyers is knowledge. Gen AI may be full of hallucinations, but specialist software can definitely make it easier to search case law, extract summaries, and do other knowledge-related activities.

The thing is, I think we’re actually buying something else when we go to a law firm.

A few months ago, I stood in a windowless office in Auckland, New Zealand, held up my hand, and took an oath affirming that I wished to renounce my U.S, citizenship.

I’ve been living in New Zealand for nearly 20 years, and have been a citizen here for 12, but it still felt like a big deal. I was born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, lived in upstate New York, South Florida, Colorado. The United States is and will forever be part of my identity.

I needed support to go through the process. So I hired a law firm that specializes in American renunciations.

They answered my questions. They filled in the forms. They helped me make the appointment. They made sure I had everything I needed.

They charged me a flat fee.

On an hourly basis, it worked out to an astronomical amount. But there was no AI that could have replaced them.

I didn’t pay them for hours. I didn’t pay them for knowledge. I didn’t pay them for things I could have Googled myself.

I paid them for reassurance.

I know none of Harvey’s backstory, whether it’s performing well or not, whether it will make its investors happy or not.

I can readily imagine there’s demand on the backend of law firms to automate routine tasks and make interns more productive.

But I doubt that’s what clients care about.

Certainly, there are some legal issues that are just about getting things done. I recently used ChatGPT to compose a strongly worded letter to a particularly noxious parking company that had incorrectly fined me. It did great: I categorically deny any wrongdoing as I consciously avoid parking at Wilson's facilities, due to its notorious reputation for unfair practices.

But the legal issues we’re concerned about, the ones we care about, the ones that potentially have a material impact… Even if we could Google the answers, we won’t. We want to know the approach we’re taking is the right one.

We don’t buy knowledge from law firms. We buy reassurance. Until AI can generate that, the lawyers are safe.