A global law firm cut contract review time using legal AI
A&O Shearman became the first law firm to deploy Harvey firm-wide, then co-built a contract tool now used daily by around 2,000 lawyers.
The Business
A&O Shearman became the first law firm to deploy Harvey firm-wide, then co-built a contract tool now used daily by around 2,000 lawyers.
A&O Shearman · Europe · 4,000+ staff.
Before AI
Summarisation, first-pass legal analysis, translation and contract review were manual, associate-heavy tasks.
What Changed
The firm rolled out Harvey (built on OpenAI models, fine-tuned on legal work) and co-developed 'ContractMatrix' with Harvey and Microsoft.
The Result
The firm reports contract review time reduced by around 30% (up to 7 hours saved per review) and staff saving an average of 2–3 hours a week on routine tasks.
Why this matters
Document-heavy professions are squarely in scope.
Accountants, insurers, consultancies and property firms all run on reviewing and drafting documents.
Where the core work is language, the same leverage applies. The question becomes which document task to point it at first.
Technology Used
Used for:
Source
Results are reported by the identified source/company and have not necessarily been independently verified by AI YAI YAI.
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