Full deck
A research program · Harvard Law School

AI & the Legal Profession

Complex decision-making and the future of the profession
Project leads
Anthea RobertsProfessor, ANU · Visiting Professor, Harvard Law School
David B. WilkinsFaculty Director, Center on the Legal Profession
Center on the Legal Profession,
Harvard Law School
with Dragonfly Thinking
hlsclp.org
The arc

Six essays, one question.

01
Law is the gateway drugWhy AI enters professional services through law
02
Harvey's strategic evolutionA platform / infrastructure play, not a wrapper
03
Getting your hands dirtyYou only learn AI by using it
04
The scrambled mapCompetition that no longer fits old categories
05
The training crisisThe scarcest ingredient is being destroyed
06
From up-or-out to up-and-outWhat shape the profession takes next
AI & the Legal Profession
Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School · hlsclp.org
Series introduction

Two lenses on the same problem.

Anthea reads

AI as technology strategy

  • Platform and infrastructure plays, not just tools.
  • Where value concentrates as a layer is built.
  • What the market is really pricing.
David reads

AI as professional evolution

  • A century of change in how legal services are delivered.
  • How the profession has absorbed prior disruptions.
  • Where structure and judgment actually sit.
AI & the Legal Profession
Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School · hlsclp.org
Dragonfly thinking · the crossover visual

Five lenses integrate into one compound view.

StructureProfessional system
TechnologyAI strategy
MarketCapital & firms
DisruptionInnovation theory
IntegrationCompound judgment
AI & the Legal Profession
Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School · hlsclp.org
Interactive · the corpus

A living map of the corpus.

170 sources · 39 topics · 11 dimensions — click and drag to explore which issues dominate and which sources bridge domains.

AI & the Legal Profession
Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School · hlsclp.org
Structure
01

Law is the gateway drug

Why AI enters professional services through law — and what its century-built centrality unlocks.

Essay 01 · The gateway

A 10:1 valuation gap is a signal, not noise.

01

Not just text-fit

Accounting and consulting are knowledge work too — that alone can't explain a tenfold valuation gap.

02

A century-built position

Lawyers have worked for a hundred years to make law a central node in how business and society operate.

03

The gating input

The General Counsel sits at the closing table — the input without which nothing moves forward.

AI & the Legal Profession
Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School · hlsclp.org
Essay 01 · The open question

Capture — both ways.

Law captures the gateway

The profession absorbs AI

  • Incumbent firms adopt AI as the latest in a century of tools.
  • Structural centrality holds — or expands further.
  • Value accrues to those who own the legal node.
The gateway captures law

Platforms inherit the position

  • AI platforms built on law inherit the gateway vantage.
  • The profession supplies raw material to a layer above it.
  • Control over the central node migrates outward.
AI & the Legal Profession
Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School · hlsclp.org
Interactive · systems map

The gateway as a system.

Structural centrality and the legalization of everything, mapped as a live systems diagram.

AI & the Legal Profession
Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School · hlsclp.org
Essay 01 · Structural centrality

Law sits at the centre — and the field keeps widening.

The legalization of everything routes more of business and society through legal frameworks — making law the highest-value entry point for AI.
LAW the central node
AI & the Legal Profession
Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School · hlsclp.org
Strategy
02

Harvey's strategic evolution

Not a wrapper but an infrastructure play — five concentric rings from assistant to ecosystem.

Essay 02 · Strategy

Harvey isn't a wrapper — it's infrastructure.

$11B
valuation — a platform bet, not a tool price
10:1
gap over the largest accounting-AI company
18k+
custom workflows built on the platform
25k+
custom agents — an emerging ecosystem
The real play is becoming the infrastructure through which professional services are delivered — with law firms as the distribution node.
AI & the Legal Profession
Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School · hlsclp.org
Interactive · five rings

Harvey's strategic evolution.

Step through the concentric expansion from assistant to ecosystem governor.

AI & the Legal Profession
Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School · hlsclp.org
Essay 02 · Concentric expansion

Five rings — from assistant to ecosystem.

CORE assistant

1 · Broad assistant

An early general legal assistant on frontier models.

2 · Enterprise trust layer

Security and governance as the competitive lever.

3 · Platform

Matter-centric workspaces; thousands of custom workflows.

4 · Infrastructure

Shared spaces — firms, clients and advisors in one workspace.

5 · Ecosystem governor

Marketplace, benchmarks and the rules others build on.

AI & the Legal Profession
Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School · hlsclp.org
Practice
03

Getting your hands dirty

You only learn AI by using it — and leaders can't delegate the aha.

Essay 03 · Practice

You only learn it by doing it.

AI skills

Learnable in weeks

  • Prompting, context engineering, iteration, workflow design.
  • Built through deliberate practice — metis, the practical wisdom that comes from doing, not textbooks.
  • Senior lawyers can acquire it — but must do the reps.
Domain expertise

Built over years

  • Taste and judgment from lived professional work.
  • The capability gap: tools ≠ knowing how to use them.
  • The "aha" doesn't spread by osmosis — leaders can't delegate it.
AI & the Legal Profession
Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School · hlsclp.org
Interactive · modes

Director · Coach · Editor.

Explore how human judgment stays in the loop across each mode of working with AI.

AI & the Legal Profession
Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School · hlsclp.org
Essay 03 · Three modes of collaboration

You already manage people this way — now transfer it to AI.

Director

Define

Frame the problem and set the approach before work begins.

Coach

Correct

Course-correct during execution as the work takes shape.

Editor

Verify

Check the output against judgment before it goes out the door.

AI & the Legal Profession
Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School · hlsclp.org
Competition
04

The scrambled map

Record profits and aggressive insourcing at once — old categories no longer hold.

Essay 04 · Competition

Both are true at once.

Supply side

Record law-firm profits

  • Am Law 100 profits up ~54% since 2019.
  • Demand for elite work still climbing.
  • The incumbent position looks stronger than ever.
Demand side

Aggressive insourcing

  • 65% of legal departments actively insourcing.
  • Fewer expect to increase outside spend (37%, down from 58%).
  • General counsel building their own orchestration layer.
AI & the Legal Profession
Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School · hlsclp.org
Interactive · competitive map

The scrambled competitive map.

Trace how player types blur and boundaries move across the live landscape.

AI & the Legal Profession
Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School · hlsclp.org
Essay 04 · The players

Old categories no longer hold.

The same player now sits on several sides at once — the boundaries are dissolving.
EstablishedNew entrant

Platform owners

Anthropic, OpenAI — the model layer everything else runs on.

Adaptive incumbents

Kirkland, Freshfields — building & buying AI aggressively.

The Big Four

Rebuilding integrated-solution legal ambitions.

Tool vendors

Harvey, Legora — software into existing firms.

AI-native firms

Crosby, Covenant — built on AI economics.

Capital / PE

Blackstone, Carta — capital becomes a provider.

Sells tools / techSells legal outcomes
AI & the Legal Profession
Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School · hlsclp.org
Training
05

The training crisis

Good outcomes multiply, not add — and the scarcest ingredient is being destroyed.

Essay 05 · Training

Good AI outcomes multiply, they don't add.

01

Four ingredients, one product

Model capability × context × AI skills × domain expertise — multiplicative, not additive.

02

The scarcest is being destroyed

AI automates the junior work — document review, research, due diligence — through which domain expertise was built.

03

A coordination failure

Each firm's choice to automate is rational; collectively the training pipeline disappears.

AI & the Legal Profession
Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School · hlsclp.org
Interactive · the multiplier

The four ingredients.

Adjust each ingredient and watch the multiplicative effect — and the binding constraint.

AI & the Legal Profession
Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School · hlsclp.org
Essay 05 · The binding constraint

Any factor near zero collapses the product.

Ingredient 1

Model capability

Frontier and rising
×
Ingredient 2

Context

Specific, structured
×
Ingredient 3 · fast metis

AI skills

Learnable in weeks
×
Ingredient 4 · slow metis

Domain expertise

Binding constraint — and shrinking
As AI improves, errors get subtler — and the judgment needed to catch them is exactly what the collective automation decisions are destroying.
AI & the Legal Profession
Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School · hlsclp.org
The profession
06

From up-or-out to up-and-out

When AI automates the base, what shape does the firm take next?

Essay 06 · The profession

From up-or-out to up-and-out.

Up

Higher-order judgment

  • Toward orchestration — director, coach, editor.
  • Pyramid economics break when AI automates the base.
  • The apex is forced upward.
Out

Adjacent domains

  • Into tax, strategy, governance, AI regulation, geopolitics.
  • Demand grows at the intersections.
  • But Christensen warns: move upmarket, get disrupted anyway.
AI & the Legal Profession
Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School · hlsclp.org
Interactive · the pyramid

Morph between the shapes.

Watch the team pyramid deform under the three convergence forces.

AI & the Legal Profession
Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School · hlsclp.org
Essay 06 · The shape of firms

The pyramid restructures into one of four shapes.

The Diamond is the shape firms are aiming for — but it depends on solving the training problem. The Barbell is the failure mode.
Traditional Pyramid
today's structure — juniors subsidise seniors
The Obelisk
same shape, dramatically narrower
The Barbell
missing generation in the middle
✗ failure mode
The Diamond
orchestrators in the widest band, alongside AI
the shape firms aim for
The T
thin human layer over an automated stack
Roberts & Wilkins (2026), "The Pyramid Transformation" · AI & the Legal Profession
AI & the Legal Profession
Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School · hlsclp.org
Essay 06 · The genuine disagreement

Two reads we hold in tension.

David

The defences are real

  • Regulatory embedding and the gatekeeper function.
  • The institutional weight of the opinion letter.
  • The legalization of everything creates new demand.
Anthea

Disruption routes around them

  • Every profession thought it had structural defences.
  • The boundary of "pure judgment" keeps moving.
  • AI keeps automating what was thought un-automatable.
AI & the Legal Profession
Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School · hlsclp.org

Lenses being tested — not finished pronouncements.

hlsclp.org · AI & the Legal Profession
Anthea RobertsProfessor, ANU · Visiting Professor, Harvard Law School
David B. WilkinsFaculty Director, Center on the Legal Profession
with Dragonfly ThinkingMulti-lens analysis methodology