A Reddit post last week ignited a firestorm of speculation across the legal industry about the long-term prospects of legal AI company Harvey, with some dismissing it as little more than a ChatGPT wrapper. But is that criticism missing the point? In his latest column for LawNext, legal tech strategy consultant Ken Crutchfield argues that […]
A Reddit post last week ignited a firestorm of speculation across the legal industry about the long-term prospects of legal AI company Harvey, with some dismissing it as little more than a ChatGPT wrapper. But is that criticism missing the point?
Ken Crutchfield
In his latest column for LawNext, legal tech strategy consultant Ken Crutchfield argues that Harvey’s critics are missing the bigger picture. Harvey isn’t competing on product features alone, he argues, it’s playing a different game entirely, much like Oracle did in the relational database wars of the 1980s.
From securing prestigious reference accounts to raising money from powerhouse investors, Harvey has built advantages that go far beyond its AI capabilities.
The best product doesn’t always win, Crutchfield says. Oracle wasn’t the best relational database, but it understood something its competitors didn’t about winning in the marketplace.
Crutchfield is principal of Spring Forward Consulting and has been an executive at LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters and most recently Wolters Kluwer, where he was vice president and general manager of legal markets for Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S.
Read his full analysis on LawNext to discover the five things Harvey is doing right and why its strategy might be exactly what it takes to win in legal AI.
