Introduction
Harvey.ai is an AI legal tool for contract drafting and contract review. It has made breakthroughs in the market for AI legal tools, and is now the most popular AI legal software sought by firms with particularly big budgets.
But the question people often ask: What does harvey Ai actually do? Is harvey.ai worth it? Let’s understand
What is Harvey.ai? Harvey.ai Review
Following are the features of Harvey AI:
1. The Assistant -
- Ask questions or give instructions in natural language.
- Analyse many documents at once, extract clauses, and summarise differences.
- Every output comes with references or citations for easy verification.
- Works across multiple languages and jurisdictions.
- Draft or revise contracts directly within Word for a seamless workflow.
Assistant is the most popular feature of Harvey AI. It understands complex documents, analyses information, drafts documents and answers questions based on those documents. It allows user to:
2. Vault –
This enables the user to:
- Upload and analyse many documents at once.
- Pull out key terms and fields from many documents
- Search your documents using plain English, e.g., “Find leases missing subletting clauses.”
Vaults have a document limit, so it’s important to be aware of usage restrictions especially when handling large volumes of legal documents.
Use case: Upload a stack of contracts and ask, “Find all indemnification clauses and summarise differences”, and get accurate results in minutes.
3. Knowledge
- Provides answers to your legal questions based on user queries.
- Continuously updated with the latest case law and legal developments.
- Trained on a dedicated legal repository, not a general AI chatbot.
- Ensures responses are grounded in authoritative sources for accurate legal guidance.
4. Workflows
- Automate repetitive, multi-step legal tasks with ease.
- Popular workflow examples:
- Smart Redline – Automatically compare contract drafts and highlight changes.
- Document Translation – Translate large documents and summarise key points.
- Motion Drafting – Generate drafts that incorporate legal research and case law.
Is Harvey.ai an AI tool for Enterprise Only?
Yes, Harvey AI is an enterprise AI tool i.e. primarily designed for enterprise law firms. Its platform targets large, elite firms with the resources to handle higher pricing, extensive integration, and team training.
- Accessibility: Smaller or mid-size firms may find it challenging to adopt, as Harvey prioritizes requests from high-demand, large-scale clients.
- Integration & Training: Implementing Harvey AI isn’t instant—it requires signing a Customer Agreement, integrating with existing workflows, and training teams to use it effectively.
- Workflow Fit: For enterprise firms, Harvey ties into complex workflows, but small firms may find setup time-intensive and less practical for day-to-day use.
In short, Harvey AI is a powerful AI legal assistant, but its design and cost structure make it more suitable for large firms rather than small or mid-size practices.
Is Harvey.ai worth it?
Harvey AI can be valuable but mainly for large enterprise firms with the budget and resources to support it. For most small and mid-size firms, the investment may not be justified.
Here’s why:
- Pricing is not transparent
Harvey’s pricing is only available on request, and costs tend to scale quickly based on firm size, number of users, and integration needs. - Demo-only access
You can’t sign up and try it. The only option is to request a demo, which involves a qualification process rather than immediate access. - Complex onboarding
After the demo, firms typically go through:
- A detailed questionnaire
- Technical evaluation of integration requirements
- Determining licence type
- Aligning number of users
- Negotiating the contract
- A detailed questionnaire
- Roadblocks before real usage
Even after the contract is signed, there’s still:
- Integration time
- Team training
- Ongoing maintenance
- Integration time
All of this means that actual usage can take weeks or months, not days.
Bottom line: Harvey AI may be “worth it” for enterprise clients with high-volume, multi-jurisdictional needs but for most small and mid-size firms, the lack of transparency, long onboarding, and high cost make it a less practical choice.
What is Harvey AI Alternative? How to choose an AI Legal Assistant for Small Firm? 3 step Guide
If Harvey AI feels too expensive, complex, or enterprise-focused, small and mid-size firms can still get powerful legal AI by choosing the right alternative to Harvey AI. Here’s a simple 3-step framework to help you evaluate any AI legal assistant.
Step 1: Look at the Founding Team
Choose an AI legal assistant built by lawyers, not just technologists or sales executives.
The background and expertise of the founding team shapes the entire product:
- A lawyer’s mindset leads to accurate, risk-aware contract review.
- A purely tech-driven product may miss legal nuance.
- A sales-driven product may optimise for speed over legal precision.
Knowing who built the system gives insight into how well it will handle real legal work.
Step 2: Check the AI’s Expertise in Contract Drafting & Contract Review
Small and mid-size firms need tools that work out of the box, not enterprise-level complexity. Look for:
- Strong capabilities in contract drafting and contract review
- A large, ready-to-use template library
- A system designed by lawyers, but usable by non-lawyers (procurement teams, operations, finance)
- Ability to support everyday documents like vendor contracts, purchase orders, invoices, service agreements, and receipts
Your AI legal assistant should make you productive from day one and not after weeks of setup.
Step 3: Choose an Affordable AI Legal Assistant
In law, “expensive = better” sometimes works.
In tech, expensive = unnecessary.
The whole point of modern AI and automation is to save time and reduce cost, not create more work.
If you need to spend:
- Tens of thousands in licensing
- Additional fees for integration
- Time on training
- Weeks waiting before your team can use the system
…then the tool becomes counterproductive.
A good AI legal assistant should let you draft and review documents for less than the price of your daily coffee and without compromising legal quality. That’s what makes it ideal for small and mid-size firms.
Bonus Step 4: Prioritise a Simple Workflow
A powerful AI tool doesn’t need 100 complex features. It needs to be:
- Intuitive
- Easy to adopt
- Designed for real daily tasks
- Quick to learn (no endless tutorials)
If your main use-case is contract generation, summarise, generate clause language, clause editing, and risk review, prioritise AI tools that excel at those tasks and skip the heavy features meant for enterprise e-discovery or multi-jurisdictional research.
Harvey.ai Alternative: Introducing DocLegal.ai
Doclegal.ai has emerged as a value efficient, modern focussed Harvey AI alternative especially for the small to mid size law firms and businesses. It is designed by experienced lawyers driven with a mission to democratize the AI legal assistant for all and not just for the big size firms with huge budgets.
Doclegal.ai Chatbot, as one of the Harvey AI competitors, offers the following services
- AI Legal Document Library: Gives you access to 2500+ AI legal documents instantly
- AI Legal Document Generation - Customize legal templates based on your simple AI prompts
- AI Legal Document Risk Analysis - Identify risks for both parties, with a share-ready report for your team.
- AI Clause Library - Get tailored clause language based on your specific needs or instructions.
- AI Contract Summary - Instantly summarise third-party contracts to speed up your review process.
- AI Contract Review and Edit - Edit Legal Documents Instantly withAI and Simple Prompts
Doclegal.ai is an AI tool for legal documents that offers legal documents at prices as low as $2 per document.
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Key takeaway: If your priority is to generate contracts quickly, customize clauses, and identify risks, a legal AI tool like DocLegal.ai may be a better alternative than Harvey AI. It offers fewer unnecessary enterprise features and focuses on what small and mid-size firms actually need.
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DocLegal.ai vs Harvey AI: Which AI Legal Assistant is Right for You?
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FAQs: AI Legal Assistant for Small Firms & AI Tool for Contract Drafting and Review
1. What is Harvey AI and how does it work?
Harvey AI is an AI tool for contract drafting, review and research designed for enterprise law firms. Its modules: Assistant, Vault, Knowledge, and Workflows allow users to analyze documents, answer legal queries, and automate multi-step legal workflows.
2. Is Harvey AI suitable for small or mid-size firms?
No. Harvey AI targets large, high-budget firms. Smaller firms may face challenges with pricing, integration, team training, and onboarding.
3. What is DocLegal.ai and how does it differ from Harvey AI?
DocLegal.ai is an AI legal assistant for small firms, solo entrepreneurs, and mid-size businesses. It focuses on contract drafting, contract review, clause generation, and risk analysis, with low cost, quick setup, and no legal expertise required.
4. Can DocLegal.ai handle contract review and risk analysis?
Yes. DocLegal.ai reviews contracts, flags risks for all parties, suggests edits, and summarizes key points, making it an effective AI tool for contract drafting and review.
5. How much does DocLegal.ai cost?
DocLegal.ai is highly affordable, starting at $10/month for subscriptions or $2 per document, providing SMEs and small law firms access to professional legal AI tools without high enterprise fees.
6. Do I need legal expertise to use DocLegal.ai?
No. DocLegal.ai is designed for ease of use, enabling non-lawyers, procurement teams, and operations staff to draft, edit, and review contracts efficiently.
7. How quickly can I start using DocLegal.ai?
Immediately. Unlike Harvey AI, which requires demos, contracts, integration, and team training, DocLegal.ai offers instant access to templates and a simple workflow for fast adoption.
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