Last month, Faegre Drinker adopted Harvey AI and Microsoft Copilot firmwide, a major step in the legal industry's shift from cautious AI testing to broad deployment. The move follows months of internal evaluation and a growing recognition that clients expect both faster turnaround and lower costs on routine legal work.
Firmwide adoption at Faegre Drinker
"We realized that we wanted to be an AI-led organization, and that we wanted to put AI in the hands of everyone in the firm," said Scott Angelo, Faegre Drinker's chief technology and innovation officer. The firm had already built its own platform, Atlas AI, but leaders concluded it offered little more than consumer tools like ChatGPT. Harvey and Copilot now cover both legal and non-legal roles - Copilot for general productivity, Harvey for legal-specific tasks such as contract drafting, due diligence, and document review.
Harvey was designed for professional services and integrates multiple large language models, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google Gemini, to split requests into subtasks and match each to the best-performing model. It pulls from sources like LexisNexis and EDGAR, letting attorneys research and store documents in one place. The company, valued at $11 billion after a $200 million funding round in March, now counts more than 142,000 professionals and 1,500 law firms as users.
Testing and expansion at other firms
Ice Miller is taking a more measured approach. James Boyer, the firm's chief innovation officer, said clients' need for speed and availability drives every evaluation. "Even if it allows us to do one or two more tasks a day, that's a tremendous amount of value. So we can respond quicker to our clients or [be] more available to our clients because we're able to do that." The firm has tested Legora and is now running a Harvey pilot with select attorneys. "Until things kind of settle out in the next four or five or six years, we're going to be constantly looking for the next best tool, to best serve our clients, because it really comes down to them," Boyer said.
Barnes & Thornburg has moved to firmwide deployment of Harvey and CoCounsel. The firm said nearly 90% of its attorneys are actively using AI, and more than 150,000 prompts were submitted in a single recent 30-day period. Brian McGinnis, co-chair of the firm's AI practice, framed the shift bluntly: "AI is not taking work away from lawyers. It is changing which parts of the work clients are willing to pay for, and the firms that understand that distinction will lead." The firm lets adoption grow naturally by giving tools to eager attorneys and learning from real client matters.
Training and ethics focus
Faegre Drinker requires every employee to complete three checkpoints before using its AI tools: basic AI training, professional responsibility training, and a test on the firm's AI security policy. "It was an opportunity to level-set, raise that level, and then level-set," Angelo said. The structure ensures everyone understands both the technology and the ethical obligations that come with it. For legal professionals building similar expertise, AI for Legal Professionals Courses offer practical guidance on integrating AI into legal workflows while staying compliant with professional rules.
Angelo said Faegre Drinker plans to integrate AI deeper into focused practice areas and client-specific needs. "We want this to be a differentiator for us," he said. "This isn't just a 'nice to have.' This isn't, 'We're only doing this because a client or two or competitors are doing it.' We believe in it, and we want to embrace that so that we can stay ahead."
Why this matters for legal professionals
The firms profiled here are not treating AI as a sideshow. They are tying adoption directly to client demands - faster responses, lower costs, and more transparency. That pressure will only increase. Attorneys who understand how these tools work, how to prompt them effectively, and where their limits lie will be better positioned to deliver what clients now expect. The ethical guardrails are real, but so is the competitive edge for those who train on them now.
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