Harvey vs Legora, compared

Harvey describes itself as built for "the world's top law firms and in-house legal teams". It is a set of modules around a shared core: agents that carry out multi-step tasks, a vault for storing and analysing documents in bulk, legal research, shared workspaces, and add-ins for Word and Outlook.

Legora says it is built for "firms and in-house teams", and sells into segments from law firms and mid-sized firms to in-house, in-house SMB, the public sector and private equity. Its core is an agent, Tabular Review and workflows, with research, an editor and add-ins around them.

Both sell by custom quote. Both hold SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001. Both connect to iManage and NetDocuments, the document systems law firms run on. Most head-to-head pages stop at that point and compare them module by module. This one does that first, then asks the question an in-house team should ask: is either of them built for the way in-house work arrives?

1. Agents. Multi-step tasks, carried out on a lawyer's instruction.
2. Vault. Store documents and analyse them in bulk.
3. Knowledge. Legal, regulatory and tax research.
4. Spaces. Shared workspaces for working with co-counsel, with ethical walls between matters.
5. Contract Intelligence and Horizon Scanning. Analysis across a contract set, and tracking of regulatory change.
6. Command Center. Usage analytics across the licence.
7. Intake and Legal Work Orchestration. Marked new on Harvey's site, and aimed at in-house teams.

1. Agent. Carries out legal tasks on a lawyer's instruction.
2. Tabular Review. One grid that pulls the same answers from many documents: every change-of-control clause in a data room, every termination right in a supplier set.
3. Workflows. Repeatable legal processes, set up and run by the team.
4. Legal Research and Editor. Research, and a place to draft and edit.
5. Add-ins and mobile. Word and Outlook add-ins, and a mobile app.
6. Portal. A space for collaborating with clients, which says a good deal about who it is built for.
7. Skills, Monitors, Lists and Intake. Newer modules, along with an integration ecosystem Legora calls "Legora aOS".

Harvey is the broader toolkit. It has more modules, a research product that covers regulatory and tax work, and a longer list of certifications, including ISO 27701 for privacy and AIUC-1. It publishes how it uses models: several providers, with an Auto setting that picks one per task. It is suited to a firm that wants one platform for research, drafting and document review across many practice areas.

Legora is the more focused workspace. Its centre of gravity is Tabular Review, which suits deal teams pulling the same facts from hundreds of documents. It adds a mobile app and a client portal, and it doesn't publish which models it uses. It is suited to a firm that does a lot of bulk review and wants its clients in the same space.

Pricing estimates put Harvey well above Legora per seat, and both report seat minimums. The legal AI pricing guide has the figures and where they come from.

For a law firm, those differences decide the choice. For an in-house team, they mostly don't, because both platforms share the same shape.

Look at what the two platforms are organised around. Harvey has Spaces with ethical walls between matters and work for co-counsel. Legora has a client Portal and a grid for data rooms. Both plug into iManage and NetDocuments. These are the tools of a firm: work arrives as a matter, a lawyer opens it, and the platform helps that lawyer get through it faster.

In-house work doesn't arrive that way. It arrives as a message from sales about a customer's paper, a renewal nobody flagged, a supplier asking for the DPA back by Friday, and twenty NDAs a week from across the business. Nobody opens a matter. Somebody has to notice the request, pick it up, do it against the team's positions, send it back and file it, whether or not a lawyer has a free hour.

Both vendors have started to address this. Harvey's Intake and Legal Work Orchestration are marked new and aimed at in-house teams, and Legora lists Intake and an in-house segment. But intake added to a firm's toolkit is still a front door to a lawyer's queue. The lawyer still drives every module behind it.

1. Requests picked up where the business asks. In Slack, in email, in the channel sales already uses. Not a new portal the business has to learn.
2. Work done, not drafts to finish. A small team doesn't need a faster way to do every NDA itself. It needs the NDA done, against its playbook, and handed back for sign-off.
3. One playbook for the whole team. The team's positions and fallbacks, written once and applied the same way to every contract, whoever asked for it.
4. Records that keep themselves. Every contract, its key terms and its renewal date, filed as the work is done, so the team can answer "what did we agree with this supplier?" in seconds.
5. Work that starts on its own. Renewals checked each morning. Every contract that lands in a channel read and triaged. The lawyer joins at the point of judgement.

Claren doesn't give a lawyer a toolkit. It gives the team envoys: AI employees, each with its own computer and its own memory. They take requests from the Claren app or straight from Slack, review every contract against the team's playbook, and hand back tracked-change redlines in Word with a comment on every change, fallback positions applied and a summary of what's off-playbook.

As they work, envoys file each contract and its terms in the team's datastore, and build the trackers, dashboards and review screens the team needs on top of it. Routines run on a schedule or when a Slack message lands, so renewals get checked and new paper gets read without anyone asking. Envoys pass work to each other, and ask before anything leaves the team.

Teams sit inside Claren the way they sit inside a legal function: managers, members and private teams, each with its own envoys, shared folder and datastore. The playbook goes in once, and every envoy follows it.

That is the difference between a platform that makes each lawyer faster and work taken off the team. Acquisition diligence across a whole data room, read and indexed, with every file reviewed.

1. Are you a firm, or a legal team inside a business? A firm choosing between Harvey and Legora should weigh breadth against Tabular Review. An in-house team should ask whether it wants a firm's platform at all.
2. Where do your requests come from? If they come from the business, in Slack and email, you want something that picks them up there. Claren's envoys do.
3. Do you need a faster lawyer, or the work done? Harvey and Legora make the lawyer at the keyboard faster. Claren's envoys do the work and hand it back for sign-off.
4. Who keeps the records? With a toolkit, the filing is yours. Claren's envoys file every contract and its terms as they go, and build your trackers on top.

Many in-house teams instruct firms that run on Harvey or Legora. That suits the work that goes out: the litigation, the large transaction, the specialist advice. It doesn't touch the work that stays in, which is most of it.

Claren takes the work that stays in: the NDAs, supplier contracts, renewals, policies and the questions from across the business. Envoys pick it up from Slack, do it against the team's playbook and hand it back done, so the lawyers spend their hours on judgement and the outside counsel budget goes further.