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This week, we talk with Gabe Pereyra, President and co-founder at Harvey, about his path from DeepMind and Google Brain to launching Harvey with Winston Weinberg; how a roommate’s real-world legal workflows met early GPT-4 access and OpenAI backing; why legal emerged as the right domain for large models; and how personal ties to the profession plus a desire to tackle big societal problems shaped a mission to apply advanced AI where language and law intersect.

Gabe’s core thesis lands hard, “the models are the product.” Rather than narrow tools for single tasks, Harvey opted for a broad assistant approach. Lawyers live in text and email, so dialog becomes the control surface, an “AI associate” supporting partners and teams. Early demos showed useful output across many tasks, which reinforced a generalist design, then productized connections into Outlook and Word, plus a no-code Workflow Builder.

Go-to-market strategy flipped the usual script. Instead of starting small, Harvey partnered early with Allen & Overy and leaders like David Wakeling. Large firms supplied layered review, which reduced risk from model errors and increased learning velocity. From there the build list grew, security and data privacy, dedicated capacity, links to firm systems, case law, DMS, data rooms, and eDiscovery. A matter workspace sits at the center. Adoption rises with surface area, with daily activity approaching seventy percent where four or more product surfaces see regular use. ROI work now includes analysis of write-offs and specialized workflows co-built with firms and clients, for example Orrick, A&O, and PwC.

Talent, training, and experience value come next. Firms worry about job paths, and Gabe does not duck that concern. Models handle complex work, which raises anxiety, yet also shortens learning curves. Harvey collaborates on curricula using past deals, plus partnerships with law schools. Return on experience shows up in recruiting, PwC reports stronger appeal among early-career talent, and quality-of-life gains matter. On litigation use cases, chronology builders require firm expertise and guardrails, with evaluation methods that mirror how senior associates review junior output. Frequent use builds a mental model for where errors tend to appear.

Partnerships round out the strategy. Research content from LexisNexis and Wolters Kluwer, work product in iManage and NetDocuments, CLM workflows via Ironclad, with plans for data rooms, eDiscovery, and billing. Vision extends to a complete matter management service, emails, documents, prior work, evaluation, billing links, and strict ethical walls, all organized by client-matter. Global requirements drive multi-region storage and controls, including Australia’s residency rules. The forward look centers on differentiation through customization, firms encode expertise into models, workflows, and agents, then deliver outcomes faster and at software margins. “The value sits in your people,” Gabe says, and firms that convert know-how into systems will lead the pack.

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[Special Thanks to ⁠Legal Technology Hub⁠ for their sponsoring this episode.]

⁠⁠⁠Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Transcript

Continue Reading The Models Are the Product: Gabe Pereyra on Building an AI Associate and Matter-Centric Workflows

For the 300th episode of The Geek in Review, we celebrate in true “three geeks” fashion by bringing back two familiar voices: Kris Satkunas, Director of Strategic Consulting at LexisNexis, and legal pricing expert Toby Brown, CEO at DV8 Legal Strategies. Kris joins to walk through highlights from the newly released 2025 CounselLink Trends Report, and Toby brings his trademark insight… and a touch of skepticism to the discussion. Together, they explore what the latest data reveals about legal pricing, client behavior, firm strategy, and the evolving landscape of law firm-client relationships.

The conversation opens with a focus on the headline trend: partner billing rates continue to rise steeply, particularly in high-value areas like M&A and regulatory work. Despite clients claiming to negotiate hard on pricing, the data on effective rates, what clients actually pay, suggests those increases are sticking. Kris points out that clients are becoming more sophisticated in managing blended rates and staffing strategies, using analytics and technology to influence outcomes, even if hourly billing still dominates.

A recurring theme is the widening rate gap between large and mid-sized firms, now a staggering 61%. Kris attributes this to the concentration of high-rate work in large firms and their dominance in practices like M&A and regulatory. Toby adds that the presence of pricing professionals at larger firms contributes to more strategic rate setting—something mid-sized firms often lack. The team also discusses a new report metric analyzing new matter spend, which reveals that even fresh legal work is increasingly flowing to the largest firms, countering narratives that mid-sized firms are winning market share.

When the conversation shifts to Alternative Fee Arrangements (AFAs), Kris cautiously celebrates a slight uptick in usage, while Toby remains doubtful about long-term momentum. They agree that lawyers’ difficulty in scoping matters remains a key barrier. The role of project management professionals is highlighted as crucial for moving the industry forward on AFAs—but adoption is still slow, especially outside of established comfort zones like IP and employment law.

Greg brings up another area ripe for disruption: ALSPs and their potential to absorb high-volume, low-risk work. While Kris hasn’t yet seen a data-supported shift toward ALSPs, Toby sees tremendous opportunity—particularly when ALSPs combine process standardization and AI tools. The hosts also discuss specific use cases, like LegalMation for employment litigation, where existing tech could already reduce cost and inefficiency, if only firms were willing to change.

The episode closes with a look ahead. Kris notes the eye-popping rate growth among associates—some nearing $2,000/hour—as a surprising trend, while urging caution in interpreting conflicting data from different sources. Her “crystal ball” prediction? Legal rates will likely continue to climb, especially in high-stakes practice areas, while AFAs may finally gain ground if firms invest in the infrastructure to scope and manage work properly. As always, the team ends with good humor, mutual respect, and a shared love for data—exactly the energy you’d expect for The Geek in Review’s milestone 300th episode.

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[Special Thanks to ⁠Legal Technology Hub⁠ for their sponsoring this episode.]

Blue Sky: ⁠⁠@geeklawblog.com⁠⁠ ⁠⁠@marlgeb⁠⁠
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Transcript:

Continue Reading Episode 300: 2025 CounselLink Trends Report with Kris Satkunas and Toby Brown

In this episode of The Geek in Review podcast, hosts Marlene Gebauer and Greg Lambert welcome back Kris Satkunas, Director of Strategic Consulting at LexisNexis CounselLink, to discuss the findings of the 2024 Trends Report. The report, now in its 11th year, provides valuable insights into the legal industry, particularly focusing on hourly rates and spending patterns.

Satkunas explains that the data used in the report comes from the CounselLink Insight benchmarking database, which normalizes and anonymizes data related to matters and billing from CounselLink customers. This year’s report highlights significant increases in hourly rates, with firms relying more heavily on this lever to increase revenue and offset rising costs due to inflation. However, the degree to which rates have increased in recent years is noteworthy, with certain practice areas, such as M&A and IP litigation, commanding even higher rate increases.

Despite the substantial rate hikes, the report shows that blended rates at the matter level are not increasing as much, suggesting that other factors, such as staffing and leveraging, are helping to mitigate individual rate increases. Satkunas also notes that while there is a perception that high rates may drive clients to mid-sized firms, the data does not support this trend, with large law firms maintaining and even growing their client base.

The discussion also touches on the adoption of alternative fee arrangements (AFAs), which has remained relatively stagnant over the years, with only around 10% of matters having some form of AFA. However, Satkunas remains optimistic that the increasing pressure on corporations to manage costs, coupled with the adoption of AI and other technologies, may lead to a greater uptake of AFAs in the coming years.

Looking ahead, Satkunas predicts that rates will continue to rise, but the legal industry will likely see changes in the business model as AI becomes more integrated into legal practices. She emphasizes the importance of in-house counsel investing in the right talent to assess their needs and determine which technologies will best address those needs. Additionally, as AI advances, more transactional work may become commoditized, potentially leading to increased adoption of AFAs for these components of legal matters.

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Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠

Transcript

Continue Reading 2024 Trends Report: Dynamics Shaping the Future of Legal w/CounselLink’s Kris Satkunas

In this episode, Greg Lambert speaks with Whitney Triplet, Paul Campbell, and Adonica Black about the LexisNexis African Ancestry Network and LexisNexis Rule of Law Foundation Fellowship 2023 cohort. They discuss the goal of the fellowship program and the projects undertaken by the fellows, including technology solutions to alleviate racial bias in jury selection and law clinic support tools to combat systemic racism in the legal system. The conversation also covers the role of analytics in identifying and addressing disparities in the legal system, as well as the future of the fellowship program and initiatives.
Takeaways
  • The LexisNexis African Ancestry Network and LexisNexis Rule of Law Foundation Fellowship aims to tackle systemic racism and inequities in the legal system through technology solutions and project-based approaches.
  • Projects undertaken by the fellows include developing a mobile app to increase literacy and comprehension of critical rule of law concepts, creating an accessible repository of inclusive curriculum resources for law school instruction, and building bridges for HBCU students to legal fields that lack diversity.
  • The fellows’ research focuses on addressing racial bias in jury selection and improving legal clinics to provide better access to justice for underrepresented individuals.
  • The use of analytics and technology can help identify and address disparities in the legal system, but it requires diverse data sets and a recognition of biases to ensure equitable outcomes.

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Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠

Transcript

Continue Reading Breaking Barriers and Building Bridges: Tackling Racial Bias in Law with LexisNexis Fellows 2023 (TGIR Ep. 231)

Many of us have wondered when the big two legal information providers would jump into the Generative AI game, and it looks like LexisNexis is going public first with the launch of Lexis+ AI. We sat down with ⁠Jeff Pfeifer⁠, Chief Product Officer for UK, Ireland, Canada, and US, and discuss the launch and what it means for LexisNexis going forward.

Pfeifer discusses how LexisNexis+ AI offers conversational search, summarization, and drafting tools to help lawyers work more efficiently. The tools provide contextual, iterative search so users can refine and improve results. The drafting tools can help with tasks like writing client emails or advisory statements. The summarization features can summarize datasets like regulations, opinions, and complaints.

LexisNexis is working with leading AmLaw 50 firms in a commercial preview program to get feedback and input on the AI tools. LexisNexis also launched an AI Insider Program for any interested firms to learn about AI and how it may impact their business. There is definitely demand for the AI Insider Program with over 3,000 law firms already signed up.

Pfeifer emphasizes LexisNexis’ focus on responsible AI. They developed and follow a set of AI principles to guide their product development, including understanding the real-world impact, preventing bias, explaining how solutions work, ensuring human oversight and accountability, and protecting privacy.

Pfeifer predicts AI tools like LexisNexis Plus AI will increase access to legal services by allowing lawyers and firms to work more efficiently and take on more work. He also sees opportunities to use the tools to help pro se litigants and courts. However, he cautions that the responsible and ethical development and use of AI is crucial.

Overall, Pfeifer believes AI will greatly improve efficiency and capacity in the legal profession over the next 2-5 years but that responsible adoption of the technology is key.

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Music: ⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠

⁠Transcript⁠

Continue Reading LexisNexis Bets Big on AI Transforming the Legal Industry: Jeff Pfeifer on the Launch of Lexis+ AI (TGIR Ep. 203)

AI is now a significant part of the legal industry, and technology companies such as LexisNexis are at the forefront of this technology shift. We sat down and talked with ⁠Jeff Reihl⁠, the Executive Vice President, and Chief Technology Officer at LexisNexis, and discussed the current state of AI and its relevance to the legal and research sector. The recent survey conducted by Lexis uncovered that 39% of lawyers, 46% of law students, and 45% of consumers agreed that generative AI tools will significantly transform the practice of law. During Reihl’s sixteen years at LexisNexis he witnessed many innovations such as the nearly universal adoption of iPhone and other mobile products, cloud computing, and document automation, but the speed a acceleration around Generative AI tool like GPT 4.0, Bing, Bard, and others is causing even the big players in the legal industry to quickly adjust to the demands of the market. Jeff highlighted the flexibility and benefits of LexisNexis’ technology, which can provide valuable insights and information to its users on-demand. The organization generates and applies AI-enabled insights that assist users in finding, evaluating, and curating content more quickly and effectively. Jeff went on to explain how AI technology is helping lawyers reduce research time and increase accuracy in creating legal documents. In conclusion, Jeff explained that LexisNexis is committed to promoting innovation in the legal field by utilizing innovative technology solutions to advance research and meet the growing research demand, thereby improving legal professionals’ efficiency and accuracy.

Of course, Lexis is not a new player in the AI field for the legal industry. They began using tools like Google’s BERT AI as early as 2018 and included AI functionality in many of their products on the backend of the resources. With the popularity of chatbot-like AI and the interaction that users are now demanding, it will require a shift in Lexis’ approach going forward. One focus that Reihl stresses, however, is that unlike the public AI chat tools, Lexis’ approach will take in the issues of privacy, security, citation of sources, and the ability to understand how their tools get to the results its users see. Less “black boxes” and more transparency is the goal.

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Music: ⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠

⁠Transcript

Continue Reading The Future of AI within LexisNexis and the Legal Industry with Lexis CTO Jeff Reihl – TGIR Ep. 197

This week we have Damien Riehl, VP, Litigation Workflow and Analytics Content at FastCase, and one of the drivers behind SALI (Standards Advancement for   for the Legal Industry.) Damien is definitely a “big thinker” when it comes to the benefits of creating and using standards for the legal industry. SALI is a system of tagging legal information to allow for better filtering and analysis. It works like Amazon’s product tags, where a user can search for a specific area of law, such as patent law, and then choose between various services such as advice, registration, transactional, dispute, or bankruptcy services. The tags cover everything from the substance of law to the business of law, with over 13,000 tags in the latest version. SALI is being adopted by major legal information providers such as Thomson Reuters, Lexis, Bloomberg, NetDocuments, and iManage, with each provider using the same standardized identifiers for legal work. With this standardization, it will be possible to perform the same API query across different providers and receive consistent results. Imagine the potential of being able to ask one question that is understood by all your database and external systems?
In that same vein, we expand our discussion to include how Artificial Intelligence tools like Large Language Models (i.e., ChatGPT, Google BARD, Meta’s LLM) could assist legal professionals in their quest to find information, create documents, and help outline legal processes and practices.
He proposed three ways of thinking about the work being done by these models, which are largely analogous to traditional methods. The first way is what Riehl refers to as a “bullshitter,” where a model generates information without providing citations for the information. The second way is called a “searcher,” where a model generates a legal brief, but does not provide citations, forcing the user to search for support. The third way is called a “researcher,” where the model finds relevant cases and statutes, extracts relevant propositions, and crafts a brief based on them.
Riehl believes that option three, being a researcher, is the most likely to win in the future, as it provides “ground truth” from the start. He cites Fastcase’s acquisition of Judicata as an example of how AI can be used to help with research by providing unique identifiers for every proposition and citation, enabling users to evaluate the credibility of the information. In conclusion, Riehl sees a future where AI is used to help researchers by providing a pick list of the most common propositions and citations, which can then be further evaluated by the researcher.
One thing is very clear, we are just at the beginning of a shift in how the legal industry processes information. Riehl’s one-two combination of SALI Standards combined with additional AI and human capabilities will create a divide amongst the bullshitters, the searchers, and the researchers.

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Transcript

Continue Reading The Bullshitter, The Searcher, and The Researcher – Damien Riehl on the Dynamic Shift in How the Legal Profession Will Leverage Standards and Artificial Intelligence

Ian McDougall is the General Counsel for LexisNexis, as well as the President of LexisNexis’ Rule of Law Foundation. According to the Foundation, The Rule of Law is made up of four parts:

1. Equality Under the Law
2. Transparency of Law
3. Independent Judiciary
4. Accessible Legal Remedy

For there to be a true existence of Rule of Law, all four parts must be present in the governments which rule the people. McDougall says that no country has mastered the Rule of Law, and that ideals like democracy and justice can cause significant barriers to the Rule of Law. Without the Rule of Law, there is no true access to justice. Without the Rule of Law, commerce doesn’t flow. McDougall is working with partners, including the United Nations, NGOs and corporate operations to establish stable environments, for people, as well as commerce.

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Information Inspirations:

We live in an age of massive data, analytics, business intelligence tools which allow industry leaders to gain insights on their organizations, industry, and competition. With all these resources, data, analytics, and insights at their fingertips, Deloitte’s recent survey of over 1,000 industry leaders exposes that a majority of these leaders still desire the simplicity of spreadsheets. To borrow from Henry Ford, they desire a faster horse.
Continue Reading The Geek in Review Ep. 47: Ian McDougall on LexisNexis’ Rule of Law Foundation

Marlene and Greg went to Raleigh, North Carolina to visit the LexisNexis Technology Center. While there, they got a tour of the facilities and introduction to some of the business techniques implemented by the Lexis team. Jeff Pfeifer sat down and explained Lexis’ new rapid development techniques, including Sprint Design Thinking, and Agile Development Principles. This type of development processes means things move quickly, and problems are broken down into small chunks to solve. It also means that Lexis looks for developers who can collaborate and work directly with the customers to identify issues, and create solutions in days and weeks, rather than months or years.

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Transcript

M: Today we have Jeff Pfeifer, Vice President and Chief Product Officer for North America, for LexisNexis Legal. Welcome to the show, Jeff.

J: It’s great to be with you.
Continue Reading E19 – LexisNexis’ Jeff Pfeifer on Being Like a Startup

Over the weekend, I had a nice conversation with some of my peers in other law firm departments (Marketing, IT, and other administration leaders), about the American Association of Law Libraries’ (AALL) letter to Lexis, asking that Lexis cease their current sales requirement of tying Lexis Advance to non-related materials, including Law360, Lex Machina, print material, and other products. I think my colleague, Jean O’Grady did a great job covering this topic in her blog post, so I won’t re-hash the specifics of the letter. However, it is definitely an issue which those outside the law firm libraries should take notice, and be very concerned. This is something that affects the entire law firm, not just the law librarians.
Continue Reading Why Lexis’ Sales Approach Should Concern Law Firm Management and Leadership