Harvey, a San Francisco-based legal AI company, is opening an office in Boston with plans to hire at least 40 people, growing its local headcount from about 10 employees to as many as 50 within the next nine months. The company's software is already used inside some of Boston's biggest law firms and corporations, and now Harvey wants a physical foothold near them.
According to The Boston Globe, Harvey's Boston employees will support existing local customers, including the law firms Ropes & Gray, Mintz, Foley Hoag, and Verrill, along with DraftKings, athenahealth, Toast, and Boston University. The same office will also house salespeople tasked with landing new customers in the region. Harvey is still selecting its exact office location, but the company aims to be close to the downtown law firms that are already customers.
A Fast-Growing Startup With Deep Pockets
Harvey develops legal AI tools built to automate workflows such as contract analysis, due diligence, compliance, and litigation work, per Reuters. The outlet reports that Harvey says its software is used by 80 percent of the 100 highest-grossing law firms in the United States, and that the company has won international clients including South Korea's Kim & Chang as it expands its customer base, according to the same report.
The company's growth has been fueled by a fresh injection of capital. The Boston Globe's account states Harvey raised $550 million this month in a deal valuing the company at almost $16 billion, while Harvey's own announcement describes the same $550 million round at a $15.5 billion valuation. Either way, it's a massive war chest: the Globe's report notes Harvey now has 1,500 employees and about $400 million in revenue.
A HubSpot Veteran Steers the Expansion
Harvey's chief operating officer, Katie Burke, joined the company in 2024 after almost 12 years at HubSpot, where she served as chief people officer, the Globe reports. Burke lived in the Boston area for 17 years before her current role, giving her a personal stake in the city's tech scene as well as a professional one.
Burke told the Globe that proximity to customers and the region's talent base matter to Harvey's decision, adding that she believes Boston will be a great market for the company. The report notes the Boston region has a deep base of experienced business software talent, a factor that appears to have weighed into where Harvey chose to set up shop next.
Massachusetts' AI Courtship Pays Off
Burke pointed to the Massachusetts AI Coalition as a factor that helped attract Harvey's attention, and said the coalition's work has been noticed and appreciated, according to the Globe's report. The coalition was formed by health-tracking company Whoop with support from HubSpot, DraftKings, and roughly a dozen other local tech companies, according to an earlier Boston Globe report, and it aims to flood the region with more than 100 in-person events this year aimed at students, entrepreneurs, and would-be startup founders. That effort was designed to complement the Healey administration's $100 million in state funding for AI initiatives, the same report states.
“That brand awareness is helpful because it makes it a whole lot easier for companies like ours to get excited about planting a flag in in Boston,” Burke said, per the Globe's reporting. Harvey isn't the first AI company to make that bet recently — Anthropic and the Swedish AI coding company Lovable have each opened offices in the Boston area over the past year, according to the same account.
Legal Tech's Bigger Picture
Harvey's expansion fits into a broader surge of money flowing into legal AI. Reuters reports that rival Legora raised $550 million at a $5.55 billion valuation in March, while Clio raised $500 million at a $5 billion valuation in November. Burke has separately said global expansion and growth in Harvey's mid-market business are top priorities, telling Legal Technology that the legal sector is forecast to be the next frontier for AI adoption after engineering.
One Boston client is already showcasing what that adoption looks like in practice. Ropes & Gray has integrated Harvey with its iManage document repository, letting legal teams securely access and manage firm documents directly within Harvey's platform, according to the firm's own account on Ropes & Gray's website. The firm says that integration has accelerated its adoption of Harvey firmwide by eliminating manual steps once required to export and upload documents.
