Australia’s digital maturity – and practitioners’ embrace of new technologies relative to overseas counterparts – is one reason global provider Harvey has established a presence in Sydney.
In a recent chat with Lawyers Weekly, Harvey’s general counsel, John LaBarre, and new Australian country manager, Ashleigh Whittaker (both pictured), reflected on the provider’s decision to expand its physical presence into the Asia-Pacific region, its plans for the Australian market, and perceptions of the current landscape.
Australian expansion
The conversation with Whittaker and LaBarre took place against the backdrop of Harvey’s expansion Down Under, with the opening of its first APAC office in Sydney and the “immediate” hiring of 15 new roles across sales, customer success, and operations, “with additional roles to follow in 2026”, the provider said.
The provider sees Australia as a “core market”, it said in a statement last week, and already boasts a “strong base” of existing customers in some of the nation’s BigLaw firms, such as Clayton Utz, Arnold Bloch Leibler, King & Wood Mallesons, Gilbert + Tobin, and A&O Shearman.
Its presence Down Under, Harvey said, will mean that the provider can more closely innovate and build with Australian partners and provide them with on-the-ground support when it is needed.
Speaking about the expansion, Harvey co-founder and chief executive Winston Weinberg said: “Australia is one of the most forward-thinking legal markets in the world, and our customers here have been incredibly innovative in proving what’s possible with AI.
“We’re making a long-term commitment to Australia that will allow us to provide customers with on-the-ground support and co-develop new solutions together to transform the legal industry.”
Whittaker said: “Harvey helps law firms transform the way they work and enterprise teams drive tangible productivity outcomes, and we feel fortunate that so many Australian law firms already trust Harvey to deliver secure enterprise AI.
“Our goal is to help lawyers spend less time on repetitive work, and more time on high-impact, strategic matters.”
Whittaker continued: “With our local hub now open and a growing team, we’re ready to capitalise on the strong momentum created by our flagship customers here.
“In particular, we see significant opportunities for in-house teams and firms alike to deliver greater business value through AI.”
Aussies ‘ready to jump in’
Speaking to Lawyers Weekly, LaBarre and Whittaker said that setting up shop in Australia made sense for Harvey – which has customers in over 50 jurisdictions, although not offices in all of those locations – to continue building traction with the Australian market, as well as in appreciation of the fact that Australian lawyers and firms have a “clear recognition” of how GenAI is going to add value to legal processes.
Australian practitioners, he said, “want to be on the forward-thinking edge of how that’s going to happen, and you don’t see that with every firm and every jurisdiction”.
“The Australian market is ready to jump in the deep end and just start,” LaBarre said.
Whittaker supported this, noting that the Australian legal market “has been extremely innovative” in not just utilising a provider like Harvey, but leaning into making a “meaningful impact on the way that everybody’s practising”.
“There’s a lot of opportunity we’re really excited for right now, [including] working with in-house teams and being that provider where you can work in Harvey and collaborate between your law firm and outside counsel,” Whittaker said.
This goal is somewhat challenging, LaBarre noted, but Harvey is confident that it has “solved that” and will be able to garner greater collaboration between law firms and law departments.
“The idea will be [that] law firms can start a project on their end, then share it with the client, or vice versa. And they can work on it in a collaborative way, where the client and the law firm can bring together the resources they need and not have to duplicate things by maintaining different versions of things on different systems,” he said.
This, Whittaker said, will allow teams of all stripes to “get to the strategic work faster”.
The provider has invested in local processing to better support Australian customers, is hiring for a customer success role in Sydney, and is focused on bolstering its workflow capabilities, given that Australians are “the heaviest users” of Harvey’s workflows, the pair said.
Australian firms, Whittaker said, have “really taken the running” with workflow capabilities, be it the “ability to actually turn what are their canonical processes into workflows that represent the way that they work, leverage our brain and our tooling and our integrations, but also link that in with IP, know-how, precedent and process”.
“We have seen Australian law firms lean into that,” she said, calling users Down Under “super innovative”.
“I think that opens up this really incredible opportunity within the market to be super specific, not only in region, but for each company and law firm,” she said.
Jerome Doraisamy is the managing editor of Lawyers Weekly and HR Leader. He is also the author of The Wellness Doctrines book series, an admitted solicitor in New South Wales, and a board director of the Minds Count Foundation.
You can email Jerome at:
