Mike Willis and his teams at PwC are helping legal professionals transform their operations at scale from the heart of Belfast. Mike discusses the value in embracing technology in this sector.
The legal profession is at a turning point. For decades, innovation in law meant incremental improvements: digitising documents, centralising repositories, and automating templates. Each delivered value, but none brought the volume of change now underway. Generative AI is operational and transforming how legal services are delivered at pace.
At PwC, we see this not as adopting a tool, but as rethinking how legal teams work, create value and focus on higher-order tasks. Our global alliance with Harvey, the pioneering legal and professional services AI platform, puts us in a unique position to help clients embrace this responsibly, effectively and most importantly, with ease.
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The PwC × Harvey Alliance
In 2023, PwC announced an exclusive alliance with Harvey, making us the only Big 4 firm with direct access to the platform. Since then, we have gone beyond proofs of concept to deliver real solutions. From launching our Tax AI Assistant, to building AI-enabled tools for M&A due diligence, we have shown that AI is already creating measurable impact in often complicated regulated domains.
For legal teams, this means more than faster review. Harvey delivers insight across Legal, Tax and M&A domains that is enriched with PwC’s expertise. The platform is designed to operate in the real world, with workflows built around the activities that teams perform every day. This is AI applied within frameworks designed for regulatory scrutiny, auditability and professional responsibility.
Harnessing Harvey’s Workflow Builder
Harvey’s Workflow Builder allows legal teams to design and automate end-to-end processes. It enables connected tasks such as contract triage, compliance checks and due diligence into structured workflows that run consistently and at scale.
PwC helps clients unlock this potential: mapping processes, configuring workflows and overlaying governance so Harvey operates within clear boundaries. AI is not just providing answers, but executing repeatable tasks, escalating exceptions and integrating into wider systems.
AI in PwC Managed Services
We are not only advising clients on Harvey. We are embedding it into PwC’s own managed services across contract management, compliance monitoring and regulatory reporting. This shows how AI drives resilience, scalability and quality assurance at enterprise level.
This is not about replacing people but augmenting them. Our teams combine Harvey’s speed and consistency with human judgment, ensuring services remain efficient and trusted.
For many clients, seeing Harvey in action within PwC is as valuable as the advisory support we provide. It is living proof that AI can be integrated safely into legal delivery.
Trust, Governance and Quality
No discussion of AI in legal can ignore trust. PwC’s Trust in AI framework underpins how we design, test and deploy AI solutions. We emphasise transparency, fairness, explainability and accountability, all of which matter when AI is applied to legal work.
We work with clients to set guardrails: defining which tasks AI should handle, where human oversight is required and how outputs are validated. Quality assurance and auditability are built in, giving legal teams confidence in their processes.
By combining Harvey with PwC’s legal and regulatory expertise, we enable adoption that is ambitious yet responsible. This is not about replacing judgment but equipping legal teams with tools they can trust within governance structures that stand up to scrutiny.
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The Future of Legal
Legal functions are shifting from reactive, document-driven units to proactive, insight-generating partners. Generative AI, through platforms like Harvey, underpins this transition.
The disruption of legal by AI is happening now. Those who embrace it thoughtfully will define the profession’s future. Through our partnership with Harvey, and tools like Workflow Builder, PwC is guiding clients through this shift, blending technology, legal expertise and managed services to create a new paradigm for delivery.
The future of legal is here, and it is powered by AI.
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