With a $15.5 billion valuation and hundreds of millions of dollars in recent funding, Harvey has plenty of cash to hire talent—and has already been attracting Big Law lawyers. During the first half of the year, the San Francisco-based legal AI purveyor hired more large firm lawyers than its rivals at Anthropic, OpenAI, and Legora combined.
That’s according to a review released in September by Firm Prospects, a company that tracks lawyer moves at Am Law 200 firms. The review noted moves by 46 lawyers in the first half of the year to artificial intelligence companies, particularly those with a major legal industry presence. The moves included 22 hires at Harvey, eight at Anthropic, five each at OpenAI and Legora, three at Sierra, two at xAI, and one at Perplexity.
While those hires represent just a fraction of the nearly 16,000 moves tracked from Jan. 1 through June 30, Firm Prospects said AI companies are becoming “a distinct destination category” for Am Law 200 lawyers. The lawyers who jumped to artificial intelligence roles included 40 associates, five partners, and one counsel, the report said.
- Legal AI companies are pulling talent from Big Law fast, with Harvey alone hiring 22 Am Law 200 lawyers in six months.
- Many lawyers are moving into “legal engineer” roles paying about $220,000, blending legal work, product strategy and client support.
- Harvey and Legora now have nearly 600 open roles, including about 100 seeking legal experience, fueled by billions in funding.
- Firm leaders face rising pressure to retain lawyers with AI and tech skills as new career paths reshape recruitment and advancement.
The Roles They’re Filling
One-third of the lawyers were hired for so-called “legal engineer” jobs, Firm Prospects said. Publicly available job listings from legal AI players Harvey and Legora said legal engineer roles are made up largely of former practicing attorneys who assist customers as they train on, implement, and use AI tools.
In major legal markets like Chicago, San Francisco, and New York, the pay range for the roles starts at or around $220,000, according to the job listings—a figure in the ballpark of starting associate salaries at a number of Am Law 200 firms. Some of the roles work with law firms, others with in-house legal departments. The companies are also recruiting for lawyers with specialized practice expertise, like tax, litigation, or private equity.
In its listings, Legora said the role “doesn’t fit” into a traditional lawyer job box. “It’s part legal ops, part product specialist, part solutions architect, and part client whisperer,” the company’s job listings said.
Aside from the 15 legal engineers, Firm Prospects said Big Law lawyers were also tapped for research, go-to-market, and strategy roles, though it is not entirely clear if those positions are specifically related to the legal industry.
Rapid Growth
Headcounts at legal AI companies like Legora and Harvey have risen sharply in the last year. Legora, headquartered in Stockholm, told the Financial Times in June that it is aiming to grow from 650 employees to 1,500 by the end of the year. Harvey said in August that it has 1,400 employees. That’s a 180% increase from December 2025, when the company said on its website it had a workforce of nearly 500.
The companies have not publicly specified how many lawyers they have on staff. A review of current open positions listed on both companies’ websites shows that more than 15% of the openings at Harvey and Legora are aimed at lawyers. Together, the companies have just under 600 openings, with 100 jobs seeking individuals with legal experience.
Look for those numbers to continue increasing as the companies hire at scale to help develop, sell, and refine their AI products. Both have raised hundreds of millions in funding this year and have said they are aiming to grow quickly.
Legora announced in March that it had raised an additional $550 million from investors specifically to accelerate the company’s expansion across the United States. The funding round valued the company at $5.55 billion.
Harvey also raised $200 million in March, and said it intended to use the money, in part, to build out its legal engineering teams. In September, investors added another $550 million to the kitty. The company’s valuation spiked from $11 billion in the first round to $15.5 billion in the second, a 41% increase in just six months.
Big Tech Jumps In
At the same time, companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google have been jumping into the legal AI fray. On Sept. 17, OpenAI announced in a press release the launch of GPT-6 Astra, which includes “settings, tools, and context for professional legal work” and can be used by Harvey, Legora, and other players to build out legal AI tools.
In May, Anthropic also introduced a dozen legal practice-related tools to its Claude platform. And Google, in August, launched Gemini Enterprise for Legal, which it said is engineered for legal industry requirements and workflows.
The arrival of AI giants should only serve to raise demand for lawyers to move into technology company roles. OpenAI is hiring dedicated engineering teams for legal products. Anthropic, job listings show, is hiring for roles that use legal expertise to help put AI tools to real-world use. And Google is recruiting lawyers to work closely with Gemini and its other AI product teams.
The Broader Lateral Market
The Firm Prospects report also examined lateral movement patterns across the Am Law 200. One of the key findings: Nearly a quarter of the lawyers who moved firm to firm during the first half of the year did so as part of a group of three attorneys or more.
According to the report:
- 8,804 Am Law 200 lawyers moved from firm to firm in the first half of the year.
- Of the lawyers who moved, 2,080, or 23.6%, were part of moves where three or more lawyers went from one firm to another.
- All told, 403 groups of three or more lawyers made lateral moves (or, in the parlance of the report, took the same “routes” between firms). Of those, 140 included five or more attorneys and 32 had 10 or more.
Much of the group movement appears to have been driven by senior lawyers. Partners accounted for 41% of the lawyers involved in group moves, the data showed. And the partner share rose when lawyers moved at the same time and place. In an interview with The National Law Journal, Adam Braveman, Firm Prospects’ CEO, said the data underlines the greater emphasis firms are putting on hiring senior-level lawyers as they rethink their staffing models in the age of AI.
A Quarterly Decline
The report suggests that the Big Law lateral market lost some steam between the first and second quarters of the year. In Q2, 5,148 lawyers lateraled to Am Law 200 firms, down 6.3% from Q1. The most notable change came in partner arrivals, which fell 8.8% between the two quarters. Associate figures declined 3.5%, and counsel moves dropped 5.9%, according to the Firm Prospects data.
Whether the decline is an actual trend or a quarterly blip is an open question. September saw blockbuster lateral moves, including the jump by Michael Aiello, a rainmaker and chair of Weil, Gotshal & Manges’ corporate practice, and five other top corporate partners to Cravath, Swaine & Moore. (The American Lawyer, which reported on the move, noted that Cravath has rarely added lateral groups, but may be altering its approach.)
The Firm Prospects data may also shift. The company noted that it has not yet captured destination data on more than 2,700 of the lawyers who departed from Am Law 200 firms. It said it expects to resolve those gaps as most moves “are confirmed and recorded.”
Talent at Risk
In a news release, Firm Prospects’ Braveman warned that firm leaders should keep a close eye on the AI industry and “its growing appetite” for Big Law talent. New roles and career opportunities could “create new paths to partnerships” for associates, Braveman said.
In other words, firms should be asking what the career path might look like for an associate with skills that straddle law and technology. At present, jumping to an AI company may provide a clearer career path than the law firm partnership track in the eyes of such a lawyer.
As artificial intelligence becomes more deeply embedded in their businesses, however, law firm leaders will need to reevaluate how they mentor, compensate, and promote those associates. One skilled in AI, knowledge management, or client-facing technology work may deliver exceptional long-term value to the law firm.
At present, the number of lawyers jumping to AI companies is small. As we noted, the data showed that just 46 moved to AI companies in the first half of the year. But with investors showering legal AI companies with money and Big Tech entering the market, lawyer hiring may escalate.
Another potential issue: Big firms are currently competing hard to retain their partners and recruit others, often in packs. What happens if AI companies, as they grow, begin looking for more senior lawyers who bring deep practice expertise and credibility with law firms and in-house legal departments? It’s a question firm leaders would do well to start answering now.
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David L. Brownis a legal affairs writer and consultant, who has served as head of editorial at ALM Media, editor-in-chief of The National Law Journal and Legal Times, and executive editor of The American Lawyer. He consults on thought leadership strategy and creates in-depth content for legal industry clients and works closely with Best Law Firms as senior content consultant.