:Harvey: In Practice: How Litigation Teams Manage Cases From Intake to Appeal
See how litigators use Harvey across the lifecycle of a case to manage complex records, sharpen strategy, and move forward with confidence.
Litigation work rarely follows a straight line. Teams contend with large, unstructured records, evolving facts, and tight timelines as cases move from investigation, through discovery and trial, and ultimately appellate processes.
Harvey fits naturally into the tools lawyers already use, helping litigation teams organize complex information, surface what matters most, and apply legal judgment with speed and confidence. The result is information symmetry: a deep, shared understanding of the record that leaves little room for surprise from opposing counsel or witness testimony.
Below are representative ways litigation teams use Harvey to build, pressure-test, and execute strategy across the lifecycle of a case — from initial assessment through appeal.
Stage 1: Initial Case Assessment
Early Case Theory Generation
Developing a compelling case theory early in the litigation process is essential to shaping strategy, guiding discovery, and positioning the matter for favorable resolution. Harvey enables litigators to generate initial defenses, theories of liability, and potential leverage points by combining originating case documents with authoritative legal data from trusted, integrated knowledge sources.
This accelerates the brainstorming phase, allowing legal teams to explore multiple strategic avenues and identify the strongest arguments before committing significant resources (or filing vulnerable arguments). By surfacing legal authorities and factual connections that might otherwise be overlooked, Harvey ensures that case theories are grounded in both the evidence and the law from the outset.
In Practice: Delivering a Chronology of Facts and Potential Defenses
In this walkthrough, a litigation associate uses Harvey during a regulatory investigation by organizing a large document production in Vault and searching across thousands of communications to surface key facts. Harvey generates citation-backed findings, flags potentially privileged materials, and helps assemble a structured chronology — allowing the team to assess the facts and potential defenses more efficiently.
Stage 2: Discovery and Fact Development
Discovery is often the most resource-intensive phase of litigation. Here are two examples of how Harvey streamlines key parts of this process: drafting discovery documents and supporting deposition preparation and analysis.
Drafting Discovery Requests and Responses
Harvey helps litigators draft discovery documents that are informed by the relevant litigation files and integrated legal authorities. By leveraging large document storage capabilities in tandem with primary law knowledge capabilities, teams can produce discovery requests that are tailored to the specific issues in dispute, as well as objections and responses that are legally defensible and strategically sound. This reduces the time spent on drafting and review while improving the overall quality and consistency of discovery practice.
Deposition Preparation and Analysis
Harvey accelerates deposition preparation by helping litigators synthesize complex factual and technical concepts to generate targeted questions for deponents. After the deposition, Harvey distills transcripts into concise summaries tailored to client- or firm-specific preferences, enabling attorneys to quickly identify key admissions, inconsistencies, and strategic takeaways.
At Mijares, partners use Harvey to identify inconsistencies in expert reports in minutes — a task that previously required hours of manual review — improving both response time and the quality of their analysis.
Stage 3: Briefing and Motion Practice
Drafting Motions and Briefs
The quality of written advocacy is often determinative of litigation outcomes, and drafting persuasive motions and briefs requires a command of both the facts and the law. Harvey is uniquely situated to offer assistance here: its large document storage capabilities and custom writing style offerings plug directly into authoritative primary law sources via knowledge source integrations. These tools help litigators draft motions and briefs that are based in the facts, guided by firm precedents, and grounded in citable, traceable law.
Oral Argument Preparation
Effective oral advocacy requires anticipating the questions a court is likely to ask and preparing thoughtful, well-supported responses. Harvey's Assistant, also accessible via mobile for on-the-go preparation, helps litigators anticipate likely questions from the bench based on an analysis of both parties' briefings and the issues in dispute. This enables attorneys to sharpen arguments, uncover blind spots, and engage with a virtual sparring partner ahead of key arguments. By reducing the uncertainty inherent in oral advocacy, Harvey helps legal teams present their cases with greater confidence and precision.
At Lynn Pinker Hurst & Schwegmann (LPHS), attorneys used Harvey to analyze hundreds of insurance documents provided by opposing counsel on the morning of a mediation. Harvey surfaced key insights within minutes, allowing the team to focus on resolving remaining issues rather than spending the day on manual document review.
“Harvey has become a true thinking partner. It helps us pressure-test arguments, explore strategies, and deliver value faster than ever.”
Chris Schwegmann
Managing Partner at LPHS
Stage 4: Trial Preparation and Presentation
Cross-Examination Question Development
Witness testimony makes or breaks a case at trial, and effective cross-examination requires a deep understanding of each witness's prior statements, testimony, and potential vulnerabilities. Harvey helps litigators generate targeted cross-examination questions directly from depositions, prior statements, and related impeachment materials, surfacing inconsistencies, weaknesses, and areas ripe for challenge. By automating the initial analysis of witness materials, Harvey frees trial teams to focus on refining their questioning strategy and courtroom delivery.
Responsive Document Identification
Exhibit lists can contain thousands of documents, and identifying those that are responsive to opposing counsel's allegations or case narratives is a time- and resource-intensive task, particularly under the time constraints of a trial. Harvey enables litigators to query large document sets in natural language, surfacing documents that are directly responsive to specific allegations, testimony, and themes. This empowers legal teams to conduct targeted, efficient searches across the record, ensuring that no critical evidence is overlooked and no rebuttable representation is left uncorrected for the judge and jury.
Stage 5: Post-Trial and Appeals
Appellate Record Parsing
Appellate practice demands a meticulous review of the trial record to identify the materials necessary to support arguments on appeal. With Harvey, appellate teams can quickly parse the record, identifying and organizing key evidence for inclusion in appellate filings. This reduces the time and effort required to compile appendices and ensures that appellate arguments are fully supported by the record below. In this way, Harvey empowers appellate litigators to focus their expertise on crafting compelling arguments and positioning their clients for success on appeal.
From early investigation through briefing and resolution, Harvey helps litigation teams turn volume, complexity, and time pressure into clear, focused strategy. Want to see how Harvey helps litigation teams stay in control of the record and approach each stage of a case with confidence? Contact our team below to learn more.
