Maya Kennedy on Building an AI-Native Legal Career Through :Harvey:’s Ambassador Program
A conversation with Maya Kennedy, J.D. Candidate at Boston University School of Law and Harvey Student Ambassador.
This spring, we sat down with Maya Kennedy over lunch at the Harvey office in New York. Maya is a J.D. Candidate at Boston University School of Law and one of our standout Student Ambassadors from the inaugural cohort of Harvey's Law School Ambassador Program. This summer, she is a summer associate at Gunderson Dettmer, working at the forefront of the emerging companies and venture capital space. She recently completed Harvey's "Preparing for Legal Work" certification, with a focus on AI and Legal Ethics.
What made you decide to become a Harvey Ambassador, and how has it given you an edge?
I decided to become an Ambassador after spending time with Harvey and seeing firsthand how useful it could be for my practice area and future career. What I recognized over and over again was that Harvey had the capacity to not only improve legal work from an efficiency standpoint, but also from an accuracy standpoint. And ultimately, I thought to myself, if Harvey can make me a more effective attorney, I have some obligation to my future clients to become very proficient at it.
Some students worry that AI will make their legal skills less valuable. How do you think about that?
I used to think that AI would substitute my legal knowledge. I now view Harvey almost as a coworker. Just like any coworker, you need to understand what their strengths and weaknesses are, what their knowledge base is, and you need to have that information in mind before you start working together in order be effective.
“I used to think that AI would substitute my legal knowledge. I now view :Harvey: almost as a coworker.”
How is the AI transformation in the legal industry changing how you think about your career and the kind of lawyer you want to be?
Understanding how Harvey works, what it's good at, and what its strengths and weaknesses are has changed how I think about my value as a lawyer. Harvey doesn’t make lawyers less important; it simply changes how we create value. I place a higher premium now on social skills, on client skills, and on the more human sides of our profession.
I understand that Harvey has the capacity to make me a better researcher, a better writer, more thorough in my work, and to reduce potential errors. But I also understand that it doesn't replace me, and it's on me to exhibit strong discernment of its output because I own the final deliverable. That shift has been fundamental to how I view my legal education and how I'm preparing myself to be the most effective advocate for my clients. I’m not just preparing to know the law – I’m preparing to use every tool available to deliver the best work product.
“I place a higher premium now on social skills, on client skills, and on the more human sides of our profession.”
How do you use Harvey in law school?
I've used Harvey to practice cold calls, inputting some of the material from class, some slides, and asking it to quiz me. I used to use the foundational models for this but find that Harvey gives more sophisticated questions that are much more in line with what my professors actually test. It makes sense given Harvey is purpose built for lawyers, but directly comparing Harvey with the other platforms blew me away.
I've also used Harvey to practice generating boilerplate documents for my future career, editing them, and customizing them to clients. Harvey has a wide range of use cases, and it can be used in almost any legal setting. I also used Harvey after exams to prepare for my summer internship. Because I built a baseline understanding of how to use the product for use cases in school, I was able to start this summer ready to leverage that know-how in my internship work.
Are your classmates using Harvey?
More and more students are using Harvey during the school year. But regardless of their prior AI or Harvey-specific experience, whenever I introduce a student to Harvey, they’re always amazed by what it’s capable of — and that's the default, no matter what their background is with AI. Even students who use AI regularly are surprised by the quality Harvey outputs and how well it understands legal concepts. I think that’s partly because many students’ frame of reference is general-purpose AI tools, so they come in thinking they know what AI can do, and then Harvey raises the bar.
A lot of students perhaps come to Harvey with some suspicion of AI. One of my favorite parts of being an Ambassador is witnessing that moment when someone experiences Harvey for the first time and sees the impact it will have on our profession. They realize that AI isn’t some distant, futuristic technology – it is already changing how lawyers research, analyze information, and approach day-to-day work. Students go from viewing AI as a novelty to understanding it as a practical tool that can help lawyers spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time on the parts of our profession that we enjoy like strategic thinking, judgment, and client interaction.
And without fail, every time, by the end of even a basic training, the student's concept of Harvey and of AI in general is totally upended. Students often arrive thinking AI is something they need to compete against, but after training on Harvey, they leave realizing it’s a tool they’ll need to learn to work with. Their question shifts from “Will AI replace lawyers?” to “How can lawyers use AI to do better work?” It’s that change in mindset that I find most exciting and that’s why I enjoy being an Ambassador.
Interested in becoming a Harvey Ambassador? Find more information on the program here.
