How Hilary Goodier is Reimagining Legal Service Delivery With AI

In our Innovation Spotlight series, we interview innovation leaders about how they approach their jobs and how they’ve implemented and deployed Harvey.

In this edition, we chat with Hilary Goodier, Partner and Global Head of Ashurst’s award-winning NewLaw division, Ashurst Advance.

Hilary manages a global team delivering the full suite of NewLaw services and solutions including advanced delivery, managed services, flexible resourcing, legal operations, and digital. As a former GC and General Manager with deep experience spanning law, technology, and operations, she takes a solutions-oriented approach to reimagining the delivery of legal services through the combination of NewLaw expertise, process design, and digital transformation.

Hilary was a recipient of the highly coveted Chief Executive Women’s Harvard Business School Disruptive Innovation Scholarship and was named “Innovator of the Year” at the Lawyer’s Weekly Partner of the Year Awards. Most recently, she was named an "AI Visionary" by Relativity — reflecting her reputation as an innovator and pioneer in the future of AI in legal. Hilary is also an Advisory Board Member of the Centre for Legal Innovation and is frequently sought after for her views on the changing legal market and the impact of technology on the delivery of legal services.

My role at Ashurst is incredibly diverse and allows me to connect with a range of teams across the firm’s global network. No two days are the same. I’ll be collaborating with the amazing Ashurst Advance team to shape cutting edge, tech-driven legal solutions one day, and the next I'll be sitting down with clients, understanding their needs and working on solutions to drive business value.

For me, innovation is about reimagining how we deliver value, challenge old business models, and empower our teams. My passion is driving change where technology meets law and harnessing AI to augment, not replace, human expertise.

Day-to-day, I focus on collaboration, continuous learning, and importantly, practical implementation. I believe in sharing knowledge openly, investing in AI literacy, and working closely with clients and colleagues to co-design solutions. Ultimately, innovation is a team effort and those who embrace it will shape the future of our profession. The choice is simple: adapt and lead, or risk being left behind.

I feel a real sense of responsibility to the firm, our people, and our clients to get this right and it really drives me. So when I am not working or travelling, you'll likely find me recharging and enjoying the peace and quiet of my farmhouse in rural Victoria. Being surrounded by nature gives me a real sense of clarity and perspective — that's when I'm not having to stop my dog from chasing the kangaroos on our property!

Not surprisingly, I’m also an avid reader on all things AI, which not only keeps me curious but really drives my passion for innovation. It's this continuous learning that often leads me to new ideas, and it helps me approach work with this same learning mindset. It is so important to ask questions and not be afraid to take risks. It's about balancing bold thinking with disciplined execution. I’m often told that my superpower is execution — in work and in life.

What excites me most is witnessing the rapid transformation of our industry through generative AI. I tend to move fast and crave variety, but the pace of change has taken even me by surprise.

We’re not just improving efficiency, we’re reimagining how legal services are delivered and how value is created for our people and clients. The pace of change means there’s a unique opportunity to shape the future, collaborate across the profession, and ensure that technology augments human expertise. It’s energising to help lead this shift, invest in AI literacy, and work with others to build a more collaborative and forward-thinking legal community.

My vision is for GenAI to become an integral part of our daily lives, woven into the fabric of legal service delivery. Empowering our lawyers and business services professionals will allow us to provide practical, impactful solutions that create real value for the firm, our people, and our clients.

Our partnership with Harvey followed an extensive trial and pilot, which involved over 525 people from across 38 practice groups and 23 offices informing the global rollout and helping to identify some of the most effective use cases.

The fact that Harvey’s AI is purpose-built for the legal sector made it an exciting prospect, and we thoroughly enjoyed collaborating with the Harvey team to explore how we could make the most of what the platform can do. That collaboration continues to this day and I have been struck by just how open Harvey has been to suggestions and feedback, and the pace at which they are building new functionality into the platform.

We are seeing the greatest efficiencies and "time to value" from AI in high-volume and data-driven work types. Increasingly, though, we are seeing GenAI adopted for contract analysis, drafting, translation, and research, alongside more "creative" use cases such as communications, content creation, negotiation support, thought leadership development, and social media.

Our adoption continues to steadily increase, and we are regularly seeing record highs for monthly users, number of queries, and workflow usage across the firm. Some of our partners are our heaviest users and strongest advocates — including those who were initially the greatest sceptics. Supporting this, we have over 100 Harvey Champions across all offices, practices, and business services teams who lead experiments and digital change initiatives within their teams and identify high-value Harvey use cases.

From the outset, our approach has centered around people's capabilities, focusing on where Harvey adds the most value to people and clients. Investing in AI literacy, deliberate training, and open dialogue have been critical as we inspired, supported, and enabled our people to self-discover use cases and benefits while building their confidence and skills.

By leveraging the unique insights gained from our GenAI trials around people’s digital literacy and development needs, we were able to create a platform of tailored training materials and educational resources. This allowed us to implement this new capability at a global level from day one.

Putting AI tools into the hands of our people and seeing how they use those tools has been an incredibly successful approach for us. We continue to collect and act on insights to inform further investments and improvements.

I think it’s safe to say that every day we are uncovering a new use case and the Ashurst Advance team is consistently testing and pushing Harvey’s limits.

Specifically, our results using Harvey Vault for due diligence have been exceptional. I cannot imagine now doing due diligence any other way. But it is the experiments we are running to drive up accuracy across families of documents that has got me really excited — the potential benefits for our clients are enormous.

We’re also really loving the opportunity to collaborate with our practice groups on custom workflows. One recent workflow reduced the time taken to produce lease summaries from three to four hours to three to four minutes. Now we’re just trying to keep up with the demand to develop workflows for other practice groups.

I don’t want to give all of our ideas away — but using Harvey to analyse market trends is our latest fun experiment!

There’s the quantitative data and then there’s the qualitative data. The Australians out there will also understand that some of it is just about “the vibe.” As I mentioned earlier, I see one of my greatest responsibilities as being to our people. How as a firm are we setting them up with the skills necessary to succeed both personally and professionally in the AI era?

I learned recently that Ashurst has the highest adoption of any law firm for AI and digital training on one of the world’s leading corporate learning platforms. Our internal training programs, workshops, and hackathons are also oversubscribed. I see that as a huge win — it means that we have fostered a culture of curiosity and agency. We put the tools in people’s hands and not only are they using them (our adoption stats prove it), but they are hungry to learn everything they can about augmenting their expertise with this incredible technology.

Importantly, it’s also about how we are differentiating and winning with clients. Our early adoption of Harvey means that we have a lot more experience augmenting it with our expertise and deploying it onto client matters. That has proved to be a huge differentiator and I am really excited about how we are using this experience to drive value for clients and win work for the firm. Demonstrating tangible ROI also supports us making further investments in both tools and capabilities.

I am also keeping a close eye on changes to resourcing models, leverage, pricing, and profitability and what this means for our business model — at both a micro (matter) and macro (firm) level. Responsible AI is not just about how you use AI, it’s about how you responsibly think about and respond to the impact of AI on your business and your people.

This is a strategic shift, not just a technology upgrade. Two key lessons stand out.

First and foremost, get comfortable with being uncomfortable and be courageous. No one individual or firm can affect the change required to move the industry forward. We all have a role to play in shaping the future of the profession. This is part of the reason we decided to be open and transparent about our GenAI journey.

Second, success with GenAI requires a human-centred, experience-led approach. Don’t just roll out new tools, but instead ensure you have a deep understanding of where they add real value, both for people and clients. Investing in AI literacy is critical; the full benefits of GenAI are only realised when teams are equipped to use it effectively.

Two years ago, I said that GenAI would be as revolutionary for the practice of law as the advent of email. In hindsight, that was modest. GenAI isn’t just a tool, it’s the catalyst for the most profound transformation our profession has faced.

GenAI offers huge potential benefits, not only in terms of efficiency but also in creating new value opportunities for both law firms and our clients. However, it's important to recognise that GenAI is not a magic bullet — and that its power lies in augmenting, not replacing, human expertise.

This shift will drive new business models, greater efficiency, and more client-focused outcomes. Ultimately, firms that embrace GenAI and adapt quickly will help shape the future of the profession, while those who resist risk being left behind.