Harvey, a legal AI platform, has introduced ethical wall enforcement to enhance confidentiality and compliance in law firms. Ethical walls, also known as information barriers, are critical for restricting access to sensitive client matters, such as acquisitions or litigation, ensuring only authorized personnel can view or interact with protected information. This development addresses a key governance gap in legal AI platforms, which often operate outside traditional compliance infrastructures.

How Ethical Walls Work in Harvey

Law firms organize their work around client matters, and ethical walls are used to limit access to information based on inclusionary or exclusionary policies. Harvey integrates these policies by syncing with firms' existing systems, such as Intapp Walls and iManage Security Policy Manager. The platform enforces walls across all resources, including Vault projects, conversations, and Review Tables, ensuring compliance throughout its ecosystem.

Technical Architecture for Wall Enforcement

Harvey's import architecture separates matter identity from access policy. Provider adapters translate data from external systems into a common model, with each firm's data stored in its private Harvey environment. The import process is divided into two distinct sync jobs:

  • Client Matter Sync: Links external matters to Harvey's Client Matter records and sets up walls if enabled.
  • Wall Sync: Updates policies for linked matters, matching personnel to Harvey users and applying membership changes.

This separation allows each job to run independently, ensuring that failures in one process do not disrupt the other. Firms can also adopt these features incrementally, starting with matter management before enabling wall enforcement.

Efficient Client Matter Search

To streamline workflows, Harvey has optimized its Client Matter picker, which allows users to select matters for conversations, projects, or tables. The picker is now powered by a dedicated search index built on turbopuffer, enabling fast and intuitive searches across large datasets. For example, Harvey's largest workspace contains approximately 1.7 million matters. The index combines fields such as matter code, client name, and description, ensuring users can find relevant matters quickly without relying on exact codes.

Resilience and Real-Time Updates

Harvey's sync processes are designed for durability and flexibility. Recurring schedules keep matter records and wall policies up to date, while webhook integrations enable real-time updates. For urgent changes, administrators can refresh individual matter policies on demand, ensuring immediate compliance without waiting for scheduled syncs. Additionally, Harvey's safeguards ensure that sync failures do not compromise wall integrity. For example, if a policy fetch fails, the platform retains the last stored policy and retries the update later.

By integrating ethical wall enforcement into its platform, Harvey provides law firms with a robust solution for maintaining confidentiality and regulatory compliance in an increasingly AI-driven legal landscape.