Want to be a legal engineer?
Harvey Academy's Legal Engineering Certification course
Which of the following best describes the core skill at the center of the legal engineer role?
B) Translating how legal work actually gets done into steps and standards a tool can
A lawyer in the commercial litigation group asks whether it is safe to upload a set of client documents into an Al tool. Which factors should most inform your answer?
D) The tool's terms of service, your contract with the provider, the client's outside counsel guidelines, and your organization's policies
An associate submits this prompt and is unhappy with the result: "Summarize the attached ruling." Which of the following rewritten prompts would most improve the output?
C) "Summarize the attached ruling for a partner preparing for a client call on the dispute, focusing on the court's holding on the limitation of liability issue. Short memo, bottom line up front."
An associate submits this prompt against a counterparty's first draft of a share purchase agreement and is unhappy with the result: "Review the attached SPA." Which of the following rewritten prompts would most improve the output?
C) "Review the attached SPA for the buyer in a private acquisition where our client is most concerned about post-closing exposure. Flag terms favorable to the sellers in the warranties, limitations on liability, and closing conditions, listing each with its clause reference and a suggested revision."
A partner asks you, "If these models are so good, why do I keep hearing I have to check their work?" Which response best reflects the plain-language explanation this course teaches?
B) "They generate language by prediction, so the same property that makes them powerful means they can be confidently wrong, and the obligation to review your own work product never changes."
How technically adept does a legal engineer need to be in order to be effective?
B) Hands-on fluent in the organization's tools, able to configure and explain them, and grounded enough in fundamentals to reason about their behavior
While speaking with a lawyer, they mention: "Every time we get an expert report in, I do the same three things. I look for potential reliability challenges, prepare questions for examining the expert, and draft an instruction set and question list for our own rebuttal expert." Which component of a legal AI platform fits this task best?
C) An agent, since this is a defined process with consistent steps and outputs that runs every time a report comes in
Why does this course teach customization over defaults?
C) Inputting your definitions, knowledge sources, formats, and precedent pays off, producing output matching practice group expectations.
You are running a one-hour working session for a corporate practice group that has only surface-level usage. Which session plan best reflects the facilitation fundamentals this course teaches?
B) Walk through one task the group already does on every deal, build it live together, and end by asking them to run it on their next matter.
A month after a well-received training, the team has adopted AI, but only at a surface level. What does this course recommend as the fix?
B) Find an inquisitive peer on the team, help them land a small, early win, and let them show the group instead of you.
Scenario 1: The Law Firm with Flat Usage
Context: You are the newly hired legal engineer at a mid-size law firm. Nine months ago the firm rolled out an enterprise legal AI platform with 200 licenses and a strong launch training. Usage spiked in the first month, but the usage is surface level. The innovation partner who hired you wants to see more material return on investment.
In your first week, the innovation partner asks what you plan to do first. You already have a series of follow up trainings and workshops planned with the vendor, and IT has proposed setting up a weekly recurring meeting to monitor logins and usage trends.
Question: Based on how this course frames the legal engineer role, what should your first move be?
C) Capture how tasks move from start to finish in the practice groups with the shallowest usage to see where the tools fit and why engagement stays surface level.
Scenario 1: The Law Firm with Flat Usage
Context: You are the newly hired legal engineer at a mid-size law firm. Nine months ago the firm rolled out an enterprise legal AI platform with 200 licenses and a strong launch training. Usage spiked in the first month, but the usage is surface level. The innovation partner who hired you wants to see more material return on investment.
You meet with a senior partner in the aviation litigation group, one of the firm's lowest adopters. Before you finish introducing yourself, she says, "I'll be honest, I don't have time to change how I work right now."
Question: What is the most effective response?
B) Ask her what her schedule looks like, notice which activities take up most of her hours, and echo those observations prior to making suggestions.
Scenario 1: The Law Firm with Flat Usage
Context: You are the newly hired legal engineer at a mid-size law firm. Nine months ago the firm rolled out an enterprise legal AI platform with 200 licenses and a strong launch training. Usage spiked in the first month, but the usage is surface level. The innovation partner who hired you wants to see more material return on investment.
You run a working session with the restructuring group. The feedback is excellent. Four weeks later, usage data shows the group has drifted back to its old process, though one associate has kept using the platform and built an agent she is quietly proud of.
Question: What does this course recommend as your next move?
B) Help the associate communicate the success of her agent, walking the group through how she uses it.
Scenario 2: The In-House Team Buried in Contract Review
Context: You are a legal engineer supporting the legal department of a technology company. The commercial contracting team spends most of its week on high-volume review of inbound vendor agreements. The general counsel has asked you to make the process meaningfully faster without lowering the quality bar, and has given you access to the team's enterprise legal AI platform.
In your kickoff meeting, the contracting lead says, "Just tell us which product is best and we'll use it."
Question: According to this course, what must happen before you recommend any tool?
A) Map the current state of the review process.
Scenario 2: The In-House Team Buried in Contract Review
Context: You are a legal engineer supporting the legal department of a technology company. The commercial contracting team spends most of its week on high-volume review of inbound vendor agreements. The general counsel has asked you to make the process meaningfully faster without lowering the quality bar, and has given you access to the team's enterprise legal AI platform.
While you are mapping the process, a lawyer on the team stops by and says, "Separate from the vendor project, I have about 400 executed customer contracts and I need to know which ones have a term that ends within the next two months, and if any have an auto-renewal clause."
Question: Which component of the platform does this task point to?
B) A project-based workspace, because the task is extracting the same data points across hundreds of documents
Scenario 2: The In-House Team Buried in Contract Review
Context: You are a legal engineer supporting the legal department of a technology company. The commercial contracting team spends most of its week on high-volume review of inbound vendor agreements. The general counsel has asked you to make the process meaningfully faster without lowering the quality bar, and has given you access to the team's enterprise legal AI platform.
Your process map confirms that first-pass review of inbound vendor contracts is a defined, repeatable workflow the team runs every week, so you build an agent for it. The output on your test runs looks strong, and the contracting lead wants to roll it out to the team on Monday.
Question: What must be in place before this agent is deployed?
B) Evaluation against documents with known answers, plus an owner with permissions to update it, a re-testing cadence, and guidance on appropriate use.
Scenario 3: Cross-Cutting Judgment Calls
Context: The final two questions test considerations that apply across every setting a legal engineer works in.
An associate at your firm messages you: "The firm platform is great, but I’m so used to using my favorite consumer AI tool at home. I've been pasting in excerpts from client agreements. It's just excerpts, and I always verify the output before using it. That's fine, right?" You are the person lawyers at the firm ask when they are unsure whether something is safe.
Question: How should you respond?
C) Obligations follow the material into any tool, and the risk sits in the input, not the output. The associate should stop this practice and the firm's policy should be confirmed.
Scenario 3: Cross-Cutting Judgment Calls
Context: The final two questions test considerations that apply across every setting a legal engineer works in.
A practice group leader has heard the firm's platform now includes agents and asks you: "Level with me. Is an agent just the chat tool with better marketing, or is this actually something different? And if it can run a whole task on its own, does that mean my associates can finally stop monitoring the output?"
Question: Which response best reflects the plain-language explanation this course teaches?
D) "It is different. A non-agentic chat surface is task-based, while an agent takes an assignment, breaks it into steps, and uses tools and sources along the way to deliver a finished result. It is still only as good as its process design, and the lawyer still owns whatever it produces."
