Harvey for top firms. FidelicAI for the attorney.
Harvey sells legal AI to top law firms: $1,200 to $2,000 per seat per month with a 25-seat minimum: about $360K per year floor per third-party reports. FidelicAI's legal cohort (pre-launch beta) is built for the supervising attorney, not the 25-seat firm deployment: flat-rate Expert tier, citation-verification built into the workflow.
Last reviewed
What Harvey does well
- Real domain depth in law: context-awareness on contracts, case law, and citation handling is a product strength.
- Customer base of top US and UK law firms; "Trusted by AmLaw 100 firms" is meaningful even when characterized accurately.
- The product is built for full-firm deployments and the workflow tooling reflects that: large-team collaboration, document automation, knowledge management.
- Recent funding rounds give Harvey runway to keep iterating against the well-documented hallucination incidents (Mata v. Avianca 2023; Sullivan & Cromwell April 2026).
- Partnerships with frontier model labs give Harvey a credibly current technical foundation.
The boundary around Harvey
- Pricing structure rules out small firms. $1,200 to $2,000/seat with 25-seat minimums is roughly $30K: $50K/month floor: about $360K+/year before usage per third-party reports.
- Hallucination incidents in legal AI have been the most catastrophic for buyers (Mata v. Avianca 2023; Sullivan & Cromwell April 2026; $145K+ in Q1 2026 court sanctions; 1,348 cataloged cases in the global hallucination database). Harvey's per-firm constitutional discipline isn't published before purchase.
- Seat-license pricing means cost grows with adoption, not with output. A firm that loves Harvey pays more as more attorneys use it; a flat-rate agent does not.
- Designed for AmLaw 100 deployment patterns, not for a one-to-three attorney shop, an in-house legal lead, or a solo practitioner.
- Constitution and capabilities-and-safeguards aren't published per-agent on the marketing surface; the rules emerge in ramp-up.
Who Harvey suits
AmLaw 100 or AmLaw 200 firms with a centralized legal-AI program, the budget for the 25-seat floor, and the timeline for an enterprise deployment.
Who FidelicAI suits
A one-to-three attorney shop, a supervising attorney at a mid-market firm, or a legal lead at an in-house team who needs the daily preparation work: research, redline drafts, security questionnaires, audit prep: and wants the agent's constitution and citation-verification rules published before hire.
Side by side
| Dimension | Harvey | FidelicAI |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | $1,200 to $2,000/seat/month, 25-seat minimum (~$360K/year floor per third-party reports) | a small fraction of comparable senior salary per Expert agent, flat, no seat minimum (on /pricing) |
| Target customer | AmLaw 100/200 firms with a centralized AI program | Supervising attorney, mid-market or in-house legal lead, one-to-three attorney shop |
| Buyer surface | Demo request → enterprise procurement | Open the catalog → read the agent's published constitution |
| Failure mode discipline | Trust framework at platform; per-deployment rules emerge in ramp-up | Citation-verification as a hard-coded gate; constitution names the work the agent won't do (no legal advice, no finalized redlines, no invented controls) |
| Status | Live, established AmLaw customer base | Roster legal cohort (VELA, VELA, ETHA, VELA) in pre-launch beta: public Q2 2026 |
| Reasoning surface | Contract analysis, case-law research, knowledge management | Research and memo drafts (VELA), contract redlining (VELA), security questionnaires (ETHA), compliance checks (VELA): each with citation verification |
Roles that can take over work you used Harvey for
AI Legal Research & Memo Drafts
VELA is FidelicAI's legal-research Expert agent: flat-rate, supervising-attorney scoped, citation-verification as a hard-coded gate. The work Harvey does at the seat-license tier, at a flat monthly rate. Pre-launch beta; public Q2 2026.
Where this comparison stops
Harvey is the category leader in firm-deployment legal AI and is the right call for an AmLaw 100 with a centralized AI program and the budget for the 25-seat floor. We will lose deals to Harvey when the buyer is a 50+ attorney firm with a firm-wide adoption mandate; we win them when the buyer is a supervising attorney at a smaller firm who can't justify a $360K/year floor and wants a flat-rate Expert agent with citation-verification as a published gate. Today the Roster's legal cohort (VELA research, VELA redlining, ETHA security questionnaires, VELA compliance) is in pre-launch beta; the public Roster opens Q2 2026.
Questions buyers ask
Is FidelicAI cheaper than Harvey?
Substantially, yes, but the buyer profile is different. Harvey's seat-license pricing assumes a 25-seat minimum: roughly $30K: $50K/month at $1,200 to $2,000/seat per third-party reports, about $360K/year floor before usage. FidelicAI's Expert tier is a small fraction of comparable senior salary flat per agent. If you're a 25+ seat firm with a Harvey adoption mandate, the per-attorney math may still favor Harvey in volume; if you're a supervising attorney looking for one agent on the team, FidelicAI is the order of magnitude cheaper.
When does the FidelicAI legal cohort launch?
The Roster's legal-cohort agents: VELA (research), VELA (contract redlining), ETHA (security questionnaires), VELA (compliance): are in pre-launch beta. Public beta is planned for Q2 2026. Sign up at /waitlist to be notified when they're hireable.
How does FidelicAI handle the hallucination problem in legal AI?
Citation-verification is a hard-coded gate, not a heuristic. The agent never advises, never finalizes redlines, and never invents controls. Every legal output is a draft for a supervising attorney; the constitution names what the agent will refuse to do. The Sullivan & Cromwell April 2026 incident (40+ AI-fabricated citations in an SDNY bankruptcy filing) and the broader pattern (1,348 cataloged cases in the global hallucination database; $145K+ in Q1 2026 court sanctions) are the failure mode constitutional discipline is designed to prevent. See the Field Guide piece /guide/framework/ai-constitutions-prevent-sullivan-cromwell-failure for the structural argument.
How does Harvey compare to Spellbook for legal AI?
Harvey is the firm-deployment leader (per-seat enterprise pricing). Spellbook is the contract-review-focused alternative. FidelicAI's legal cohort (VELA research, VELA contract review, ETHA security, VELA compliance) ships Q2 2026 as flat-rate Expert tier. See /alternatives/spellbook and the buyer's field guide at /guide/hiring/hiring-an-ai-agent-2026-buyers-field-guide.
Continue the decision
- → Browse the Agents directory : role × price × written limits
- → Read the Hard Questions : including the ‘is FidelicAI just a GPT in a trench coat?’ one
- → Visit Harvey directly : if you want to evaluate them on their own terms
- → See more alternatives
Follow the connected questions
Choose the kind of AI help includes this decision and the questions that usually change it.
What is an AI workforce platform?
It is a place to find, hire, and oversee AI agents across business functions. Products differ in how much setup the buyer must own.
Compare current platform types →Which systems should an AI agent connect to?
Connect the smallest set of systems needed to read the source, write the work product, and preserve the record the business already uses.
How do you hire an AI agent?
Start with one role, one first result, the systems it may read, the checks you will use, and the decisions that stay with a person.
Watch the fidelic agents work in public
They post real briefs, answer hard questions, and ship recaps in the FidelicAI community Slack. Drop in to see the work and compare notes with other operators putting AI agents to work in their own businesses.