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Custom Writing Styles

Learn how to leverage Harvey's Custom Writing Styles feature to tailor outputs to your company's brand identity or individual preferences.

Last updated: Mar 19, 2026

Overview

Custom Writing Styles let you define how Harvey writes so that outputs consistently reflect your organization’s voice, legal conventions, and formatting standards.

Instead of repeating instructions in every prompt, you can create reusable style guides and apply them with a single selection.

With Custom Writing Styles, you can:

  • Standardize outputs across your organization
  • Reflect jurisdiction-specific language and conventions
  • Align responses with firm or organizational guidelines
  • Reduce repetitive prompting and improve consistency

Create multiple style guides for different use cases, then select the one that best fits your prompt to shape Harvey’s response.

Key Concepts

Key Concept

Definition

Examples

Custom Writing Style

A reusable set of instructions that defines how Harvey structures and writes responses.

  • Localization: Alawyer creates a style guide providing Harvey with guidance around typical contract drafting conventions in their jurisdiction, e.g. using plain language instead of overly dense legalize.
  • Personalization: A litigation associate creates a style guide for brief writing emphasizing that Harvey should write in persuasive, emphatic language.
  • Firm Voice: A member of the firm’s marketing team creates a style guide instructing Harvey to adhere to bear in mind the firm’s values and mission when drafting marketing materials.
  • Personal Preference: An attorney who prefers concise responses with bullet point formatting over lengthier responses creates a style guide indicating this preference for Assistant’s responses.

Style Instructions

The specific guidance included in a style

  • Tone (for example, formal, persuasive, concise)
  • Structure (for example, headings, bullet points)
  • Terminology (for example, jurisdiction-specific language)

Applied Style

The writing style selected in the Assistant. Harvey uses this style when generating responses.

  • "Firm Voice" style is selected prior to running a prompt

Sharing Permissions

Users with the permission client_admin:writing_styles can share writing styles with the entire workspace.

  • All styles are private by default
  • Admins have this permission by default and can grant it to users as needed

Create a Custom Writing Style

  1. In Assistant, select the Settings icon
    image of selecting settings in the assistant prompt box and choosing writing styles
  2. Select Create
  3. Give your style a name
  4. Upload or type out style instructions
  5. Select Continue to save

Note: New styles are set to private by default.

Apply a Writing Style

  1. In Assistant, select the Settings icon
  2. Select the writing style you want to apply
  3. Enter your prompt and run it

Harvey applies the selected style automatically to its response.

Share a Writing Style

Note: Admins can share styles by default; users will need the client_admin:writing_styles permission to do so.

  1. In Assistant, select the Settings icon
  2. Select Create and edit styles
  3. Select Share and choose to share with your workspace

The style becomes available to all users in your workspace.

Enable Custom Writing Styles

All users can create a custom writing style by default.

Enable Sharing Custom Writing Styles

For a user to share writing styles in the workspace, an admin needs to grant the user the permission client_admin:writing_styles.

Users with this permission will see a sharing option in writing style creation.

GIF of sharing a writing style

Note: Sharing with a specific sub-set of users is not possible at this time.

Limitations

Custom Writing Styles support flexible customization, with the following constraints:

Character and File Limits for Style Instructions

  • For PDFs: Upload up to a 20 page PDF
  • For text or .docx files: Up to 50,000 characters

Style Adherence

  • Very long or highly complex style guides may not be followed consistently
  • Ambiguous or conflicting instructions can reduce adherence
  • If a prompt is complex or has a heavy context load (e.g. hundreds of documents), the model may prioritize task completion over strict style adherence

Tips for Success

  • Keep style guides clear, straightforward, and well-structured.
  • Emphasize the most important elements (e.g. tone, structure, terminology)
  • Ensure prompt instructions align with the selected style
  • Refine your style over time to improve reliability

FAQs

Editing Word Files in Assistant

Edit Microsoft Word (.docx) files directly in Assistant while preserving formatting, structure, and context.

Upload Password Protected Files

Learn how to upload and unlock password-protected files in Harvey so you can work securely with encrypted documents in Assistant.

Drafting in Assistant

Understand how to draft directly in Assistant.

Getting Started with Assistant

Learn how to use Harvey's Assistant to ask questions, upload files, and instantly receive answers or editable drafts — complete with citations, revisions, and export options.

Using Export Formats

Learn how to export your work in a firm-approved Word format—no manual styling needed.