Getting Started with Assistant

Overview

When you open Harvey, you’ll land in the Assistant tab — your purpose-built tool for creating, refining, and analyzing content. Assistant makes it easy to ask questions, generate drafts, edit text, summarize long documents, or unpack complex ideas, all from a single view.

You can type a prompt directly, then upload documents or choose knowledge sources to focus Harvey’s responses on specific materials — with every answer linked back to the exact sources used. Whether you need a quick answer, an in-depth analysis, or a polished final draft, Assistant equips you with the tools to get there quickly and confidently.

Key Features:

• Natural Prompting: Ask questions in plain language, referring to documents by file name or order. Use Improve to instantly refine prompts for better results.
• Generate and Edit Drafts: Create and refine professional documents, clauses, summaries, and more directly in the draft editor.
• Search Specialized Databases: Query targeted sources like LexisNexis, EUR-Lex, or EDGAR for regulatory content.
• Document Processing & Citations: Upload files to create outputs like tables or memos, complete with linked citations.
• Iterative Workflow: Ask follow-ups to sharpen outputs and make quick revisions.
• Vault Integration: Run detailed queries on vaults for deep, data-rich insights.
• Export Capability: Export responses to Word (with or without citations) individually or in sets.
• Multilingual Support: Summarize documents in multiple languages (use translation workflow for precise translations).
• Redlined Documents: Detects and processes tracked changes, including comments and inline edits, with the same capabilities as Redlines Q&A.

Supported File Types

To review supported file types and how to upload them to Harvey, refer to Uploading Files to Harvey.

How to Run Queries

Harvey’s Assistant works the same way whether you’re asking a question, analyzing documents, or creating new content.

First, type or dictate your query. For example, “Summarize the attached lease agreement and highlight key renewal clauses” or “Draft a confidentiality agreement for a software vendor.”

If you’d like to convert your speech to text, use the voice dictation tool. For a list of supported languages, view our FAQs section at the bottom of this article.

1. Click the microphone icon in the query box and begin speaking.

   1. You may need to update your browser settings to enable microphone permissions for Harvey. In your web browser’s search engine, search “[your web browser’s name] how to enable microphone permissions” for step-by-step guidance, or ask your organization’s IT team about permitting access.
2. Click the stop icon when finished with your query. Harvey will transcribe your voice into text.
3. Once the text is transcribed, click Ask Harvey to run your query.

Watch our video below to view this feature in action.

Next, add context by uploading documents or selecting a knowledge source like LexisNexis, Web Search, EUR-Lex, EDGAR, or your own Vault files.

1. Upload Files: drag and drop them into the upload box, click the box to open your file system, or pull from your connected DMS.
2. Use a Knowledge Source: select up to two databases under Sources and check all relevant filters you want to search.

   1. Learn more about available sources and their capabilities in the Knowledge Sources Overview.

Click on Ask Harvey to run the query. Harvey will automatically determine the best way to deliver your results:

• Iterative Q&A format – Ideal for quick answers, explanations, and follow-up questions. You can keep refining the response within the same thread by adding follow-ups or uploading more documents.
• Draft editor – Opens when your request calls for creating or revising a document. You’ll see your draft alongside the Assist panel, where you can make direct edits, highlight text for specific changes, or guide revisions using natural language.

From here, you can:

• Ask up to 50 follow-up questions in a single thread, or choose from AI-generated suggestions to guide the conversation.

  • Add or replace supporting files mid-conversation for additional context.
• Make up to 50 revisions in our draft editor to refine your output. You will easily see the changes Harvey made between revisions with the “Show Edits” toggle. Deletions will show with a red strikethrough, while additions will show in blue.
• Access linked citations for every document-based answer.
• Share threads with colleagues.

  • For details, see our Sharing Assistant Threads article.
• Save prompts to your Library for reuse.
• Export outputs to Word, with or without citations.

Using Vault in Assistant

You can reference vaults in Assistant to ask Harvey to deliver quick, focused insights from a few documents or, start a review table to extract structured data across large document sets.

Learn more about how to use these two styles of querying together in our Choosing Between Assistant Threads and Review Tables article.

Ask for Focused Insights

When choosing files to upload, Vault users can Add from vault to select a specific file(s) from a vault to query in Assistant.

These threads will then become available both in History and in Vault, as well as shared within a vault to all members who have access.

Structure a Large-Scale Analysis

Use review tables to pull structured insights, compare competing agreements, and summarize data at scale. For details, see our Using Review Tables article.

Query Writing Tips

• Consider specifying the format you need—such as a table, email, memo, outline, or bullet points.
• Indicate the desired tone, whether informal, professional, firm, or otherwise.
• Clearly identify the intended audience (e.g., ‘a client with little acquisition experience’ or ‘a senior in-house attorney’).
• Make your queries explicit, descriptive, and specific. Providing clear direction can greatly improve accuracy (e.g., use ‘holders of Company Common Stock’ instead of ‘common holders,’ or ‘written legal opinion’ instead of just ‘legal opinion’).
• Simplify complex queries by breaking them into smaller components, especially when analytical or subjective tasks are involved.
• Include background information and context (e.g., legal jurisdiction) to ensure a more accurate response.
• Save or load prompts from your library to streamline access to relevant information, enhance team collaboration, and tailor your workspace to your needs.
• When using the EDGAR knowledge source, provide company names, stock tickers (including post-2021 changes), industries, and specify filing years or let Harvey infer them; multiple years can be reviewed simultaneously.

Best Practices for Assistant

• Double-check outputs for accuracy and completeness, as responses may contain inaccuracies. Be especially cautious when referencing specific cases, statutes, company filings, or other detailed sources, as these may highlight gaps in Harvey’s training data.
• When documents are uploaded, text is processed left to right across the page making multi-column layouts, vertical text or images hard to process.
• References and citations are generated automatically when you upload documents, there’s no need to request them separately.
• Assistant is not designed to function as a proofreading tool at this time.

FAQs

General

What types of email attachments are supported through file uploads?

• Supported:

  • In parity with standard file upload limits, email messages can be up to 100 MB in size.
  • Within an email, DOCX and PDF files attachments up to 25 MB total are supported.
• Currently not supported:

  • Files larger than 25 MB are converted by Gmail/Outlook into “virtual attachments,” which cannot be processed.
  • Redlined documents (we are exploring this functionality)
  • Email threads that do not contain the attachment in the most recent email.

    • An attachment from an email thread will only be included if it's attached to the most recent email. Attachments from prior messages in the conversation are not carried over. This is a Gmail/Outlook limitation that applies across all software.
    • To access attachments from earlier parts of the thread, download the specific email that contains it.

Can Harvey read comments in Word documents?

Yes, you can upload a Word document (.docx) with comments in Assistant, then ask Harvey any question about the uploaded file, including questions about the comments.

Harvey’s response will cite comments within the document and reflect a summary of the comments as a footnote at the bottom of the document.

Notes:

• Emojis in comments are not supported at this time.
• Citations may reference comments from the document, but they won’t always point to the precise position of the comment. This improvement will be part of future development.

Voice Dictation