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Welcome to this week's edition of The Legal Wire!

OpenAI just drew a brighter line for law: AI can draft and dig, but licensed lawyers must own the advice, and no fully automated decisions in high-stakes matters. Translation: human-supervised legal AI is now the standard, not just the slogan. But is this working in practice? Meanwhile, the market’s voting with cash. Legora’s $150M Series C (at $1.8B) and Harvey’s $150M (at $8B) signal relentless demand for tools that move real work, research, drafting, collaboration, faster. In Washington, Sen. Mike Rounds says the quiet part out loud: to win the AI race, the U.S. needs more talent, via immigration and upskilling, or risk falling behind.

And for the messy middle, depositions and transcript slog, don’t miss our feature on Rev, the “AI junior associate” turning hours of review into minutes, without cutting lawyers out of the judgment loop.

Last chance to join this week (4–6 Nov): Legal Innovators UK at The Minster Building in London. Three days of learning, sharing, and networking with leading firms, in-house teams, litigation and legal ops, plus live demos at the intersection of tech, innovation, and the business of law. If you’re shaping 2026 strategy, this is the room.

This week’s Highlights:

• Industry News and Updates

• Rev, the AI Junior Associate: Clearing the Transcript Traffic Jam

• AI Regulation Updates

• AI Tools to Supercharge your productivity

• Legal prompt of the week

• Latest AI Incidents & Legal Tech Map

➡️ OpenAI’s New Usage Rules Set Clearer Boundaries for Legal Work | OpenAI’s updated Usage Policies, effective Oct. 29, quietly reinforce a key principle for the legal industry: AI can assist, but it cannot replace licensed professional judgment. The rules explicitly bar providing “tailored advice that requires a license, such as legal or medical advice, without appropriate involvement by a licensed professional” and prohibit fully automated legal decision-making in high-stakes areas such as employment, housing, finance, insurance, and legal services. For law firms and legal departments, this creates a firmer compliance line. Generative AI can draft, summarize, research, and support workflows, but lawyers must remain in the loop, to review outputs, exercise judgment, and supervise any client-facing deployment. Vendors offering fully automated legal guidance will face greater risk exposure. The policy also reinforces privacy and safety guardrails relevant to legal practice: no scraping or re-identifying sensitive data, and no unauthorized recognition or profiling of individuals. As AI adoption accelerates in law, the rules signal an emerging industry standard, human-supervised legal AI, governed by professional duties and backed by transparent safeguards.
^{Oct 29, 2025, Source: OpenAI}

➡️ Legora Raises $150M at $1.8B Valuation to Scale Legal AI Platform | Legora has raised $150 million in a Series C round led by Bessemer Venture Partners, bringing its valuation to $1.8 billion. The legal AI platform has grown from 250 to over 400 customers since May and now operates in more than 40 markets, supporting firms like Linklaters, Cleary Gottlieb, and MinterEllison. CEO Max Junestrand said demand for AI in legal work is “astronomical,” with lawyers using Legora daily to research, draft, and collaborate. The company plans to double its nearly 200-person team and expand globally as it positions itself as a partner for firms adopting AI at scale.
^{Oct 30, 2025, Source: The Legal Wire}

➡️ Harvey Raises $150M at $8B Valuation | Legal AI startup Harvey has raised $150 million in a new round led by Andreessen Horowitz, valuing the company at over $8 billion — its third fundraise of 2025. The San Francisco-based firm, backed by LexisNexis owner RELX, provides AI tools to major law firms like A&O Shearman and Ashurst, and funds such as KKR and Bridgewater. Founded in 2022 by ex-lawyer Winston Weinberg and former DeepMind researcher Gabe Pereyra, Harvey now surpasses $100 million in annual recurring revenue. Its valuation has more than doubled in a year, placing it far ahead of rivals like Legora, Clio, and Ironclad in the fast-growing legal AI market.
^{Oct 29, 2025, Source: Forbes}

➡️ Sen. Rounds: Legal Immigration Key to U.S. AI Race | Sen. Mike Rounds said the U.S. must expand legal immigration to compete with China in AI, noting the nation’s labor force alone can’t meet future tech and manufacturing demands. “[L]egal immigration is critical to the success of [the U.S], long term. We’ve got to be able to bring in the best and brightest” he said at a Washington event. Rounds also urged better workforce training to prepare Americans for AI-era jobs. His remarks came after Amazon announced 14,000 layoffs tied to AI restructuring, as Rep. Bill Foster warned that AI risks widening inequality without stronger safety nets.
^{Oct 29, 2025, Source: Fedscoop}

Legal Technology

Rev, the AI Junior Associate: Clearing the Transcript Traffic Jam

Some problems in legal work are obvious, unglamorous, and quietly ruinous. Like the first pass of transcript review. The deposition slog. The 800-page PDF that lands on your desk just before lunch, with instructions to “flag anything useful.”

Rev, a veteran in the speech-to-text space, is reimagining this not as grunt work to be endured, but as a workflow to be engineered. Their platform sits at the intersection of transcription, AI summarization, and secure discovery review, and in doing so, it challenges how legal teams think about time, talent, and technology.

So what happens when you treat transcript review not as a rite of passage for junior lawyers, but as a systems problem that can be solved?

This week The Legal Wire had the opportunity to dig into this question and more in discussion with Rev Founder and CEO, Jason Chicola.

Click here to continue reading the full interview

The AI Regulation Tracker offers a clickable global map that gives you instant snapshots of how each country is handling AI laws, along with the most recent policy developments.

The most recent developments from the past week:

📋 2 November 2025 | Singapore and South Korea upgrade ties to strategic partnership, covering AI: During Prime Minister Lawrence Wong's official visit to Seoul, Singapore and South Korea have elevated their bilateral relations to a Strategic Partnership, marking the 50th anniversary of diplomatic ties. This partnership encompasses cooperation in public sector areas such as defense and cybersecurity, economic relations, sustainability initiatives — including the establishment of a green and digital shipping corridor — research and innovation, and cultural exchanges. Specifically on AI, the Strategic Partnership emphasizes advanced technology and R&D as a key pillar, with cooperation in the public sector extended to explore the enhancement of regulatory collaboration, including the development of common approaches for evaluating AI enabled medical devices and the exchange of knowledge on regulating emerging technologies. The two nations will look to strengthen cooperation in education by facilitating student and faculty exchanges and joint initiatives between educational authorities in areas of mutual interest such as AI and digital education.

📋 29 October 2025 | US signs Technology Prosperity Deals with Japan and South Korea: The US has signed Technology Prosperity Deals (TPD) with Japan and South Korea, aiming to enhance collaboration in science and technology sectors such as AI, civil nuclear energy, and quantum computing. Each TPD agreement will establish joint initiatives between the nations' premier research institutions (i.e. US Center for AI Safety Institute, Korea AI Safety Institute, and Japan AI Institute) as well as coordinate US-Korean and US-Japan AI exports.

📋 29 October 2025 | Indonesian government taps on bankable IP to protect creators in the AI era: It is reported that Indonesia's Ministry of Law is developing a policy to allow intellectual property (IP) certificates to be used as collateral for bank loans, aiming to provide creators with new financing avenues and strengthen the creative economy. This initiative seeks to recognize creative works — such as music, films, writing, and design — as intangible assets with measurable economic value, transforming them into legitimate capital. To support this, the Directorate General of Intellectual Property will digitalize the copyright registration process, enabling certificates to be issued in under two minutes. Additionally, the policy addresses the challenges posed by AI in the creative industries by ensuring fair compensation for creators, particularly in journalism, where AI models often use content without consent or remuneration. Minister of Law Supratman Andi Agtas introduced the "Jakarta Protocol," a multi-sector initiative aimed at protecting and utilizing digital works within the global online ecosystem, advocating for fairer royalty distribution for creators from developing countries.

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Why it helps: Pinpoints soft spots to press without rereading 80 pages.

Instructions:
Paste the expert report. Return a table of: Opinion | Foundation cited | Missing data/assumptions | Lines to challenge | 3 cross-questions.

The Responsible AI Collaborative is a not‑for‑profit organization working to present real‑world AI harms through its Artificial Intelligence Incident Database.

View the latest reported incidents below:

⚠️ 2025-04-28 | Meta AI Reportedly Generated Purportedly False Claims Linking Activist Robby Starbuck to January 6th Riot, Prompting Defamation Lawsuit | View Incident

⚠️ 2025-01-21 | Purportedly AI-Generated Deepfake Reportedly Used to Impersonate DNB Bank CFO and CEO in Live Teams Meeting | View Incident

⚠️ 2025-06-09 | Purported AI-Generated Deepfake Videos Reportedly Used in Swedish Scam Campaign Impersonating Doctors Agnes Wold and Anders Tegnell | View Incident

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