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Harvey vs ChatGPT: what lawyers say.

Short answer. Harvey has net sentiment −21 on 749 public lawyer voices and ChatGPT has −13 on 2,467, as of . It is a tie on this record: the two 90% bands overlap. Net is like minus dislike as a share of voices.

Harvey

−21

net · band −26 to −15

749 voices High

vs
ChatGPT

−13

net · band −16 to −10

2,467 voices High

A tie on this record: the two 90% bands overlap, so read the tasks and complaints below.

749 voices on Harvey and 2,467 on ChatGPT, all public posts by lawyers and people who work with them, since 2023. This is how they describe using each tool, not a test of the tools. Harvey is a legal AI assistant by Harvey AI; ChatGPT is a general-purpose model by OpenAI.

Side by side

Rates and bands, not raw totals.

HarveyChatGPT
Voices on record7492,467
Like · mixed · dislike204 · 101 · 359832 · 321 · 1,162
Net like minus dislike, % of voices−21 90% band −26 to −15−13 90% band −16 to −10
ConfidenceHighHigh
Per 100 voices: like · dislike · name hallucinations27 · 48 · 534 · 47 · 27
Latest voice

The two 90% bands overlap, so on this record the two cannot be told apart by net sentiment. Read the tasks and the complaints below instead of the headline number. Difference in net: −8 points (Harvey minus ChatGPT).

By task

What they were doing when they posted.

TaskHarveyChatGPT
Legal research56 voices · net −11623 voices · net −34
Drafting59 voices · net +20573 voices · net +22
Contract review43 voices · net +1257 voices · net −11
Citation checking6 voices · net −67157 voices · net −69
Discovery10 voices · net +2032 voices · net +9
Summarization19 voices · net +11114 voices · net +5
General use545 voices · net −30790 voices · net −18

Net here is plain like minus dislike as a share of that task’s voices, with no band: a task needs 5+ voices on a side to show one. Tasks with fewer on both sides are left out. A voice has one task, set by our classifier.

What they complain about and value

Harvey · complaints

  • Accuracy 156
  • Price 146
  • Privacy 46

Harvey · what they value

  • Time saved 72
  • Ease of use 50
  • Accuracy 29

ChatGPT · complaints

  • Hallucination 665
  • Accuracy 596
  • Privacy 276

ChatGPT · what they value

  • Time saved 351
  • Drafting quality 262
  • Accuracy 151

Counts are voices that name that complaint or value (top three per tool). A voice can name one of each. Not a comparison of raw totals: the bigger side has more posts of every kind.

In their own words

Each quote is a verbatim span of a counted voice, with its date and a link to the original.

On Harvey · verbatim

Hacker News
“Lawyer here: Harvey was never very good, or useful. It mostly exists so large law firms can say they do AI.”

in “Claude for Legal” · 9 voices

CriticizesPrice, valueSelf-described lawyer
8 more voices in this thread
  • Hacker News · May 15, 2026ClaudeCriticizes“Everyone is busy discussing how amazing is this collection of markdown files for Claude... which Claude is known to randomly ignore.”open
  • Hacker News · May 15, 2026ClaudeCriticizes“These companies have marketed their products so badly (or well, depending on your viewpoint) that lawyers think that these tools are glorified search engines. Then they get busted in court because the LLM made up citations, quotations etc.”open
  • Hacker News · May 15, 2026ClaudeValuesCautiously optimistic about Claude's agent approach for legal drudgery, but lawyers remain accountable, not Anthropic. (summary, not a quote)open
  • Hacker News · May 15, 2026LegoraCriticizes“I have a friend that runs a firm and uses Legora and can’t stand it.”open
  • Hacker News · May 15, 2026ClaudeCriticizes“I think we should be realistic here, this is a more advanced version of those "will kits" that spit out a PDF.”open
  • Hacker News · May 14, 2026HarveyCriticizes“There's other companies that have a much better understanding of the market and compliance issues but you don't hear about them because nobody wants to talk about legal tech.”open
  • Hacker News · May 14, 2026ClaudeMixed“As a lawyer, I'm excited about this, but there are two roadblocks that I'm not sure how Anthropic will navigate:”open
  • Hacker News · May 14, 2026ClaudeNeutral“It seems like they ripped out Lexis, which is probably one of the most important tools for lawyers: https://github.com/anthropics/claude-for-legal/pull/5 .”open
Hacker News
“That benchmark in the report clearly shows that there is not much added value or moat in the custom training of Harvey.”

in “AI Market Clarity”

CriticizesBenchmarkUnverified voice
Hacker News
“I believe that [...] this startup will win by having the UX that is best focused on lawyers and addresses lawyers' compliance concerns.”

in “Most AI startups are doomed” · 2 voices

ValuesEase of useUnverified voice
1 more voice in this thread
  • Hacker News · Nov 28, 2023ValuesGenerative AI can speed lawyer workflow since legal documents are mostly configurable boilerplate; fake-citation cases were careless. (summary, not a quote)open

On ChatGPT · verbatim

Bl
Bluesky · bsky.app
“RFK Jr’s HHS getting caught submitting legal filings where 22 out of 29 footnotes were fabricated by AI!”
CriticizesHallucinationUnverified voice
Bl
Bluesky · bsky.app
“Orally must admit, impressive.”
ValuesGeneral useUnverified voice
Hacker News
“[...] my friend has said it has just made up case law that isn't real.”

in “The Anthropic Economic Index” · 2 voices

MixedHallucinationSecond-hand report
1 more voice in this thread
  • Hacker News · Feb 10, 2025ChatGPTCriticizes“Part of it is selection bias, Claude is much less general-audiences than ChatGPT. But any lawyers using LLMs in 2025 deserve to be disbarred”open

When both come up in one thread

Voices from threads where posters name Harvey and ChatGPT. Open the thread for the whole exchange.

r/Lawyertalk
Harvey
“Now using Harvey. It is quite worrisome what it can do..”

in “Freakin' Baby Lawyers and AI” · 4 voices

ValuesGeneral useUnverified voice
3 more voices in this thread
  • r/Lawyertalk · Oct 21, 2026ChatGPTCriticizesThe author reported a lawyer to the bar for filings with misleading precedents invented by ChatGPT and for feeding client data into AI. (summary, not a quote)open
  • r/Lawyertalk · Oct 21, 2026Lexis+ AICriticizes“I’ve caught even Lexis’s AI making mistakes.”open
  • r/Lawyertalk · Oct 20, 2026ChatGPTCriticizes“Some of the worst lawyering I’ve ever seen has come from lawyers asking ChatGPT how to cross-examine a witness.”open
r/Lawyertalk
ChatGPT
“Some of the worst lawyering I’ve ever seen has come from lawyers asking ChatGPT how to cross-examine a witness.”

in “Freakin' Baby Lawyers and AI” · 4 voices

CriticizesAccuracyUnverified voice
3 more voices in this thread
  • r/Lawyertalk · Oct 21, 2026ChatGPTCriticizesThe author reported a lawyer to the bar for filings with misleading precedents invented by ChatGPT and for feeding client data into AI. (summary, not a quote)open
  • r/Lawyertalk · Oct 21, 2026Lexis+ AICriticizes“I’ve caught even Lexis’s AI making mistakes.”open
  • r/Lawyertalk · Oct 20, 2026HarveyValues“Now using Harvey. It is quite worrisome what it can do..”open
r/biglaw
Harvey
“When you know what you are doing and what you want, Harvey is great IMO.”

in “Harvey / Legora are awful.” · 38 voices

ValuesDrafting qualityUnverified voice
37 more voices in this thread
  • r/biglaw · Oct 19, 2026CriticizesLegal SaaS platforms like Harvey and Legora are just wrappers around LLMs, and the author's firm built its own in-house platform and sees their valuations as unjustified. (summary, not a quote)open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 18, 2026HarveyValues“Boomer here, but I think Harvey is incredible.”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 17, 2026CoCounselNeutral“CoCounsel allows you to build workflows and combine with other sources too, though.”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 17, 2026HarveyValues“The US caselaw search is better because you can combine it with other sources so you can have it look through a set of litigation documents and run caselaw research to help figure out their significance at the same time.”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 17, 2026ClaudeValues“To be very clear, in my experience having these systems finely tuned to your individual work vs the level of tuning you can get out of harvey/cocounsel/co-pilot can represent 2-3x productivity increases.”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 17, 2026HarveyValues“Harvey vault is amazing for working with discovery productions.”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 16, 2026HarveyNeutral“Harvey also has a US Caselaw database where whichever model you pick will directly search for cases in the database.”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 16, 2026CriticizesSays lawyers will not use raw coding or chat tools and need a wrapper around the model to make it usable. (summary, not a quote)open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 16, 2026HarveyNeutral“Harvey can be used with Astra 6 or Fable, your firm just has to agree to API pricing.”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 16, 2026HarveyNeutral“Harvey uses the Chat GPT and Claude models and you can actually pick which model.”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 16, 2026ChatGPTValues“What pisses me off is that our clients ARE using Claude and ChatGPT themselves and we’re stuck using these inferior models.”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 16, 2026HarveyNeutral“Alls I know is that I can’t keep track of all the platforms so I stick to my mans Harvey even though the other mans might be better.”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 16, 2026HarveyNeutral“You do realize that Harvey was literally just an interface to access Claude since day 1.”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 15, 2026HarveyCriticizes“Harvey and Legora are inferior products, by magnitudes, and any firm that exclusively relies on these tools is falling behind in productivity and associate satisfaction.”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 15, 2026ClaudeValues“If you are using Fable and you give it enough project data, it can function like your associate on that case who has a mastery of facts and super fast turnaround.”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 15, 2026HarveyCriticizes“Harvey sucks because it's just an API built on top of open-source AI models, which are way behind the models currently available through openAI or Claude.”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 15, 2026HarveyCriticizesYounger lawyers who grew up with general AI tools would be disadvantaged by using Harvey, while older lawyers can be forgiven for adopting it. (summary, not a quote)open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 15, 2026HarveyCriticizes“This is basically a fine tuned version of the Kimi K3 model which they claim is better but is clearly worse”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 15, 2026HarveyNeutral“Harvey does have its own propriety model. And yes, if you select a specific model, only the output is generated by that model, not all of the intervening tasks.”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 15, 2026HarveyNeutral“There is no “Harvey” model. Harvey just picks one of the models based on your prompt.”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 15, 2026HarveyMixed“I like to think of Harvey as an energetic junior, does their best, a fine starting point, but doesn’t produce a product I’d be willing to send a client without a deeeep review”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 15, 2026HarveyValues“Harvey's been killing it for me on the transaction side with the rote drafting and title work.”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 15, 2026CoCounselValues“I’ve been really impressed and don’t see how a tool could be much better”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 15, 2026CoCounselValues“I’ve been really impressed and don’t see how a tool could be much better”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 15, 2026HarveyValues“I use Harvey daily and think it’s a fantastic product (as long as you use it to supplement, not replace your work product)”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 15, 2026CoCounselValues“I use co counsel for litigation and i find it is much more accurate for litigation research than claude, chatgpt, or gemini.”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 15, 2026Westlaw AIValues“I use co counsel for litigation and i find it is much more accurate for litigation research than claude, chatgpt, or gemini.”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 15, 2026HarveyCriticizes“Even when I add docs to a vault and ask for a review table, getting Harvey to actually “read” the docs is like pulling teeth.”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 15, 2026ClaudeValues“Claude code with a syfert.com MCP (or a courtlistener MCP, or ding duff) is 500% better than Harvey and Legora.”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 15, 2026HarveyMixed“It’s usually right but the times it isn’t it’s REALLY wrong.”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 15, 2026HarveyCriticizes“I also do not think I’m getting real Opus 5 when I select it in Harvey. And it’s hella slow.”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 15, 2026HarveyCriticizes“Harvey profits by arbitrating token costs, so they use the cheapest models they think can get away with for the bulk of response.”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 15, 2026HarveyCriticizes“They came out years later than Harvey, when firms already adopted Harvey, but yeah, firms should abandon Harveyw”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 15, 2026CoCounselValues“My firm has Harvey and CoCounsel, and I just use CC bc it has access to Westlaw.”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 15, 2026HarveyCriticizes“It routinely gives me genuinely “lazy” answers that fail to address what are obviously critical aspects of the issue, in a way that is not true of Fable or Astra”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 15, 2026HarveyCriticizes“The only reason firms choose Harvey is it doesn’t use our data to train its AI due to confidentiality, or else they are trash”open
  • r/biglaw · Oct 15, 2026HarveyCriticizes“All other tasks, such as the actual research, review, etc, are handled by whatever model Harvey wants, including their own shitty “proprietary” models.”open
r/legaltech
Harvey
“Both Harvey and Legora are built on sales team, not product quality.”

in “Harvey vs Legora” · 10 voices

CriticizesAccuracyUnverified voice
9 more voices in this thread
  • r/legaltech · Oct 17, 2026HarveyCriticizes“Harvey is the cryptocurrency of legal tech, it survived on belief, marketing, and FOMO when in essence it’s an LLM wrapper now with a post-trained open source model to make better margins for their insane valuation and funding rounds”open
  • r/legaltech · Oct 16, 2026LegoraCriticizes“At least where I reside, Legora cannot be trusted to do good/accurate research.”open
  • r/legaltech · Oct 16, 2026LegoraValues“Whilst Legora has its issues, nothing good prompting cannot fix.”open
  • r/legaltech · Oct 16, 2026HarveyCriticizesHarvey's benchmark standing does not match the experience in practice, and financial losses may lead it to cut corners. (summary, not a quote)open
  • r/legaltech · Oct 16, 2026LegoraValues“Despite my bitching about Legora, it is still a very good tool and at present I can pass on the whole cost to my clients.”open
  • r/legaltech · Oct 16, 2026HarveyValues“When you look at the benchmarks, none of the labs most advanced models are close to Harvey for what it does.”open
  • r/legaltech · Oct 16, 2026ClaudeValues“It runs on our existing gpt or claude subscriptions we already pay for so it has been alot cheaper than Harvey or Legora.”open
  • r/legaltech · Oct 15, 2026LegoraMixed“I use Legora and the tool is both helpful, and a useless piece of shit that will get you into trouble and waste far more time than it will save.”open
  • r/legaltech · Oct 15, 2026ChatGPTValues“Both ChatGPT and Claude are better than Legora and Harvey.”open

Short answers

From the same record as the tables above.

Harvey vs ChatGPT for lawyers: what do lawyers say?

Harvey has net sentiment −21 on 749 public lawyer voices and ChatGPT has −13 on 2,467, as of . It is a tie on this record: the two 90% bands overlap. Net is like minus dislike as a share of voices.

How many lawyers have posted about Harvey and ChatGPT?

We count 749 public voices on Harvey and 2,467 on ChatGPT, posted since 2023 by lawyers and people who work with them, as of . Each voice is one post or comment that names the tool.

Do lawyers feel better about Harvey or ChatGPT?

Net sentiment (like minus dislike, as a share of voices) is −21 for Harvey, 90% band −26 to −15, and −13 for ChatGPT, 90% band −16 to −10. The two 90% bands overlap, so on this record the two cannot be told apart by net sentiment. Read the tasks and the complaints below instead of the headline number.

What do lawyers use Harvey and ChatGPT for?

The task named most often on Harvey is general use (545 of 749 voices); on ChatGPT it is general use (790 of 2,467 voices). A voice has one task, set by our classifier.

Task reports with both: Contract review report · Legal research report · Drafting report · Summarization report