Student AI Summer Update
Dear Students:
Congratulations on finishing the semester, and we hope you have a wonderful summer ahead. For those of you who may want to use some of the time to build your knowledge of AI and its growing role in legal practice, we wanted to share a few resources and updates that are worth knowing about.
Harvey and Legora are both purpose-built legal AI platforms. They are used by a growing number of law firms and legal departments around the world, and BU Law now has institutional access to both. Faculty and students can create accounts at no cost using their BU email address.
Lexis+ with Protege is now also available to BU Law students. This platform combines the comprehensive legal research capabilities of Lexis+ with Protege, an AI-powered assistant designed to streamline legal research, drafting, and analysis. Students can access Lexis+ with Protege using their BU credentials, providing an additional resource for both coursework and practical legal research.
GETTING STARTED
• Legora: Visit https://legora.com/ and sign up with your @bu.edu address. You will receive an email with instructions on how to get started.
• Harvey: Visit https://www.harvey.ai/ and sign up with your @bu.edu address. You will receive an email with instructions on how to get started.
Lexis+ with Protege: Log in at the Lexis+ portal using your BU credentials. Once logged in, you will see the Protege AI assistant integrated into your dashboard. Follow the on-screen prompts to explore its features, including AI-driven research suggestions, drafting support, and citation analysis.
TRAINING AND RESOURCES
Both Harvey and Legora offer built-in resources for getting oriented:
Harvey guidance can be found by clicking on the Help button on the bottom left of the Harvey home page. Start with "Harvey Academy," which provides free, self-paced training — the same content delivered to attorneys at major law firms — and includes:
- A tool-agnostic Legal AI Literacy overview
- Role-specific learning paths
- In-practice videos showing AI applied across M&A, litigation, and more
- A dedicated law school course, "Harvey Law Schools: Preparing for Legal Work," covering transactional, litigation, and public interest contexts with responsible AI use throughout
Completing the law school course earns you a Harvey Academy certificate that you can add to your resume — a tangible signal of AI fluency that firms are increasingly paying attention to.
Legora provides a comprehensive New User Introduction Guide for Law Schools, which is pasted below. It walks through logging in, setting up the Word and Outlook Add-Ins and Mobile App, organizing documents into projects, and getting started with the platform's core features — Assistant, Tabular Review, and Word Add-In. You can also access support directly within the platform by clicking the support button at the bottom of your home page once you have created an account. "Legora Essentials" is a good place to start.
A NOTE ON RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN LEGAL AI
The legal AI landscape is moving quickly, and a few recent developments are worth being aware of:
On May 12, Anthropic launched "Claude for Legal," integrating Claude with over 20 widely used legal platforms — including Westlaw, iManage, and DocuSign — along with 12 practice-area specific plug-ins and Microsoft 365 integration. More information here: https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2026/05/12/claude-for-legal-launches-may-reshape-the-legal-tech-world/
Also today, Artificial Lawyer is reporting that OpenAI is planning its own legal AI offering, potentially branded as "Codex for Legal." No release date has been announced, but the move signals that all of the major AI companies are now targeting the legal market directly. More here: https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2026/05/18/openai-plans-codex-for-legal/
Lexis+ with Protege offers a range of tutorials and support materials accessible directly from the Lexis+ dashboard. These resources include step-by-step guides, video walkthroughs, and live chat support to help you maximize the platform’s AI-powered research and drafting tools.
NEW AI COURSES AT BU LAW THIS FALL
We also wanted to make you aware that BU Law will be offering several new courses on AI and the law in the coming academic year (including Professor Duncan's: AI for Legal Conceptualization, Reasoning, and Analysis).
Please don't hesitate to reach out to one or both of us directly if you have any questions about the AI tools and resources. Have a great summer!
Best regards,
Rebecca Pendleton
rlpendle@bu.edu
Faculty Director & Lecturer, Two-Year LLM (Master of Law) Program
Boston University, School of Law |
Tim Duncan
tduncan@bu.edu
Director of the AI Program
Boston University School of Law |
Legora Introduction Guide for Law Schools
Legora Overview: Legora is a collaborative AI platform for lawyers that fits seamlessly into the way lawyers work. Lawyers leverage Legora for analysis, large-scale document review, drafting and editing across all litigation and transactional practice areas - producing outputs that are not only faster, but also higher quality. Legora has already been adopted as the legal AI solution by 800+ customers in 50+ countries, including top firms in the US such as White & Case, Goodwin, Cleary Gottlieb, Sheppard Mullin, K&L Gates, McGuireWoods, Husch Blackwell, BCLP, Linklaters, and many others.
1. Logging in to Legora for the first time
- You should have received an email in your law school email account, asking you to sign-in to Legora. Click the Join Now button in the email
- On the Legora log-in page, enter your full name, your role, and select all practice areas that are relevant to you. Select American English English (United States) as the interface language, and United States as the work country
- You will be guided to create a Private Project where you can upload documents for analysis on Legora - documents and outputs in your Private Project folder are accessible only by you
- For subsequent log-ins, you can access the Legora web platform at https://app.us.legora.com - we recommend bookmarking this link on your Bookmarks Bar where it is easily accessible
- For additional assistance with logging-in to Legora, you may also watch this “Logging into Legora” video tutorial
2. Setting up the full Legora suite
As part of your Legora law school license, you also receive access to the Word Add-In, the Outlook Add-In, and the Mobile App. You may install these manually, if they are not already installed automatically by the Legora admin at your school (typically, your school’s Law Library or AI Lab)
To install the Word Add-In:
To install the Outlook Add-In:
To install the Mobile App:
Play Store (for Android devices) and the Apple App Store (for iPhones)
3. Creating Project folders and organizing your documents
- Projects are how you can organize your documents and analysis on Legora - for example, you may have one Project for each class, and within each Project you may organize your documents into subfolders based on topic, or based on assignment
- For more information on how to upload documents and navigate between projects, see the “Setting up your first project” guide
- To help you get started, we have provided the following sandbox documents:
○ 35+ publicly available contracts - upload them to a sub-folder titled “Public Commercial Contracts” in your Legora Project
○ 50 US Supreme Court cases - upload them to a sub-folder titled “Supreme Court Cases” in your Legora Project
4. Legora platform overview
For a high-level overview of the Legora platform, watch the “Intro to Legora” tutorial video. Need inspiration on how to use Legora? Here are some example use cases.
Using Assistant
Using Tabular Review
Using the Word Add-In
Using the Mobile App
- The Mobile App is used primarily for searching content, lightweight reviewing of files, and Assistant-driven work while away from your desktop, rather than full-scale drafting or review
- Please review the Mobile App Guide for more information
|
