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Clio’s billion-dollar acquisition of vLex made headlines this week alongside Harvey’s deepening partnership with LexisNexis.

On the surface, these moves look like rivals squaring off.

But it’s not Clio versus Harvey.

It’s Clio and Harvey trying to be the same thing: legal’s hero company. The all-in-one, do-it-all, own-the-stack player.

We’re watching legal tech consolidate in real time and this may not be the last deal of its kind.

In this week’s Attorney Intelligence, we’ll explore:

• Why Clio and Harvey are both racing to own the legal tech stack

• How each company’s strategy reflects a different market focus, at least for now

• What this means for players like Westlaw, Lexis, vLex and Legora

• Why smaller tools and niche platforms might actually benefit from the consolidation wave

Let’s dive in.

Not quite head-to-head

It’s tempting to frame this as a battle between giants. But that oversimplifies what’s really going on.

Clio is still primarily focused on small to mid-sized firms - think solo shops to firms with under 100 lawyers.

This is where vLex fits well, too (although they have been making progress up market). Although Clio wants to push upmarket, this deal isn’t about taking on Harvey tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Harvey is embedded in enterprise firms.

Its partnership with LexisNexis gives it direct access to one of the two largest pools of legal data, but they haven’t made a move into practice management yet. That could change.

And if Harvey acquires or builds on the business-of-law side, the competition could get much tighter.

A full-stack future

Both of these companies are chasing the same endgame: become the central operating system for legal work.

Clio’s been inching in this direction acquiring startups in contract automation, launching its AI product (Clio Duo), and now this vLex deal.

Harvey, on the other hand, built from research outward, embedding into tools lawyers already use, and now moving closer to a full-service play.

The difference is form, not function.

Both want to own the user experience from intake to insight. And to do that, they need data, workflows, and client mindshare.

The data squeeze

This is where the pressure starts to build, especially for other legal tech players.

The three major data players in legal used to be Westlaw, Lexis, and vLex.

The landscape has begun to shift…

• Lexis is partnered with Harvey

• Westlaw is tied up with CoCounsel

• vLex just got acquired by Clio

The race for high-quality, scalable legal data is narrowing fast, leaving companies like Legora in a tough spot.

Partnerships, or acquisitions, are coming next.

What comes next

While these deals are big, the real takeaway is the trend they have sparked.

We’re entering a wave of legal tech consolidation, where horizontal tools get bundled, vertical players try to go full-stack, and everyone races to become the default interface for lawyers.

Clio and Harvey are just the first two to make their intentions clear.

Expect more billion-dollar moves while the definition of a “legal tech company” to continues to expand.

Legal Bytes

• Harvey launches Deep Research for Legal, extending its capabilities into long-form, high-context legal analysis.

• Authors sue Microsoft over alleged use of their books to train AI - another flashpoint in the growing copyright storm.

• LawDroid debuts CiteCheck AI, designed to prevent hallucinated citations and the costly sanctions that can follow.

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Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week,

Adrian