Harrison Drury Partners with August to Co-Develop AI Workflows Across Legal Practice and Firm Operations

Manchester, UK / New York, NY — Harrison Drury, a full-service law firm founded in 1901 with nine offices across the United Kingdom, has partnered with August to co-develop AI workflows across its legal teams and business operations. Rather than layering a tool on top of existing processes, the firm is focusing on how work gets done across the business to benefit their clients and the teams delivering the work for those clients, from corporate transactions and commercial property and to their operational teams in terms of HR, marketing and business development, and financial operations.

The partnership will put Harrison Drury's people at the centre. The time that previously went into process-heavy, repetitive tasks will now go toward the judgment, expertise, and client relationships the firm is known for. Staff across the firm, from fee earners to operational teams, will be trained and certified through August Academy, a library of 100+ video tutorials on using  AI effectively and responsibly.

“What August will give us the ability to spend more of our time on the things our clients actually value: our knowledge, our relationship, and our attention to their specific needs. The technology handles a lot of the process; our people handle the judgment and the advice,” said Simon England, Managing Partner at Harrison Drury.

Co-Developed Workflows, Not an Off-the-Shelf Tool

Harrison Drury chose August after evaluating multiple platforms, selecting it for the depth of collaboration on offer: dedicated engineering support, co-developed workflows, and a rollout structured around how the firm actually operates. As August's anchor UK client, Harrison Drury has priority access to new features and a direct product feedback channel.

That collaboration is already underway with teams exploring areas where the platform can make tasks more efficient and working closely with the team at August to make these a reality. During the trial, teams were able to utilise the platform in areas such as due diligence and document analysis to support them on workflows, with the plan being to tailor these for each team.

Rick Life, Partner, Corporate at Harrison Drury said “I’m really interested to see the positive impact this will have on our day-to-day tasks and have already seen fantastic application opportunities to enhance our workflows during the initial trial and roll out. After twenty years in corporate M&A and having worked at some leading firms with a vast array of technologies, I’m genuinely excited to use this platform and see how it can offer even more value for our clients and our teams.”

“The difference here is collaboration. Other firms are subscribing to AI. We're working with August to build something that fits how we actually operate and deliver what our clients need. That closeness means we can find ways to use the technology that our competitors, even those with bigger budgets, simply aren't doing,” said Malcolm Ireland, Legal Services Partner at Harrison Drury.

Expanding What the Firm Can Offer

Harrison Drury's approach points to what the next generation of law firms looks like: not firms that use AI as an add-on, but firms that tailor its use within their operations and functions. Every department, from corporate legal services to the firm’s finance team, runs through the same platform, with the same context, and the same feedback loop back to the product team. And because each workflow is built on Harrison Drury's own expertise and processes, the firm's institutional knowledge is captured in the system itself, and will be available to every lawyer and every team.

"Harrison Drury isn't treating AI as a checkbox. They're rethinking how the entire firm can benefit from the support our technology can offer to their expertise, from how lawyers deliver work to how the business functions around them. That's exactly the kind of firm we built August for," said Rutvik Rau, Co-Founder and CEO of August.

About Harrison Drury

Harrison Drury is an independent Northern law firm with offices in Clitheroe, Garstang, Kendal, Lancaster, Lytham, Manchester, Preston, Southport and Stoke-on-Trent. It employs more than 200 staff and advises a wide range of corporate and commercial clients on Corporate and Commercial and Property and Construction matters including large organisations, SMEs, owner-managed businesses, and high-net-worth individuals. It also has a Home & Family division specialising in matters including family law, estate planning, wills and probate, and residential property.

About August

August is a legal AI workspace that helps lawyers handle the full spectrum of their work and helps the legal operations teams handle the business. Unlike tools that solve isolated tasks, August works across a lawyer's entire workflow with context that moves seamlessly between web, email, and documents. The company has raised $7M in funding from New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Pear VC, Afore Capital, Stanford Law School, and executives at OpenAI, Bain Capital Ventures, and Ramp, and serves law firms ranging from solo practitioners to the AmLaw 150.