Legal AI company Harvey has launched a free Legal Engineering Certification, open to legal professionals whether or not they use the company’s platform.
The approximately two-hour, self-paced program combines video lessons and exercises with a final assessment. No Harvey licence is required.
The curriculum is organized around four areas: legal expertise, AI fluency, process design and facilitation. Together, they reflect the expanding role of legal engineers—professionals who connect legal practice with technology, redesign workflows and help organizations adopt new tools.
Harvey says participants will learn to identify legal-specific AI risks, understand core AI concepts, assess workflows for improvement and support responsible adoption across an organization. The program is intended for lawyers, legal operations professionals, innovation teams and legal technology specialists, as well as others interested in entering the field.
For Joe Marando, a Toronto-based Legal Innovation Partner at Harvey, the certification also brings greater definition to a career path that legal professionals have often had to navigate on their own.
“If you suspect there’s a serious career here that doesn’t look like the traditional one, you’re right,” Marando wrote on LinkedIn. “Now there’s a place to start, and a field guide to go with it.”
Marando described his own path from corporate tax practice at a large Canadian law firm to a legal technology startup and, later, roles spanning knowledge management, legal project management and innovation. Although his former team did not use the legal engineer title, he said much of its work would now fall within that category.
The launch follows the growing prominence of legal engineering within law firms, corporate legal departments and legal technology companies. As generative AI moves beyond experimentation, organizations increasingly need people who can translate legal requirements into practical workflows while accounting for professional judgment, risk and user adoption.
For Canadian legal organizations, the certification may provide a useful common starting point for developing those capabilities. A vendor-issued credential is not a replacement for practical experience or organization-specific training, but a free and publicly accessible program could help establish a shared vocabulary around a role that is still evolving.
The certification is available through Harvey Academy.