DeepJudge's Agent Handoff Protocol Opens an Interoperability Wedge

DeepJudge launched the Agent Handoff Protocol (AHP) on August 13 — an open system that allows users to move between AI platforms without losing context. Harvey and Thomson Reuters are adopting early, making AHP a de facto interoperability standard between two of the market's largest platforms. For legal tech operators, the AHP is structurally significant: if context portability becomes a buyer expectation, vendors that resist open handoff protocols risk being positioned as lock-in plays rather than best-of-breed tools, a framing that CIOs and legal operations teams increasingly penalize at procurement. The AHP also raises the stakes for document management systems like iManage and NetDocuments, which currently anchor context through matter and document records; an open handoff layer could shift context authority toward the AI orchestration layer.