How Estrella Levels Up With Harvey

About Estrella

Estrella, LLC is a full-service Puerto Rico business law firm with more than five decades of history and deep roots in the Island’s legal and business communities. Founded in Old San Juan, the firm advises leading enterprises across litigation, corporate and commercial transactions, labor and employment, regulatory matters, and intellectual property.

Today, Estrella operates as a 20-lawyer platform that combines the responsiveness of a boutique with the bench strength of a full-service firm. The firm emphasizes senior lawyer involvement, judgment, and accountability — a model built for quality that demands leverage.

Opportunity

Estrella’s structure created a familiar challenge for firms of its size.

Experienced lawyers handled matters directly, which meant partners and senior attorneys often spent time on first drafts, bulk document review, translations, and proposals. That friction limited capacity and pulled attention away from strategic analysis, client counseling, and business development.

Operating in Puerto Rico added another layer of complexity. The firm works across a mixed civil and common law system, in both Spanish and English. Litigation filings, regulatory materials, and contracts often require bilingual precision, making translation and review a recurring bottleneck.

Managing Partner Alberto Estrella knew the firm needed a way to scale impact — without changing its model or compromising judgment.

Solution

Alberto Estrella personally led the evaluation and implementation of Harvey. Just as importantly, he adopted Harvey himself across litigation, corporate, and labor and employment matters.

“I leverage technology in all my functions at the firm,” Estrella says. “Harvey quickly proved it could fill the gap we had.”

Today, Harvey is a core part of how Estrella lawyers draft, review, and analyze documents. They created firmwide prompts to review motions, pleadings, contracts, and client reports, enforcing structure, clarity, accurate citations, and preferred firm writing style.

“I run a specific prompt through Harvey for Word every single time I draft or review a client report,” he says. “It improves the quality of the document every time, consistently.”

Harvey also strengthened legal analysis. When preparing to oppose a motion, Estrella outlines his arguments and then asks Harvey to surface every possible counterargument based on the filing.

“Invariably, it suggests an argument I missed or didn’t think about,” he says. “This is powerful, actionable stuff.”

Winning More Work, Faster

While Alberto focused on quality and leverage, Mayra Artiles, Corporate and Commercial Practice Co-Chair, focused on growth.

Before Harvey, the firm spent significant non-billable time drafting proposals and RFP responses just to compete for work. Now, Estrella uses Vault to store past proposals, pitches, and RFP materials, allowing lawyers to generate tailored proposals minutes after an introductory call.

“We send proposals while the opportunity is still live,” Artiles says.

Harvey also accelerates commercial contract drafting and financing document comparisons. That speed allows Estrella to take on more matters without expanding headcount or client budgets.

Proven Across Complex Practice Areas

Estrella’s intellectual property team uses Harvey to support trademark prosecution and IP-heavy contract work, including USPTO Office Action responses.

“Harvey significantly reduces the time it takes to analyze Office Actions and synthesize case law,” says Jeffrey Hernandez-Escobar, Of Counsel. “It lets us move quickly from analysis to strategy, while keeping full control over legal judgment and the final work product.”

Harvey helps the team compare cited marks, analyze goods and services, surface relevant precedent, and reuse successful argument structures through Vault.

“By reusing prior successful Office Action responses, we draft more consistent, higher-quality arguments in less time,” adds Vannessa Díaz-Carrasco, Of Counsel.

At the firmwide level, José Meléndez, Director of Operations and Co-Lead of the Corporate and Commercial Practice, uses Harvey to run diligence across transactions and regulatory matters.

The team ingests entire data rooms, extracts and classifies key provisions.

“Vault lets us triage faster and go deeper within the same review hours,” Meléndez says. “We spend less time hunting documents and more time delivering advice clients can act on.”

Impact

Across the firm, Estrella saves, on average, 7–10+ hours per lawyer per week, depending on the practice area. That time flows back into higher-value analysis, client development, and strategic work — not administrative overhead.

“I see Harvey becoming a lawyer’s most important tool,” Estrella says. “A trusted assistant that helps you do better work.”

For a mid-sized firm operating in a complex, bilingual jurisdiction, Harvey has enabled Estrella to compete with larger firms on speed, quality, and sophistication while staying true to its identity.

And for firms looking to level up, Estrella’s playbook is clear: lead from the top, embed AI where lawyers actually work, and use it to elevate judgment — not replace it.