10X Lawyers: How Pierson Ferdinand Scales a Partner-Only Firm With :Harvey:

Key Highlights

• A minimum of 10 hours saved per attorney every week, with power users reclaiming 15 to 20.
• 14 days of trial testimony, roughly 7,000 pages, reviewed in about five hours, with findings to the client in two days instead of three weeks.
• 300+ partners across 90+ practice areas, fully remote, doubled in size in two years.

About Pierson Ferdinand

Pierson Ferdinand was designed to challenge traditional assumptions about how legal services are delivered. Founded in January 2024, the firm launched with more than 130 partners as one of the largest law firm launches in US history. Today it is a fully distributed, partner-led global firm with nearly 300 partners across more than 90 practice areas in the US and UK. Co-Chairmen Michael Pierson and Joel Ferdinand built it to be something deliberately different: the elite law firm of the future, fully remote, AI native, and technology driven, grounded in four cornerstones of being professional, responsive, trusted, and humble. “We didn’t do this overnight,” says Ferdinand. “We looked 50 years ahead and asked what this should look like.”

Opportunity

Most firms run on leverage: armies of associates stacked beneath partners. Pierson Ferdinand flipped that model on its head. It is a partner-only firm, with no associates and no junior training, by design. As clients increasingly seek efficiency, value, and more direct engagement with experienced counsel, the firm's model offered a different approach. That bold structure raised an equally bold question: how do experienced partners absorb the work juniors traditionally handle, without sacrificing speed, margin, or quality?

“In place of junior staff, we use AI to largely replace the tasks that would have ordinarily been performed by more junior lawyers,” says Pierson. The firm evaluated more than 200 products, and security alone eliminated most of them. Harvey stood apart: purpose-built for legal work, built by lawyers, and backed by the security infrastructure (SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, GDPR) the firm refused to compromise on.

Solution

Two years in, Harvey is the firm’s associate bench, what Pierson calls “the associate that does not need to eat, sleep, drink, or leave the office.”

Litigation at speed. A Pierson Ferdinand litigator used Harvey to review the full record of a 14-day trial, roughly 7,000 pages, in about five hours, saving an estimated 55 hours and delivering preliminary findings to the client in two days rather than three weeks. Another partner saved 100 to 150 hours building deposition outlines on a case spanning 1,000+ documents and a dozen witnesses.

Work that happens overnight. Using Harvey’s Vault, “one of the most incredible pieces of software I’ve ever seen,” says Ferdinand, partners drag in pleadings, discovery, and deal files and let Harvey work while they sleep. “I ask, ‘What do you think about the timeline? I think there are holes.’ I wake up the next morning and I have a timeline.” A 600-page deposition transcript that once took days now summarizes in seconds, with a split-screen source view that lets partners verify every quote.

A built-in gut check. Partners use Harvey to pressure-test strategy. “I can upload 19 decisions from a judge and say, ‘Pretend you’re the judge. How does this play out?’” says Ferdinand. “To have the tech push back on you is very powerful.”

Adoption was never forced. Chief Innovation Officer Christina Wojcik runs practice-specific trainings and a monthly “How I Use It” series where partners show peers exactly how they drive value. “We know you can’t force anyone to change, so we didn’t,” says Wojcik. “We show the value and let them come to the tool naturally. Adoption has skyrocketed.”

Impact

At a bare minimum, every attorney saves 10 hours a week, and many report reclaiming 15 to 20. But Michael Pierson and Joel Ferdinand frame it as reallocated time, not saved time. “Instead of creating a first draft, we get deeper into the matter and provide more strategic advice,” says Pierson. The model moves lawyers from task-based work to trusted-advisor work, and the market is responding. Pierson Ferdinand has doubled in size in two years, grown 61% year over year, and one of the world’s largest financial institutions recently added the firm to its panel of outside counsel, citing its model, its value, and its AI strategy. That growth has been enabled, in part, by Harvey empowering Pierson Ferdinand partners to reallocate time to client service and business development.

“Any law firm that’s not adopting AI as a core component of its evolution will quickly fall behind,” says Pierson. For Pierson Ferdinand, that isn’t a prediction. It is the foundation they built on.