For Pittsburgh Law Firms

Your Pittsburgh tech partner.

One monthly retainer. IT support, websites, automation, training, and smarter tools when they fit, what we do is set by what your firm actually needs. Pace controlled by the hours you book. Client material stays on your firm's servers.

Your associates spend twelve hours on a contract set before a partner ever sees it. Deposition prep means reading thousands of pages by hand. Knowledge from past matters lives in a system nobody can really search. Institutional knowledge walks out the door every time a senior associate leaves.

You've seen what the new tools can do. Your ethics committee or IT director blocked the pilot. They were right to. The off-the-shelf tools store the data on someone else's servers. When you're handling privileged communications and confidential client files, that's the wrong setup, no matter how the vendor's contract reads.

Meanwhile, your peers are moving.

Reed Smith named a Chief AI Officer. K&L Gates won an Innovation Icon for their tech work. Both firms are headquartered in Pittsburgh and recruit from the same talent pool you do. Allen & Overy rolled out smart-drafting tools to all 3,500 of its lawyers firmwide. Harvey raised $200M at an $11B valuation in March 2026, explicitly to scale these tools across law firms.

The mid-AmLaw and regional firms that don't have a credible answer in 2026 are losing on the hiring side first, then on the client side six months later.

Sources: Bloomberg Law · Harvey AI · BTI Consulting Group · A&O Shearman newsroom

One retainer. Whatever your firm actually needs.

The retainer is the container. The work inside it flexes per firm based on what your team actually needs. Some firms get website rebuilds plus training. Some get IT support while a partner figures out their next move. Some get smart-tools work on case files. Same hours, same price, completely different work.

Smart tools for case files and drafting

Smart search across your matter files. First-draft contracts your associates edit instead of writing from scratch. Connection to your case management system. Everything runs on your firm's servers, no client data leaves.

Training and policy

Practical training for partners and associates on which tools are safe and useful. Drafting your firm's internal policy on the new tools. Helping the ethics committee evaluate vendor claims.

IT support

Help-desk, infrastructure, vendor management, security monitoring. Fractional IT director at the largest tier. Anything that should not eat partner time but currently does.

Website and tools

Firm website rebuild. Client portals. Internal dashboards for partners. Custom intake forms that pre-screen new matters.

Servers and infrastructure

Move from old servers to private cloud. Set up the right hardware so the smart tools run on your firm's infrastructure. Identity and access management.

Security

Annual security checks. Patient-data protection if your work touches health. SOC 2 readiness. Incident response planning. Vendor security review.

Reporting and analytics

Practice-group revenue reports. Time-and-billing analytics. Matter profitability. Lateral-recruit dashboards.

Process automation

Engagement letters generated automatically. Conflict checks streamlined. Matter intake. Client communications and reminders.

Discovery sets the scope. The free 30-minute assessment is where we map your firm's specific gaps to the catalog. The retainer agreement documents what we'll prioritize in your first 90 days. Quarterly review can shift the mix as priorities change.

Three sizes. Pick the one that matches your firm.

$250 per hour blended rate. Same rate for both senior operators. The work inside the retainer is set by your firm's needs, pull from any combination of services in the catalog above.

Starter
$1,250/month
5 hours · $250/hr
Best for a focused pilot. One specific use case. Lowest-risk way to evaluate working with us.

What 5 hours can buy

  • A scoped training session for one practice group
  • Drafting your firm's internal policy on the new tools
  • An ethics-committee-ready brief
  • Light technology advisory or vendor evaluation
  • One small automation (intake form, conflict check)
Growth
$10,000/month
40 hours · $250/hr
Best for firms ready to make tech a strategic priority. Multi-practice or multi-initiative scope.

What 40 hours can buy

  • Multi-practice rollout with each group's data kept separate
  • Or full IT support plus a significant initiative
  • Or smart-tools setup for power users across the firm
  • Or case-management-system integration plus quarterly roadmap
  • Strategic tech planning with the managing partner

First month is free at any tier. Hours roll over one month max. 30-day walk clause if no shipped work. Firms needing more than 40 hours per month get a custom Enterprise quote.

What the retainer doesn't include: tool usage costs (model inference, software subscriptions), infrastructure costs (hosting, storage, cloud compute), and any third-party tools required for your build. These are billed pass-through at cost, typically $300 to $1,500 per month depending on usage. We design things to keep them predictable.

Step 01

Free 30-min look at your firm's setup

We look at your current IT setup, where the team's time is going, and the three to five places we'd start. Recommendation on a starting tier with reasoning. You leave with a 90-day plan, yours to keep.

Step 02

Retainer agreement

One-page short-form retainer agreement, drafted within 24 hours of the call. Three-page long-form available if your GC wants it. Standard hours-not-rolled-over-past-one-month language.

Step 03

First month free, ship in week one

We start work on day one. By end of month one, your firm has shipped real work, not slide decks. If we miss, you walk. No termination fee.

Client material stays put

No client data touches an external server. No outside-system calls. The system runs where your data lives. Privilege is preserved by how it's built, not by a policy you have to enforce.

Ethics-committee ready

We build with full activity logs, access records, and matter-by-matter data isolation. Your ethics committee gets the documentation they need to approve, on day one.

Senior operators

Marc Shade, twenty-plus years shipping software for corporate clients. Scott Frederick Laughlin, software and infrastructure. The people you talk to are the people writing the code. No junior labor. No offshoring. No handoff chain.

Pittsburgh-rooted

We're local. Same talent pool, same industry network, same regulatory and client environment your firm operates in. Same time zone for incident response.

Familiar buying motion

Monthly retainer, standard hours-included contract, partner-decidable budget line. No procurement gauntlet. No six-month enterprise software sales cycle.

Pace controlled by you

Risk-averse partners start at Foundation tier. Watch the work prove out for ninety days. Scale to Growth or Enterprise when the value is concrete. Your hours, your pace.

What if we already have an IT support partner we're happy with?
We offer a tools-only retainer at the same hourly rate. Same model, no IT-support overlap. We slot in alongside your existing IT relationship.
What does the ethics committee see?
Activity logs for everything the system does, access records by matter and user, separation between practice groups, no outside-server traffic, no model training on your data. Documentation drafted in the language your ethics committee already uses for technology vendors. We've worked through the questions before.
How do you handle privilege?
It's a matter of how it's built, not what's in the contract. The smart tools run on your firm's infrastructure or in a private cloud you control. Nothing leaves your environment. The system never sees a privileged document outside your firewall. We'll walk your IT director and ethics chair through the setup before we sign anything.
What if we don't use all our hours one month?
Standard practice: hours roll over to the next month, but no further. Quarterly review with the managing partner adjusts the tier if your usage pattern is consistently above or below the package.
What about a defined-scope project on top of the retainer?
We can quote a fixed-scope project at $312.50 per hour for clearly-defined deliverables outside the retainer hours, billed separately. Most firms find the retainer hours are enough.
Are tool and infrastructure costs included in the retainer?
No. The retainer pays for our time. Tool usage costs (model inference, software subscriptions), infrastructure costs (hosting, storage, cloud compute), and any third-party tools required for your build are billed pass-through at cost. Typical range: $300 to $1,500 per month depending on usage. We design things for predictable, transparent costs and quote them up front.
Why not just use ChatGPT Enterprise or Microsoft Copilot?
Both store and route data through their own servers. For privileged work and confidential engagement files, that's the wrong setup regardless of what their contract says. The big firms (Reed Smith, Allen & Overy, Cleary Gottlieb) using Harvey or comparable tools are doing it for the same reason.
Can you work with our existing case management system?
Yes. iManage, NetDocuments, Worldox, and most major systems have integration patterns we've built against. Direct integration is part of the Growth and Enterprise tiers; Foundation tier integrates with one document source at a time.
How long is a typical engagement?
Most retainer engagements run year-over-year. There's no minimum commitment beyond the first month. The first-month-free clause means there's no termination penalty if it's not working.

Free 30-minute look at your firm's setup

See what a real tech partner looks like for your firm.

Thirty minutes, no deck, no slides, no follow-up pitch unless you ask. You walk away with a 90-day plan and a recommended starting tier. Yours to keep regardless of whether we ever work together.

Book Your Free Assessment →
Marc Shade · 2 Acre Studios · Pittsburgh