How We Work
Most small firms cannot deliver Big Law output. We rebuilt the small firm from the ground up to do exactly that—through AI-native infrastructure, principal-direct delivery, and quality controls built into the system.
The Operating Model
AI-Native Infrastructure
Most law firms talk about AI. We built our practice on it. Citation verification pipelines, multi-agent research and drafting workflows, document automation, matter intelligence—engineered in-house, battle-tested across active matters. The infrastructure handles leverage work that traditionally required associate teams, which is what lets two attorneys run matters at the scale and pace clients need.
Principal-Direct Delivery
There is no associate layer. Both attorneys run their own matters from intake through resolution. When you call, you reach the lawyer working on your case—not a junior associate filtering between you and the partner who signed your engagement letter. Direct access is not an accommodation; it is the operating model.
Full-Lifecycle Coverage
From entity formation through fundraising, regulatory licensing, ongoing advisory, and litigation when disputes hit court—Astraea Counsel covers the full lifecycle of emerging companies under one roof. Transactional structuring and trial-tested litigation are not adjacent practice areas; they are integrated by design, so the firm that structures your deal is also the firm that defends or prosecutes the disputes that arise from it.
Quality as a Discipline
Quality control is not a final review pass. It is built into how the work gets produced—citation verification before any quote lands in a filing, peer review across attorneys, structured document review at scale, automated checks that catch what tired human eyes miss at 11 PM the night before a deadline. The systems are the discipline.
Inside the Practice
The Tools
Astraea Counsel runs on a custom suite of legal AI tools, built and maintained in-house and refined across active matters. The infrastructure is not a vendor product or a generic AI assistant. It is a deliberate, layered system engineered around the specific leverage points where AI changes what a small firm can do.
Citation verification runs against primary sources before any quote, holding, or rule statement lands in a filing. Every cite is checked for accuracy, currency, and pin-point precision. The system catches the kind of errors that get sanctioned in federal court—the misrepresented holding, the overruled precedent, the hallucinated case—and surfaces them before the brief leaves our offices.
Multi-agent research and drafting workflows allow us to canvas authorities, develop arguments, and produce first-pass drafts at velocities that traditionally required associate teams. The agents do the volume work; the attorneys do the judgment work. The result is faster turnaround on briefs and motions without compromising the rigor of analysis.
Document review at scale handles privilege flagging, redaction triage, hot-document identification, and exhibit extraction across productions of any size. Cases involving millions of documents—historically the exclusive province of large-firm associate teams—are now manageable by two attorneys plus the system.
Matter intelligence keeps everything where it should be: deadlines tracked, conflicts cleared, communications surfaced, time captured, billing reconciled. The operational backbone runs without consuming attorney hours, which is why those hours are available for the work clients are actually paying for.
The AI does not replace judgment. It removes the constraints that limit how much judgment we can deliver.
The Team Model
Astraea Counsel does not have associates. The two attorneys who founded the firm—Chanté Eliaszadeh and Brandon Orewyler—are the two attorneys who handle every matter, from initial scoping through resolution.
This is a deliberate structural choice. Most law firms scale by hiring associates and routing client work through layers of supervision. The model works for billable-hour economics; it does not always work for clients. Associates rotate off matters they have just learned. Partners delegate the drafting, then bill at partner rates to review what associates produced. Clients pay for the training and the friction.
Our model removes both. When you engage Astraea Counsel, the attorney who took your intake call is the attorney drafting your motion, the attorney negotiating your transaction, and the attorney appearing in court. There is no junior layer between you and the lawyer running your case, and no senior layer billing for review of work they did not do.
What replaces the leverage of an associate pyramid is the leverage of the AI-native infrastructure. The systems handle the volume work that justified the pyramid in the first place. The attorneys handle the judgment, the strategy, and the relationship.
For clients, this means continuity. The same attorney who knows the facts at week one knows them at week fifty-two. There is no hand-off, no re-briefing, no compounding institutional memory loss. The matter stays with the lawyer who owns it.
The Pricing Philosophy
Astraea Counsel charges boutique rates for Big Law output. The structure is not a marketing claim; it is the mechanical consequence of how the firm operates.
When a Big Law firm bills a matter, a significant portion of the rate covers leverage cost: the associates who do the volume work, the institutional overhead that supports them, the partner-review layer that exists because the associates need supervision. Clients pay for the pyramid that makes the model work.
Our infrastructure replaces the pyramid. The leverage that used to flow through associate teams now flows through systems we built in-house. The cost structure is fundamentally different, and we pass that difference through to clients rather than capturing it as margin.
For routine matters where scope is predictable, flat-fee arrangements are available. For ongoing advisory work, retainer engagements. For litigation and other matters where the scope is genuinely unpredictable, hourly billing remains the default—but at rates that reflect a two-attorney firm running on AI-native infrastructure, not a global firm running on associate hours.
Where alternative arrangements make sense, we discuss them. Capped fees for discrete phases of litigation. Blended rates across portfolios. Hybrid contingency arrangements for plaintiff-side matters where appropriate.
The philosophy is simple: the leverage advantage of how we built the firm should flow to the client, not into a higher bill rate.
For specific rates and engagement structures, see Pricing.
Engage Counsel That Scales With You
From entity formation through resolution, Astraea Counsel handles the work under one roof—Big Law-trained, AI-native, principal-direct.
Schedule a Consultation