Founded 1939. Still arguing.
Harshaw, Meade & Long was founded in 1939, in a single room above a Kansas City bank, on a proposition that has not changed: a client is owed the whole of a lawyer’s judgment, not a committee’s average.
The firm grew the slow way — by outcome. Harshaw built the counseling practice on the principle that the best dispute is the one structured out of existence. Meade built the litigation practice for the disputes that insisted. Long, who claims to have seen every market cycle that matters, built everything designed to last longer than its founders.
We remain deliberately small. We decline more matters than we accept. We plan in decades because our clients do.
How We Practice
Candor
We tell clients what is, not what sells.
Continuity
Relationships measured in generations.
Craft
Every document drafted as if it will be read aloud in court. Eventually, some are.
A Short History
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1939
Founded
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1948
First appellate victory
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1961
Harshaw’s Stranger doctrine adopted
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2026
Becomes the demonstration practice of Jubal.law
“Front!”
— traditional summons to the duty secretary, still shouted fondly
J. E. HarshawAn homage, freely admitted.
Harshaw, Meade & Long is a fictional firm. Our partners are borrowed, with affection and respect, from the works of Robert A. Heinlein — who gave American letters its finest lawyer, its longest-lived counselor, and more good sense per page than most law libraries. The firm exists as the demonstration practice of Jubal.law: the stage on which we show, in research, writing, and presentations, what an AI legal partner does for a working firm. The matters here are as fictional as the partners. No legal services are offered, and no affiliation with the Heinlein estate is claimed or implied.
We are, simply, readers who never quite got over the books.