Mark Harris

Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Axiom

Mark Harris was a 29-year-old associate at Davis, Polk and Wardwell when he came up with the idea for Axiom. He hoped to create an entirely new kind of firm that liberated great lawyers from the traditional law firm and gave clients a more efficient alternative to the mahogany-paneled offices and “partnership pyramid” they’d been bankrolling. The catch lay in the uniquely conservative nature of the legal profession.
 
Nonetheless, in 2000 Mark recruited his friend Alec to “put the traditional law firm in a wind tunnel, and strip away everything that created drag or waste.” Headquartered in New York, Axiom is the world’s largest and fastest growing new model legal services firm, recognized for its leadership and expertise in the challenges attached to the business of law. Working primarily with Fortune 100 companies, the firm is now almost 1,000 people across its offices in New York, San Francisco, London, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Boston, Hong Kong, Singapore, Houston and Atlanta and delivery centers in Houston, Gurgaon and Belfast. Mark’s been featured in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and as an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year. And the firm he founded has been recognized by the Financial Times, The Lawyer and Legal Week for its innovation, including as a recipient of the Financial Times Innovative Lawyers Award in the US and UK. He has spoken extensively on legal innovation and is often found lending his expertise in the classrooms at leading law schools and at forward thinking industry events.   
 
Before Davis, Polk and Wardwell, Mark clerked for the Honorable Joseph T. Sneed, Senior Judge to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He received his JD from the University of Texas School of Law.