Pantea Farhi Stevenson
Founding Partner
Pantea is an award-winning attorney with 18 years of experience spanning Big Law to law firm partner to Deputy General Counsel at one of DC’s only tech unicorns to General Counsel at a tech company. Ultimately, Pantea returned to her entrepreneurial roots to build a boutique firm grounded in her values, insights, and best practices: one that merges excellence with the agility, creativity and pragmatism that can only come from someone who’s built organizations from inside and out and sat on both sides of the table.
She has distilled that journey into Farhi Law, bringing her expertise to a law firm that is designed to guide businesses through their most important transactions and decisions.
Pantea began her career in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) at Jones Day in New York, advising public and private boards and closing high-stakes transactions. At Morgan Lewis, she represented science, pharmaceutical, and tech companies in partnerships, IP licensing, co-development, and fundraising deals.
She later built her own practice, which was acquired by Bean Kinney & Korman, where she became a partner focused on corporate transactions and M&A. From there, she joined one of her clients as its first General Counsel and COO, building its legal, operations and controls functions.
At Cvent, one of the region’s largest tech companies, Pantea led multi-million dollar SaaS negotiations against Fortune 500 companies, provided legal support for the company’s IPO, oversaw corporate and litigation matters.
Pantea then joined Upside as Chief Legal Commercial Officer and later Chief Legal Officer for Partnerships and Product. There, she led some of the largest deals in the company’s history–with deals regularly valued in millions–negotiated fundraising deals worth $100M+, designed enterprise-wide regulatory frameworks (including privacy, AML, and AI governance), and built scalable legal infrastructure–CLM system, AI-enabled workflows, and standardized agreement templates–that dramatically expanded the legal team’s impact.
Pantea uses her expertise to provide strategic legal advice and help companies grow and close deals. She has advised companies through their most important inflection points, built legal departments from the ground up, drove strategic initiatives and negotiated deals that define companies. All while helping companies plan and prepare for their goals.
Pantea has also served on nonprofit boards, taught negotiations and business law, and led cross-functional teams supporting companies from startup through IPO and beyond.
Patrick Kernan
Patrick Kernan is a Washington, DC–based attorney with over 25 years of experience in federal litigation and government contracts law. He represents businesses nationwide in bid protests, contract claims, and complex disputes before the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, boards of contract appeals, and federal courts. He also advises contractors on procurement strategy, protest risk, and claims resolution.
Before entering private practice, Mr. Kernan served in senior legal roles across the federal government, including the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and the United States Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps. His experience provides clients with a practical understanding of how agencies evaluate procurements, make decisions under pressure, and resolve disputes in real time.
During his military service, Mr. Kernan served two tours in Iraq, including as Chief of Procurement and Fiscal Law for Multi-National Corps – Iraq, where he oversaw legal support for billions of dollars in government contracts in an operational environment. He later served as Staff Judge Advocate for the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force–Arabian Peninsula, advising leadership on legal and operational risk. For his service, he was awarded the Bronze Star.
At the Department of Homeland Security, Mr. Kernan advised on contract formation, bid protests, and claims, and served as Chief Counsel to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Transformation Program, a large-scale business and information technology modernization effort.
Mr. Kernan began his career litigating contract disputes and bid protests with the U.S. Army Contract Appeals Division.
He is a graduate of Hamilton College and Wake Forest University School of Law, and holds an LL.M. in government contracts from the Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School. He is admitted to practice in Washington, D.C., the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and the Supreme Court of the United States.
His practice is informed by firsthand experience advising decision-makers in high-stakes government environments.
