Daniel Hardman, Esq. was the co-founder of Pearson Hardman. He is an attorney and former managing partner before Jessica Pearson and Harvey Specter threatened to expose his affair to Alicia Hardman, his wife who had cancer. His actions on the later half of season 2, forced Jessica to merge with Edward Darby to create Pearson Darby, which later got renamed to Pearson Darby Specter.
History
Before the year 2003, Daniel was a senior partner at Gordon Schmidt Van Dyke. Sometime in 2003, Daniel, along with Jessica, had successfully staged a coup by convincing majority of the senior partners to vote out Gordon, Schmidt, and Van Dyke, creating Pearson Hardman. The coup was said to be very swift as described by Harvey Specter "...you got [your name] up there fast" to Jessica.
In the year 2007, Jessica had noticed someone had been stealing from the firm after looking at the accounting books. Hesitant to go to Daniel without any concrete proof, Jessica sends Harvey to investigate, promising him partnership if he succeeds. Harvey soon finds the culprit to be Louis, only to find out that the real culprit had made Louis out to be the fall guy. With Louis's help, Harvey proves that Daniel Hardman had been the one stealing from the firm. When confronted about this by Jessica, Daniel reveals that his wife has cancer and he has been stealing this money to help her. This was enough to satisfy Jessica but not Harvey who really wanted his partnership. He soon discovered that the money was not for Alicia but for Monica Eton, with whom Daniel was having an affair. Threatening to tell his wife, Harvey asks Daniel to sign a piece of paper saying Daniel is walking away from the firm. Daniel reluctantly agrees.
Season 2
Five years later, when Alicia loses the fight against her cancer, Hardman comes back and manages to take over the firm once again by taking advantage of a lawsuit filed against Harvey by Travis Tanner, saying Harvey had buried evidence in a case. Later, it was discovered that Daniel had planted the evidence and made it look like Harvey had buried it, and Daniel was dismissed from the firm.
After the dismissal, Daniel started working with Robert Zane to take the firm down by defending Folsom Foods on a gender discrimination civil case being handled by Pearson Hardman. While defending Folsom, he files a gender discrimation suit on behalf of Monica Eton using, word-for-word, the lawsuit Mike Ross had filed against Monica.
Trivia
- The original founding partner was supposed to be Phillip Hardman, portrayed by Victor Garber, who willingly passed on his position to Jessica.[1]