Hathaway Russell

Hathaway Pease Russell is a senior intellectual property lawyer with a practice focused on life sciences and high-technology industries, alongside significant firm-wide leadership responsibilities.

Russell leads Foley Hoag’s strategic direction while also overseeing day-to-day operations, including client service, culture, inclusion, and long-term growth. She is part of a relatively small cohort of women managing major law firms in the US.

Her legal practice focuses on complex pharmaceutical and biotechnology patent portfolios, including global strategy, freedom-to-operate analysis, due diligence, inventorship, validity, and non-infringement opinions. She has acted for major pharmaceutical companies including AbbVie, Pharmacyclics and Allergan, and for leading institutions such as Johns Hopkins University and CU Innovations.

Russell has had significant involvement in large-scale pharmaceutical portfolios, including Humira and other AbbVie assets, such as Skyrizi, Qulipta, Ubrelvy, Vyalev and Venetoclax. 

Following corporate acquisitions, she also worked on portfolios including Imbruvica from Pharmacyclics and botox-related technologies from Allergan. Her work spans therapies generating billions in global revenue, and she regularly advises on biosimilars, biologics strategy and long-term portfolio management.

She has also contributed to amicus briefs in major US Supreme Court patent eligibility cases in personalised medicine, including Mayo Collaborative Services and Mayo Clinic Rochester v Prometheus Laboratories. Her career reflects a blend of high-end pharmaceutical IP strategy and institutional leadership at firm level.

Beyond the courtroom, Russell has shown a commitment to fostering inclusion and equality within the firm and across the wider IP community. Under her stewardship, Foley Hoag was named a ‘Best Place to Work’ for LGBTQ+ equality for 12 consecutive years by the Human Rights Campaign.