Editors’ Note

Ed Haug is a founding partner of Haug Partners LLP and has served as the firm’s Managing Partner since 2005. He is nationally recognized as a trial lawyer and consultant involving all aspects of intellectual property and competition law. Haug received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from University of Notre Dame and his J.D. from St. John’s University.

Firm Brief

Haug Partners LLP (haugpartners.com) is a full-service, national law firm that provides integrated multidisciplinary legal services for life science and technology companies. With offices in New York, Washington, D.C., and Boston, and through working partnerships with firms in Germany, China, and Japan, Haug Partners has the resources, technical expertise, legal acumen, and business judgment to consistently deliver optimal outcomes for clients. The firm was founded in 1997 as Frommer Lawrence and Haug LLP.

Haug Partners’ brand centers around the concept of “seeing things differently” from its competitors. How is Haug Partners’ approach to client counseling different from service other law firms provide?

Effective client counseling in this complex and evolving legal and regulatory market requires input from multiple distinct, but often related, legal disciplines. Haug Partners delivers added value to our clients by assembling a multidisciplinary team tailored to each client’s needs. That team may include litigators and trial attorneys, Ph.D. technical advisors, procurement specialists, regulatory and antitrust experts, and transactional counsel. Each of our teams works closely with the client to thoroughly analyze a matter, design a comprehensive legal strategy, and then deliver a comprehensive, integrated solution. While other firms may have an attorney or group of attorneys that work in the same or similar practice areas, our integrated counseling is unparalleled. Our purpose is not to just deliver legal advice; we provide comprehensive solutions that allow our clients to accomplish their business objectives.

How does Haug Partners keep up with the pace of technological innovation in this country? Is understanding your clients’ commercial motivations, and the technical aspects of your clients’ technology necessary to provide the services you offer?

There’s no question that success in our industry requires an intimate and sophisticated understanding of a client’s technology and business goals. At Haug Partners, we understand complexity, and we understand how to communicate that complexity to judges, juries, and administrative agencies. Many of our attorneys and scientific advisors hold advanced degrees in highly specialized technical fields and many have extensive in-house experience in diverse industries. Our team includes former research scientists, in-house corporate counsel, FDA and FTC attorneys, and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office examiners. This technical expertise, coupled with our legal depth and business judgment, enables us to consistently deliver optimal results.

You’ve announced an ambitious new expansion into the Boston legal market. Why Boston?

We made the move to Boston to support and offer services to the cluster of life science and technology companies in the Boston area. Now, with offices in New York, Washington, D.C., and Boston, and through working partnerships with firms in Germany, China, Japan, and other key international markets, Haug Partners has the reach and resources to address our clients’ most demanding issues. We’ve also expanded and redefined our service offerings beyond our core competencies in intellectual property, FDA, antitrust, and transactional law to include commercial litigation and strategic counseling; due diligence; investigations, compliance, and risk mitigation services; international trade commission; and licensing and transactions. As we expand into Boston and beyond, we will continue to broaden these practice areas.

It seems that Haug Partners’ service to the community makes headlines more often than other firms your size. Would you discuss your emphasis on community service and pro bono work?

Haug Partners brings its expertise and considerable resources to bear in standing up for veterans, low-income individuals, and nonprofit/charitable organizations that lack the resources for adequate legal representation. Our firm has appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court three times in the last few years, and two of those appearances were on behalf of pro bono clients. This fall, we will argue Hamer v. Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of a pro bono client that was prevented from appealing an adverse decision in her employment-discrimination and retaliation case. We’ve also represented pro bono clients in administrative proceedings before the federal government and at all levels of the state and federal court system. We participate in numerous pro bono organizations, including Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, the Innocence Project, the Veterans Consortium Pro Bono Program, and the New York City Corporation Counsel. All Haug Partners attorneys are encouraged and formally incentivized to devote a portion of their time to pro bono matters.

It is also essential to actively contribute to our legal community through service in bar and industry associations, including the Federal Circuit Bar Association, of which I’m the Past President, the Licensing Executive Society, BIO International, NYBIO, NJBIO, MassBIO, and the Food and Drug Law Institute. Our active, frontline involvement in these organizations allows us to directly influence law and policy to the benefit of our profession and our clients.

How important is recruiting young talent to Haug Partners’ success?

Firms must find ways to efficiently incorporate young attorneys with lower billing rates into key roles. That can’t be done, however, unless you have a deep bench of well-trained associates. Haug Partners wholeheartedly invests in hiring and training top lawyers. Our total compensation and benefits package is among the most generous in the legal industry. In addition to an industry-leading compensation and benefits package, we also provide ongoing mentorship, training, and professional development opportunities. Mentorship is a critical piece of our commitment to our associates’ professional development. This immersive hands-on training and one-on-one mentoring starts at the beginning of the summer associate program and continues for our full-time associates. We also provide countless formal training opportunities for our attorneys, including practical oral advocacy training in our New York office’s state-of-the-art mock courtroom.•