Russell F. Hilliard

Russ is a native of New Hampshire, and has spent most of his professional career at the Upton firm, where he is now the senior partner. Since 2005, he has operated from the firm’s branch office in Portsmouth.

He focuses his practice in the areas of commercial and insurance litigation, professional discipline, and alternative dispute resolution, representing businesses, municipalities, and individual professionals.

Russ is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, inducted in 1995. He taught professional responsibility at Franklin Pierce Law Center (now UNH School of Law) for 10 years, and was a visiting lecturer at Tumaini University (now University of Iringa) in Tanzania in 2009 and 2012, leading courses in insurance law and judicial and legal ethics.

Following his time as a professor there, he and his wife now spend two months each year in central Tanzania doing volunteer work for the Lutheran church, Russ working remotely and taking advantage of the seven-hour time difference.

Russ earned his B.S. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1973, his J.D. from Cornell Law School in 1976, and his L.L.M. in taxation from Boston University School of Law in 1985. He has participated on numerous CLE panels on trial practice, insurance issues, legislative developments, and professional ethics.

A highly respected attorney among his peers, he is ranked by Chambers USA, America’s Leading Lawyers for Business in the area of commercial litigation, which recognized him as “as good a litigator as you could hope to find.” He is also included in The Best Lawyers in America® for alternative dispute resolution and in Super Lawyers in business litigation. He has a Martindale-Hubbell AV rating.

Russ was a founding member of the Hopkinton, New Hampshire Rotary club, serving as its charter president in 1996, and is now an honorary lifetime member. He is a member of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Newington, New Hampshire, where he served as council president in 2010. He was inducted into the Pembroke Academy Hall of Fame in 2008.

Russ and his wife Jo live in Portsmouth, and between them have five children and seven (and counting) grandchildren.

Assistant: Sharon Mallon