Hillary Hughes

Practice Areas

Business & Corporate Finance

Artificial Intelligence

Beauty & Wellness

Charitable & Tax-Exempt Organizations

Commercial & IP Transactions

Communications, Telecom & Media

Consumer Brands

Emerging Companies

Family-Owned & Closely Held Businesses

Fashion & Apparel

Food & Beverage

IP & Technology

Luxury Law

Mergers & Acquisitions

Sports, Arts & Entertainment

Career

Hillary is a business, food & beverage and CPG, beauty/wellness, sports & entertainment, fashion & apparel and technology attorney.

Hillary represents sports & entertainment talent, entrepreneurs, start-up businesses and established brands as well as angel, venture capital and private equity investors. She serves as the Chair of the firm’s Sports, Arts & Entertainment practice and chairs the Food & Beverage practice. Hillary counsels clients on a full range of matters, from day-to-day operational concerns to sophisticated transactions. Like the innovative entrepreneurs, talent and brands she advises, Hillary strives to bring creative yet practical strategies to legal services, assisting clients with brand and asset protection, risk management and dispute resolution. The matters on which Hillary counsels are often cross-border in nature.

The clients of her business practice include entrepreneurs, start-up businesses and established brands as well as angel, venture capital and private equity investors. Hillary has a broad transactional background, advising her business clients with a variety of matters, including corporate structure, capital raising and financing, commercial matters, intellectual property matters, mergers and acquisitions and other exit transactions.

Hillary’s food & beverage and consumer packaged goods (CPG), beauty/wellness practice focuses on advising clients in the better-for-you, natural, organic, plant-based, vegan, cultivated, cultured meat or cell-based meat, food tech as well as pet food arenas, including brands disrupting their categories and those developing innovative technology. She also serves international brands expanding into the United States, as well as investors and vendors partnering with these brands. She counsels these clients on operational concerns and sophisticated transactions including raising capital, intellectual property development and protection, manufacturing/packing, broker, distribution, supply and other services arrangements as well as on other commercial matters and exit transactions. With the increasing trend of brands and celebrities to partner, Hillary often finds her food & beverage and sports & entertainment practices intersecting and assists brands or their celebrity partners on investment and/or endorsement transactions. The Food & Beverage practice produces a weekly publication focusing on regulatory, market, operations and transactions in the start-up and emerging food & beverage industry called the Emerging Food & Beverage Update. Click here to subscribe.

Hillary’s sports & entertainment clients include new and established athletes, recording artists, actors, television personalities, writers, producers, journalists, broadcasters, photographers, fashion designers, chefs and talent agents and managers. Her counsel to them spans a broad range of services on matters such as brand and intellectual property protection and licensing, services arrangements, rights acquisition and disposition, entrepreneurship and investment and post-career planning.

Hillary’s fashion & apparel practice provides a full suite of legal services to designers, manufacturers, distributors and retailers of fashion, jewelry, apparel, footwear and accessory products sold at all price points – from affordable goods to luxury offerings. She regularly advises fashion and apparel clients on launching, investing in, scaling, and protecting their valuable brands in a global marketplace. She provides boutique quality specialized industry knowledge and experience backed by the resources of a full-service mid-sized international law firm. She understands that effective representation involves leveraging a variety of areas of law to accomplish the objectives of the fashion and apparel brands she services.

In Hillary’s artificial intelligence practice, she combines a passion for innovation with her emerging technology insights to assist clients with unlocking AI's potential while mitigating its legal risks. She works closely with investors and businesses across diverse industries, advising them on AI’s legal intricacies so they can make informed decisions about how to responsibly leverage it within their enterprises. Hillary guides her clients across the complex AI landscape by providing counsel in a number of areas that include commercial, intellectual property and corporate transactions.

Her experience also includes handling trial and appellate litigation. Hillary has successfully advocated before the Appellate Division of the State of New York. She has participated in numerous alternative dispute resolution forums involving commercial and tort matters. In addition, Hillary serves as an arbitrator in the Small Claims Part of the Civil Court for the City of New York.

When not serving her clients, Hillary dedicates time to pro bono service to both non-profit organizations and individuals unable to afford legal services and serves as a volunteer to a variety of public charities. Hillary’s involvement in the legal community includes membership in local bar associations such as the New York County Lawyers’ Association, where she served as chair of its Corporation Law Committee for seven years. She is also a member of the Sports, Entertainment and International Law and Practice Sections of the American, New York State, and New York Women's Bar Associations. Hillary is also a member of the Sports Lawyers Association and the Business Law Section of the American Bar Association, the New York City Bar Association and the Jewish Lawyers Guild.