Lee

William F. Lee

Managing Partner of
Hale & Dorr

Litigation Department


William Lee became Managing Partner of Hale and Dorr LLP on February 1, 2000. Before becoming Managing Partner, he was Chair of the Firm's Litigation Department.

In addition to his Firm responsibilities, Mr. Lee continues to concentrate his practice primarily on intellectual property and commercial litigation and has extensive trial experience. A fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, Mr. Lee serves as a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School where he teaches Intellectual Property Litigation.

Mr. Lee acted as lead trial counsel in patent litigation concerning a genetically engineered tomato product; a trial involving the right to manufacture and sell recombinant erythropoietin; a trial before the International Trade Commission involving $3 billion of commerce; and in trials in Federal Court involving laser optics, video conference, dye chemistry, high speed chromatography and medical devices.

In May of 1996, Mr. Lee was named one of the nation's top 10 litigators by The National Law Journal. He was profiled in the Journal as a leading trial attorney who has amassed a "long record of favorable jury verdicts" and for having won a recent high profile, significant case. The case to which the Journal referred was Mr. Lee's defense of a patent infringement charge, for which he won one of the largest defense verdicts of 1995. In May of 1999, The National Law Journal profiled Mr. Lee's verdict in a jury trial in Dallas involving a claim for $600,000,000 in damages, as one of the top defense jury verdicts in the country.

From July 1987 through June 1989, Mr. Lee served as Associate Counsel to Independent Counsel Lawrence E. Walsh in the Iran-Contra investigation. In that capacity, he was responsible for certain portions of the grand jury investigation and resulting indictments. He has also served as a Special Assistant to the Massachusetts Attorney General for the purpose of investigating alleged incidents of racial bias in the Massachusetts courts.

At the request of the judges of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, he served on the Court's Advisory Committee on its local rules, the Court's Committee to Evaluate Administration of the Criminal Justice Act and the Court's Merit Selection Panel on Magistrate Judges. At the request of the United States District Court for the District of Delaware, he serves on its Intellectual Property Advisory Committee.

Mr. Lee has been appointed by the Govenor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to serve on a special Judicial Nominating Committee for the selection of judges for the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

He graduated magna cum laude from both Harvard College in 1972 and the Cornell Law School in 1976. He also received a M.B.A. with Distinction from the Cornell Business School in 1976.

Mr. Lee has served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Tenacre County Day School in Wellesley, Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Boston University Medical Center University Hospital and an Overseer of the Museum of Science.