About Holly
Holly Haines built a legal foundation that began in Virginia and culminated in New England. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in political science and international studies from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 1996. She then moved to New Hampshire to study law, completing a J.D. at the University of New Hampshire School of Law in 2000.
Her early years in the profession were closely tied to the courts. After law school she served as a judicial law clerk at the New Hampshire Superior Court in 2000. That position led to a clerkship with Justice Joseph Nadeau at the New Hampshire Supreme Court in 2002. Those roles exposed her to both trial-level decision-making and appellate work, and they shaped the way she approaches legal problems.
In 2003 she entered private practice as an attorney at Abramson, Brown & Dugan. The move from clerkships to a law firm offered a different vantage point. She began handling matters that required courtroom presence, client counseling and pleading practice. Her courtroom experience complements the appellate insight she gained on the bench.
Haines has kept one foot in bar governance and the other in legal publishing. She has sat on the New Hampshire Bar Journal Editorial Board since 2004 and served on the New Hampshire Bar News Advisory Board, where she was once chair. Her leadership roles reach beyond editorial work. She has been on the board of the New Hampshire Women’s Bar Association since 2004 and served as its president. Since 2014 she has been active with the New Hampshire Association for Justice and has represented New Hampshire as the American Association for Justice’s young governor. She also holds memberships in the New Hampshire State Bar Association, the Massachusetts State Bar and the American Bar Association.
Colleagues describe Haines as a lawyer who combines courtroom experience with a familiarity with appellate procedure. Her career shows a pattern: careful legal analysis informed by hands-on practice. She has moved between bench and bar and back into practice, bringing both perspectives to bear on cases.
She remains licensed to practice in New Hampshire and Massachusetts and maintains an active legal practice handling matters in the state courts of both jurisdictions.
