Cathy Kiselyak Austin is a partner in the Intellectual Property Practice Group.  She has served as chair of the Information Technology & Outsourcing Group and of the Intellectual Property Practice Group.  For more than 20 years, Cathy's practice has focused on business and technology.  Cathy has extensive experience negotiating licensing, outsourcing, development and implementation agreements, particularly for computer-related technology.  Cathy assists a wide range of companies, universities and not-for-profit organizations in contracting for technology platforms, content, information services and strategic alliances and handling Internet-related matters, such as online contracting, domain name, privacy and security issues and website policies and agreements.

Facilitating the development and implementation of new technologies to provide innovative services is an aspect of Cathy's work that she particularly enjoys.  For example, Cathy helped a national service organization become entirely web-based, to better serve the more than 30,000 individuals who annually use its services to secure graduate education opportunities, and she worked with a health care company to develop tele-health services, from its pilot program through a relationship with a foreign device manufacturer to service contracts with several of the largest employers in the region. 

Cathy was co-editor-in-chief of CyberStrategies for three years.  CyberStrategies was a quarterly journal published by CCH Incorporated to help business lawyers and corporate executives understand issues at the intersection of technology, business and the law.

Cathy previously served as general counsel for an Internet catalog company.  Earlier in her career she was assistant general counsel of Household Finance Corporation of Prospect Heights, Illinois.  In that capacity Cathy was responsible for all legal matters relating to information technology for HFC and its subsidiaries, as well as their transactions in the international financial markets (e.g., Euromarket financings, interest rate swaps and multibank lines of credit).

Prior to attending law school Cathy worked as a computer programmer primarily at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Laboratory of Computer Science and Laboratory for Nuclear Sciences in Cambridge.

Cathy is married and utilizes information technology heavily in her personal life to allow her to keep up with her three active children.  She enjoys swimming, dance and sleeping (on occasion).

Awards.  Recognized as one of Chambers USA’s 2008 “Leaders in their Field” for Technology.

Selected by the Leading Lawyers Network as a Leading Lawyer in Computer and Technology Law, 2004 - 2008.

Recipient of 2003 Women in Black award, honoring outstanding women in business technology in Illinois, I-Street magazine, a publication of the Chicago-Sun Times, March 2003.