LIFE CYCLE FIRMS
PRACTICE GROUP ANALYSIS
Practice Group Overview Ropes & Gray
Ropes & Gray receives tremendous feedback from both clients and competitors alike. “There wasn’t really an issue the attorneys at Ropes couldn’t handle for us,” raves one client. The depth of expertise there and the responsiveness of their lawyers make them, in our view, one of the best law firms in the industry.” A rival attorney agrees, stating, “The firm’s partners are very versatile across all of the key practice areas in the field and we always see them working on some of the biggest cases in the country.” One of only a handful of firms with a top-tier regulatory team, regulatory partners Alan Bennett and Gregory Levine are critical reasons for the rise of the practice group’s profile. Bennett co-chairs the life sciences industry group and has been advising pharmaceutical clients on marketing and promotional regulatory matters for over 25 years. One of Bennett’s colleagues sees him as “one of the finest attorneys in Washington DC who always works diligently for his clients.” Importantly, the firm’s integrated practice group works in concert to handle large and complex matters spanning a number of legal issues. For example, the Medical Information Working Group (MIWG), an informal group of 13 major pharmaceutical companies, hired Bennett, as well as white-collar criminal defense attorney Joan Mcphee, when seeking to achieve clarity regarding rules governing off-label dissemination. Collaboration between the firm’s corporate and intellectual property groups is one component of Ropes’s industry practice that one client finds “crucial to why we hired them.” Partners Anita Varma and James Haley conduct a wide variety of IP work ranging from advisory and prosecution proceedings to playing large roles in patent litigations. AstraZeneca employs the firm’s IP group for both transactional and patent matters. Varma is the lead attorney for the pharmaceutical heavyweight and has provided due diligence work on key transactions such as AstraZeneca’s $7 billion joint acquisition with Bristol-Myers Squibb of Amylin Pharmaceuticals. On the corporate side, Michael Sexton was the lead attorney for Pharmaceutica in its sale of their US and Canadian patents for Bystolic, a marketed drug product for hypertension, to Forest Laboratories for $357 million. Partner Marc Rubenstein works on several different types of deals, including joint venture agreements along with mergers and acquisitions deals. He led a team that represented Biogen in its acquisition of Stromedix, a privately held biotechnology company focused on innovative therapies for fibrosis and organ failure.
LIFE SCIENCES STARS
REGULATORY Alan Bennett, Washington DC Gregory H Levine, Washington DC Paul D Rubin, Washington DC INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY Bradford “Jim” Badke, New York James F Haley, New York Denise L Loring, New York Anita Varma, Boston FINANCE & TRANSACTIONAL Geoffrey B Davis, Boston Michael F Sexton, Boston Steven A Wilcox, Boston Marc A Rubenstein, Boston NON-IP LITIGATION AND ENFORCEMENT Eve M Brunts, Boston Colleen A Conry, Washington, DC Brien T O’Connor, Boston Joan McPhee, Boston Mark S Popofsky, Washington, DC Joshua S Levy, Boston
PRACTICE GROUP BREAKDOWN OF LIFE SCIENCE STARS
Regulatory Intellectual Property Finance & Transactional Non-IP Litigation and Enforcement
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LMG LIFE SCIENCES 2013