Department Will Provide Integrated Legal Services to Pharmaceutical, Life Science and Health Care Clients
Innovative Shift in Service Delivery Model in Response to Client Needs, Pepper Says
PHILADELPHIA, March 08, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pepper Hamilton LLP today announced the creation of a new Health Sciences Department. The firm will combine several of its premier practice groups – Health Effects Litigation, Health Care, Life Sciences, Intellectual Property and White Collar/Government Investigations – in order to better serve clients in the health sciences industry.
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The new department will be led by Pepper’s former chairwoman, Nina Gussack, a nationally recognized leader in health sciences litigation and counseling. More than 110 of the firm’s lawyers will be in the new department. Health Sciences presently constitutes more than 40 percent of the firm's revenues.
Leading partners from the firm’s Commercial, Intellectual Property and Litigation departments have formed a Steering Committee to drive the group’s strategy and operations. Collectively, the committee has decades of experience advising clients across the health sciences spectrum.
The new department will serve a diverse range of clients throughout the health care supply chain who develop, patent, license, manufacture, market or sell pharmaceuticals, medical devices or other health-related therapies and who deliver or support the delivery of health care services.
“Our goal is to be in the best position to offer a comprehensive and integrated array of legal services – including corporate, regulatory, transactional, litigation and intellectual property – to clients in the rapidly changing health care, biotech and pharmaceutical space,” Gussack said. “An interdisciplinary, rather than a siloed, approach will result in better and more client-centric counsel and service.
“We are committed to being on the cutting edge of client service by using our deep knowledge of the health industry to create systems and processes that are both distinctive and relevant to our clients.”
Thomas M. Gallagher, chairman of Pepper’s Executive Committee, said the firm’s decision to restructure was driven by clients’ needs.
“Nina has served as Chief Client Ambassador for the firm over the last year, listening to clients tell us how they work and what they need. It’s clear that clients want their outside counsel to become more industry-focused and capable of understanding how their multidimensional issues and concerns overlap.”
Gussack added, “In the health sciences sector, that means lawyers who grasp the complexities of the entire health care ecosystem – from discovery of new therapies to delivery of patient care, from scientists and manufacturers to suppliers and doctors – and who know how to craft cutting-edge solutions to legal challenges.”
Pepper’s new Health Sciences Department is both a natural evolution of its decades-long representation of clients in the health care, pharmaceutical and life sciences sectors, and a response to client demand.
Gallagher noted that the firm – with offices along the East Coast from Boston to Washington, D.C., and on the West Coast – is already located in geographic hubs that serve a substantial number and type of health sciences companies.
In creating the new department, Pepper will capitalize on several decades of high-profile client wins across the health care spectrum.
Its nationally regarded pharmaceutical and medical device litigation team has notched significant victories in multiple litigation and white collar/government investigations matters for a number of large pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers.
Its thriving IP practice regularly collaborates with clients to create and evaluate exclusivity strategies for health care products – such as pharmaceuticals and biologics – through the interplay of intellectual property regulatory incentives and supply chain management.
Pepper’s White Collar/Government Investigations team represents pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers facing such challenges as civil and criminal investigations by the DOJ and other federal agencies. The group resolved government investigations successfully by obtaining declinations from the DOJ, as well as civil settlements and deferred prosecution agreements that allow clients to avoid criminal consequences.
Its Corporate practice successfully counseled various public and private health care clients and sponsors in a variety of complex transactions throughout the country. The firm’s Corporate practice prides itself on its cutting-edge approach of integrating the transaction and regulatory practices in a one-stop shop and being on the ground with regulators in many jurisdictions – creating significant efficiencies for its clients in any health care transaction.
The firm’s Commercial Litigation practice counsels all types of health sciences clients on dispute avoidance and resolution. The firm has successfully defended health sciences clients in antitrust, director and officer liability, ERISA and employment, shareholder and securities, fraud and breach of contract, government and private payor disputes, physician/hospital disputes, privacy matters, and a wide array of other litigation matters.
About Pepper Hamilton
Pepper Hamilton LLP is a multi-practice law firm with more than 450 lawyers nationally. The firm provides corporate, litigation and regulatory legal services to leading businesses, governmental entities, nonprofit organizations and individuals throughout the nation and the world. The firm was founded in 1890.