Month: February 2024

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Sponsored thought leadership: Healthcare and pharmaceutical regulation in Portugal

The health sector in Portugal, which encompasses the pharmaceutical market, is a prominent and fast-evolving sector that has undergone significant growth in recent decades.

Sérvulo & Associados law firm is proud to have a highly specialised, experienced and well-balanced team in the life sciences field. The team covers all the main legal matters of the health and pharmaceutical industry, acting and providing guidance on a broad range of issues. These include patent trademark litigation within the pharmaceutical sector, but also advice on regulatory matters, data privacy for clinical research, and patient support programmers, as well as distribution and supply agreements to the industry. Continue reading “Sponsored thought leadership: Healthcare and pharmaceutical regulation in Portugal”

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Baker McKenzie: One eye open

‘What defines Baker McKenzie over the last few years is the sheer amount of work that has gone into financial integration. This is a massive achievement but it has come at a cost. Now, establishing the differentiator to attract the next generation is important. It isn’t going to turn into Kirkland & Ellis, but what is going to drive that entrepreneurial aspect now Bakers looks more like other firms?’ So speaks one commentator of the quandary facing Baker McKenzie, a sentiment reprising a prevailing theme of our 2017 deep dive into the firm, ‘Waking the Giant’, which found a firm struggling to maintain its unique international selling point amid escalating globalisation of Big Law.

Then, the firm had just embarked on a new and ambitious phase, with the respected veteran intellectual property (IP) partner Paul Rawlinson instated as its first British chair in October 2016. The mandate? To implement the firm’s 2020 strategy, which focused on integrating Bakers across three profit pools, increasing profitability and growing the firm’s transactional practices in London, New York and China. Continue reading “Baker McKenzie: One eye open”

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Revolving doors: Moves in disputes and antitrust as Paul Weiss continues sweep of London recruits

Simpson Thacher begins this week’s lateral hire round-up with its recruitment of Legal 500 international arbitration leading individual David Edwards from Skadden. Edwards will co-lead the firm’s European disputes practice alongside Tyler Robinson.

The hire brings the London office to a total of five dispute partners: Edwards, Robinson, and antitrust specialists Antonio Bavasso, Ross Ferguson, and Étienne Renaudeau. All three antitrust partners are also listed as partners in the firm’s Brussels office, which opened in September 2021 and is headed by Bavasso and Renaudeau. Continue reading “Revolving doors: Moves in disputes and antitrust as Paul Weiss continues sweep of London recruits”

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Lead partner: The year the United Kingdom becomes a globally leading life sciences hub?

Herbert Smith Freehills

As part of its ambition for the United Kingdom to become a tech and science superpower by 2030, in 2023, the government announced a range of initiatives aimed at boosting investment and innovation in the life sciences sector. Innovators will have welcomed the R&D tax relief reforms whilst the Mansion House Compact (the largest UK pension providers committing 5% of their assets to unlisted equities by 2030) announced in July has provided some hope of alternative pools of capital to unlisted UK life sciences companies.

Whilst the impact of those initiatives remains to be seen (and of course with a general election looming) the UK life sciences industry is being positioned to play an integral part in the growth of the country’s economy with many recent legal and regulatory developments also seeking to enhance the attractiveness of the UK as a leading life sciences hub. The UK’s offer to prospective investors will be centred around access to innovation, the financial firepower of the City, the introduction of progressive and pragmatic regulation and a robust advisory ecosystem, which it hopes will allow it to differentiate itself from the EU.
Continue reading “Lead partner: The year the United Kingdom becomes a globally leading life sciences hub?”

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‘You’d be a brave innovator to ignore the UK’ – why patent work is booming in the post-Brexit UK life sciences market

Buzz about blockbuster drug developments, expiring patents and the launch of the European Union’s Unified Patent Court – 2023 certainly kept the life sciences sector on its toes.

Against a backdrop of several of the world’s best-selling drugs nearing their patent expiration dates and the market getting to grips with the implications of the long-awaited EU patent court, leading practitioners at UK law firms provide their perspective on the evolving world of IP and patent litigation in the life sciences sector – and what these changes mean for corporates and their in-house legal teams.
Continue reading “‘You’d be a brave innovator to ignore the UK’ – why patent work is booming in the post-Brexit UK life sciences market”

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Taking back control – the post-pandemic landscape for life sciences regulation

After years of delays caused by geopolitical instability and the Covid-19 pandemic, the new regulatory landscape for the life sciences industry is beginning to take shape in both the UK and the EU.

As the UK pushes ahead with its post-Brexit journey of divergence, establishing itself as an innovation-friendly environment in the global life sciences market has become of paramount importance. In contrast, the EU’s attempts to draft comprehensive laws on AI have attracted criticism from the medical devices industry, prompting overburdened innovators to turn to more investment-friendly locations. Continue reading “Taking back control – the post-pandemic landscape for life sciences regulation”

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King & Spalding takes another silk with hire of former director of public prosecutions

King & Spalding has hired Sir Max Hill KC (pictured) into its London office. Hill served as director of public prosecutions for England and Wales from November 2018 to October 2023. A barrister since 1987, he took silk in 2008 and was knighted after leaving the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in January 2024.

Hill’s addition brings the number of KCs in the firm’s London office to four, alongside disputes partner Ruth Byrne KC, arbitration partner John Savage KC, and office managing partner Tom Sprange KC. Continue reading “King & Spalding takes another silk with hire of former director of public prosecutions”

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How do you know when you have a brand advantage?

By Sholto Lindsay-Smith, founding partner and director of brand strategy at Industry, an international brand and business consultancy.

As the management mantra goes, ‘you can’t manage what you can’t measure’. Law firms often undertake evaluation of their brand in pockets throughout the organisation by teams in HR, customer experience, internal and external communications. What is often missing is a 360-view which can summarise the brand strategy, identify brand-blockers and determine where to invest efforts in building brand advantage. This article considers the importance in assimilating this information to build a lasting brand advantage. Continue reading “How do you know when you have a brand advantage?”

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‘The human cost’: Post Office Horizon fiasco throws scrutiny on litigators and shines light on litigation funding

The Post Office Horizon scandal saw over 700 subpostmasters convicted of fraud, theft, or false accounting. The victims were prosecuted for accounting shortfalls that were in fact the result of errors made by the Post Office’s Horizon accounting software.

At time of publication, fewer than 100 of those convictions have been overturned. Continue reading “‘The human cost’: Post Office Horizon fiasco throws scrutiny on litigators and shines light on litigation funding”

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Freshfields snaps up former FTC commissioner to bolster US antitrust offering

In a boost to its Washington DC presence, Freshfields has hired former Federal Trade Commissioner, Christine Wilson, as a senior adviser in its antitrust practice.

The firm has made a concerted effort to build out its antitrust offering in both the US and Europe over the last year. In October 2023, it appointed former senior director of mergers at the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority, Colin Raftery, to the firm’s London office. While in June 2023, antitrust litigators Heather Lamberg and Justina Sessions joined the firm’s Washington DC and Silicon Valley antitrust practices. Antitrust and foreign investment practitioner Charlotte Colin-Dubuisson also joined the firm’s Paris office in January 2024. Continue reading “Freshfields snaps up former FTC commissioner to bolster US antitrust offering”

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Revolving doors: White & Case doubles down on recruitment as BCLP loses three partners

It has been a busy week for White & Case, with the firm seeing the return of Patrick Sarch to its global mergers and acquisitions practice in London. He will be head of UK public M&A in the London corporate/ M&A group.

Sarch worked at White & Case between January 2017 and March 2021, moving to Hogan Lovells in March 2021, where he was co-head of the firms UK M&A practice. He advises on corporate finance, cross-border, and domestic public company M&A. Continue reading “Revolving doors: White & Case doubles down on recruitment as BCLP loses three partners”

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Time to Talk Day Q&A: Andrew Nealon, Vinson & Elkins

For this year’s Time to Talk Day (1 February), which aims to encourage workplaces to start a conversation about mental health, we sat down with Vinson & Elkins energy and infrastructure partner Andrew Nealon (pictured) to discuss the impact of law firm culture on mental health and some of the positive industry changes he has witnessed over the course of his career so far. Continue reading “Time to Talk Day Q&A: Andrew Nealon, Vinson & Elkins”