Practice/Organization Description
The Fenwick & West Life Sciences Group is a multi-disciplinary legal team comprised of more than 60 attorneys, agents and scientists who advise many of the West Coast’s leading private and public life sciences companies. Our fully-integrated teams provide critical legal support on:
•Corporate governance
•Securities offerings
•Venture capital/private equity
•Buy and sell-side M&A transactions
•IP strategy and prosecution
•Complex IP litigation
•Domestic and international tax
The Fenwick Difference - Our legal expertise is backed by a formidable scientific and technical understanding: 40% of our Life Sciences team members have advanced technical degrees from Stanford, MIT, Johns Hopkins, University of Washington and other leading institutions, as well as post-graduate hands-on industry experience in the areas of:
•Immunology
•Chemistry
•Biology/CMB
•Genetics
•Electrical and mechanical engineering
This combination of technical and scientific expertise—combined with over 30 years of experience advising leading emerging and established life sciences companies in the pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, bioinformatics, healthcare services, industrial biotech and medical devices sectors—means our advice is efficient, accurate and in consideration of your competitive environment.
Other factors we believe set our Life Sciences Group apart from other law firms include:
The Fenwick culture promotes cross-practice collaboration, permitting our fully-integrated corporate, IP, litigation and tax groups to provide efficient and effective counseling for our clients. Strategic deal support from our licensing, antitrust and benefits teams, as well as our nationally-recognized M&A and tax practices, results in superior analysis and execution.
We invest in our clients, offering off-the-clock meetings with management and the Board.
Fenwick has long-standing connections to a large network of the most active venture capitalists in all technologies and all stages (seed/angel, early, late). We offer a systemized approach to connecting investors and companies based on stage of development, technology and amount/stage of investment.
We have one of the premier technology M&A practices in the nation, and our team is consistently ranked as one of the Top 10 M&A advisors nationally, and one of the Top 20 Global M&A Advisors. In recent years, the firm has completed more than $200 billion in transactions, including significant acquisition programs for leading serial acquirers.
We have a world class Tax practice that counts more than 40 of the Fortune 100 among its clients. The group was honored by International Tax Review in 2011 as one of the "world's leading tax transactional firms." Fenwick has been ranked as a First Tier tax practice by International Tax Review since the survey's inception.
Honors and Awards
•Ranked as a "Top Technology & Life Sciences Law Firm" by InterContinental Finance Magazine
•More than 15% of Fenwick & West partners are ranked in Band 1 or Band 2 by Chambers USA 2011
•Named to The National Law Journal’s Intellectual Property Hot List
•Ranked by Minority Law Journal as one of the top three and by American Lawyer as one of the top seven most diverse law firms in the U.S.
•Ranked by Vault.com as the #1 Green Law Firm for 2012
•Ranked #5 for "Best Places to Work" by Silicon Valley Business Journal and San Francisco Business Times (2011). Also awarded "Best Places to Work" in 2008, 2009 and 2010
