Life Sciences

DLA Piper's life sciences team comprises lawyers with legal, scientific and medical knowledge who understand the complexity of the business and regulatory environments in which our clients operate.

The challenges facing today’s biotechnology and medical device companies are greater than ever. For companies to take promising therapies from the laboratory to the market, they must protect those therapies from IP, regulatory and reputational risks. Furthermore, the last few years have seen increasing pressure from many sides: demand for greater shareholder return, loss of key revenue streams due to patent expiration or generic challenges, fierce competition in key therapeutic areas, pricing pressures from health care payors, increased government regulation beyond core safety issues, rising costs of R&D, challenges in maximizing return in emerging markets and aggressive government enforcement action.

Our life sciences sector team is one of the largest and most active of any law firm. Operating as one team across more than 30 jurisdictions, we combine subject matter experience with considerable knowledge of the sector, including the scientific, medical, regulatory, commercial and enforcement environments facing our biopharmaceutical, medical device, research and diagnostics clients.

DLA Piper's team includes award-winning lawyers practicing litigation, compliance and investigations, IP strategy and enforcement, M&A, licensing and distribution and clinical trial advice. They also support clients across all other areas needed to address risk, including government affairs, environmental law, import/export, tax, real estate and employment law. Many of our lawyers are former sector professionals, many have PhDs or other advanced degrees in the life sciences field and others are former government officials or prosecutors.

Recognizing that our clients’ needs vary, we rapidly organize and customize our client service teams, whether for a large pharmaceutical company, a mid-sized medical device client or a development-stage biotech company. These teams are supported by international and local practitioners to efficiently meet the demands of the matter.

Our cutting-edge staffing, budgeting and billing systems, created specifically to assist our global life science clients, ensure that our teams deliver value in addition to great results.