Healthcare & Life Sciences Transactions

As a leading adviser to healthcare and life sciences companies and investors on their most complex, high-profile M&A transactions, Kirkland’s M&A Practice Group is consistently recognized for innovation, creativity, energy and, above all, a profound commitment to quality.

Our Firm has been ranked by Bloomberg as one of the most active law firms in this industry. Kirkland attorneys have led the industry’s most cutting-edge transactions, including two of the largest biopharmaceutical deals in history, Bristol-Myers Squibb’s $90 billion acquisition of Celgene Corporation and AbbVie’s $63 billion acquisition of Allergan.

Both our acclaimed Public Company and Private Equity practices have unparalleled breadth of scope and depth of experience across all healthcare and life sciences market segments. In the last two years, the Kirkland team handled five of the 10 largest transactions for public companies and more than 80 transactions for private equity funds and their portfolio companies, including more healthcare services transactions than any other firm.

Working closely with our transactional attorneys, our Antitrust & Competition Practice Group provides healthcare and life sciences clients with realistic pre-transaction assessments, assists in contractual risk allocation negotiations and secures expedited regulatory clearances. We work with buyers and sellers through all facets of the mergers and acquisitions regulatory clearance process, starting at the earliest stages of a deal to identify, allocate and reduce potential antitrust issues. By assessing the level of regulatory risk at the outset, we can better prepare the legal and economic analyses necessary to navigate clients through the entire deal negotiation and clearance process.

Our antitrust attorneys also have significant experience counseling and representing healthcare and life sciences clients in key matters arising under the Hatch-Waxman Act, including matters relating to generic and branded drugs and reverse payment claims.

Our Technology & IP Transactions Practice Group includes nearly 90 deal lawyers dedicated to strategic commercial agreements and M&A matters for which intangible assets are a critical component. We have extensive experience advising clients, from biotech start-ups to global market leaders, on the full range of life sciences/biopharma transactions—including M&A, licensing, collaboration and other strategic commercial agreements. Our work spans development agreements, university collaborations, technology transfers, joint ventures and product line acquisitions and divestitures. Because many deals are driven by the value of intangible assets, we work closely with Kirkland’s M&A teams to integrate our technical capabilities into clients’ broader strategic and commercial goals. 

We have extensive experience advising clients on collaboration agreements to develop or commercialize new technologies, products and services in the life sciences/biopharma sector. This includes negotiating development, collaboration and supply agreements, often coupled with licenses for drugs, therapies, diagnostics, devices and other technologies with significant commercialization potential. Our significant experience with a wide variety of licensing and strategic commercial agreements provides us with insights on all aspects of these agreements, including structuring of milestones, royalties and governance. As a full-service firm, we can also address the impact of related regulatory frameworks and laws on licenses, including tax, antitrust and bankruptcy. Our team’s in-depth knowledge of the life sciences/biopharma sector, including the full range of life sciences technologies and their scientific foundations, allows us to effectively work with clients and their business, legal and scientific teams to identify issues and solutions in these complex transactions and support strategic paths from discovery to commercialization.

Kirkland’s Healthcare & Life Sciences Regulatory Practice Group has extensive experience in advising clients on a diverse array of critical matters, including federal and multi-state considerations, precise structuring and pivotal statutes like the Federal Anti-Kickback Statute, state anti-kickback laws, and the Federal False Claims Act. The team regularly provides counsel on intricate regulatory concerns related to Medicare, Medicaid, fraud and abuse and HIPAA, and has noteworthy experience in federal and state licensure, the corporate practice doctrine (medicine, dentistry, etc.), physician practices, hospital facility compliance, provider enrollment and reimbursement matters. Additionally, our attorneys guide clients through the complex landscape of healthcare IT, healthcare-related privacy, data security, breach notification and interoperability laws.

The Healthcare & Life Sciences Regulatory group adeptly handles everyday regulatory considerations that significantly affect healthcare and life sciences companies and vendors, including pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturing, clinical research, sales, marketing, compliance and market exclusivity concerns. Drawing from extensive experience in both buy- and sell-side transactions, our team possesses the capacity to scrutinize regulatory matters from dual perspectives, effectively streamlining the transaction process.

Named a Law360 2020 Capital Markets Practice Group of the Year, Kirkland’s award-winning Capital Markets Practice Group assists healthcare and life sciences clients navigate key capital inflection points and guide transformative transactions. Our capital markets attorneys provide sophisticated and strategic advice to a full range of companies at every stage of development and growth. We advise on capital-raising transactions that achieve strategic and commercial objectives and result in long term and meaningful partnerships between investors, founders and entrepreneurs and management teams.

Kirkland’s market-leading Debt Finance Practice Group advises healthcare and life sciences clients on a wide variety of financing solutions. Our attorneys have a deep understanding of United States and international debt markets and provide clients with strategic and focused representation adapted to the unique needs of this industry. Consistently ranked as the preeminent borrower law firm, Kirkland has handled over $250 billion in financings for global borrowers in the healthcare and life sciences industry over the last five years.

Kirkland boasts a long list of healthcare and life sciences fund formation clients, many of whom lead the market and deploy billions of dollars each year to the sector. Our Investment Funds Practice Group has earned an international reputation for advising sponsors looking to expand into healthcare and life sciences and their sub-asset classes. Because of our consistently high volume of fund formations across the globe, we have developed a broad vision of the issues that confront healthcare and life sciences sponsor clients, approaches to individual investor requirements and an aptitude for developing novel, creative and constructive solutions to the unique challenges they face.