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Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Law - Stem cell legal specialty emerging

The Boston Globe reports today on an emerging new practice area - stem cell law. Sacha Pfeiffer writes:

Law firms market different types of legal work with the ebb and flow of the economy. In recessions, bankruptcy practices boom; at the peak of the dot-com era, high-tech practices were hot.

Now, in keeping with the boom in cutting-edge life science research, several firms are promoting a new legal specialty: stem cells. * * *

Many firms have been doing stem cell legal work for years, most often involving patents . But the specialty has spiked in prominence since California passed a bond measure two years ago that devotes $3 billion to stem cell research, fueling demand for related legal services. That has prompted firms nationwide to position themselves as go-to legal advisors for universities, research facilities, biotechnology companies, and other clients in the stem cell arena.

"There's going to be tons of legal work, and everywhere -- at the state level, at the federal level, at the policy level," said Boston lawyer John M. Garvey, a member of the "stem cell technologies" team at Foley & Lardner, which represents domestic and overseas clients involved in stem cell research. "It was a matter of law firms' understanding that scientific information about stem cells had progressed to the point that many nonscientific issues had developed, so then the question was: How do you translate that into good, profitable, high-level legal work?" * * *

Stem cell legal practices are in large part marketing tools. Traditionally, general practice law firms offered the same basic menu of legal services: corporate, trusts and estates, tax, real estate, litigation. As competition among firms heightened and clients' legal needs became more complex, firms created subspecialties -- mezzanine financing, nanotechnology, corporate governance -- to distinguish themselves. Stem cell work is an outgrowth of that.

Skeptics consider stem cell practices public relations gimmicks, noting that many law firms have extensive experience in stem cell issues even though they don't have formal stem cell practice groups.

Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks, for example, does stem cell patent work for Massachusetts General Hospital and Cytomatrix, a Chelmsford biotech company. Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky, and Popeo represents StemCells Inc., a Palo Alto, Calif., company. Fish & Richardson does stem cell patent work for the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. Yet none of those law firms has a so-called stem cell group.

"Some firms are saying they have stem cell practices, but you have to look behind the curtain and say, 'Can you show me some examples of your stem cell patent applications?' because there just aren't that many law firms with real expertise in this area," said Mintz partner Ivor R. Elrifi, who has been doing stem cell legal work for more than a decade.

"We don't have a little group called the 'stem cell working group' or 'We are Stem Cells' or 'Stems Cells R Us,' " Elrifi added, "but we know a lot."

Posted by Marcia Oddi on November 7, 2006 02:42 PM
Posted to Biotech | General Law Related