Life Sciences / Healthcare Regulatory Practice Forum

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Anonymous User
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Life Sciences / Healthcare Regulatory Practice

Post by Anonymous User » Sat Nov 17, 2018 12:18 pm

There's a lot of talk on this board about day to day life in big law but it seems like it's mostly focused on corporate or litigation. I'm going to a firm with very strong life sciences and healthcare regulatory practices. I have some pre law school experience in the field and would be interested in pursuing a career in it.

My main question is the quality of life substantially different from litigation and what is the day to day like? Are you mostly advising clients on regulatory hurdles? What kind of deadlines are associated with the work? The limited people I've talked to make it seem significantly more stress free than litigation because no trial and hard filing deadlines and less stressful than corporate because of no fire drills.

The practice also seems to be a lot less leveraged than other groups. The associate to partner ratio at my firm is 1:1 while in litigation it's more like 3:1. How will this affect my practice and will it be easier to stick around longer in big law because of it?

Thanks in advance for any insight.

Lawalum20

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Re: Life Sciences / Healthcare Regulatory Practice

Post by Lawalum20 » Sun Sep 15, 2019 5:53 pm

Bumping this again. Does anyone here have any insight regarding biglaw Healthcare practice? Curious as to the comparative quality of life in this area, along with the types of exits opportunities (and their approximate range of compensation) down the road. Thank you!

albanach

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Re: Life Sciences / Healthcare Regulatory Practice

Post by albanach » Mon Sep 16, 2019 1:00 pm

There can definitely be hard filing deadlines in healthcare regulatory work. Admittedly less common than litigation, where everything has a deadline attached but the regulations usually include timelines. And even where they don't, business often does (i.e. the LOI is expiring and we need a decision on that regulatory question by Monday).

Anonymous User
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Re: Life Sciences / Healthcare Regulatory Practice

Post by Anonymous User » Mon Sep 16, 2019 2:42 pm

I wrote about being a regulatory associate generally here: http://top-law-schools.com/forums/viewt ... #p10357115

Anonymous User
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Re: Life Sciences / Healthcare Regulatory Practice

Post by Anonymous User » Mon Sep 16, 2019 2:53 pm

Anonymous User wrote:I wrote about being a regulatory associate generally here: http://top-law-schools.com/forums/viewt ... #p10357115
Thank you for the cross-reference and a great detailed post about regulatory work. From your experience, is this similar across most regulatory practices? I am wondering whether healthcare work might be more intense, given the fact that it also potentially extends beyond regulatory work to actual M&A work.

Not to derail this thread, but do you also have any knowledge about data privacy work and whether it is similar to other regulatory practices in terms of QOL and workflow?

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Anonymous User
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Joined: Tue Aug 11, 2009 9:32 am

Re: Life Sciences / Healthcare Regulatory Practice

Post by Anonymous User » Mon Sep 16, 2019 5:19 pm

Anonymous User wrote: Thank you for the cross-reference and a great detailed post about regulatory work. From your experience, is this similar across most regulatory practices? I am wondering whether healthcare work might be more intense, given the fact that it also potentially extends beyond regulatory work to actual M&A work.
This varies more depending on the type of work the firm does rather than the substance IMO. But if your firm’s healthcare group does a lot of M&A support, then yes I would expect it to be more intense. Not necessarily more total hours, but more ups and downs, including periods of very high intensity.
Not to derail this thread, but do you also have any knowledge about data privacy work and whether it is similar to other regulatory practices in terms of QOL and workflow?
Yeah I work with privacy people pretty frequently. Yes, it’s pretty similar to what I described, with the exception that, instead of working on a lot of investigations, these associates tend to either work on data breach response (which honestly isn’t that different from an investigation) or a lot of deals. I also see more people who split between privacy and privacy-focused litigation than in other areas, though that could be random and anecdotal.

Anonymous User
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Re: Life Sciences / Healthcare Regulatory Practice

Post by Anonymous User » Sun Sep 22, 2019 10:46 am

Anyone have experience moving to the government side (FDA, HHS)? How does the work compare to big law?

kmanskey

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Re: Life Sciences / Healthcare Regulatory Practice

Post by kmanskey » Tue Oct 22, 2019 4:18 pm

Lawalum20 wrote:Bumping this again. Does anyone here have any insight regarding biglaw Healthcare practice? Curious as to the comparative quality of life in this area, along with the types of exits opportunities (and their approximate range of compensation) down the road. Thank you!
There's tons of exit opportunities in this area now. Depending on where you go, a lot of the biglaw work now is deals given the rise in funding of practices and M&As. Due to the various laws that govern HC transactions, this work is handled by HC attorneys specifically.

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