Latham Named Life Sciences Group of the Year

Law360 named Latham & Watkins a 2022 Life Sciences group of the year as part of the publication’s annual Practice Group of the Year awards honoring the law firms behind the major deals and litigation wins that resonated throughout the legal industry in the past year. In a feature covering Latham’s significant achievements, Law360 noted that Latham lawyers were part of a legal team that made history by winning an in-house merger challenge at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for Illumina/GRAIL.

Following a four-week trial before the special administrative court of the FTC, Latham antitrust litigators persuaded an FTC judge to rule in favor of Latham client GRAIL and its acquirer, Illumina– marking the first time the FTC’s administrative law judge has ever ruled against the FTC in a merger case. "It was classic blocking and tackling," said Michael Egge in the story, firm Executive Committee member and former Healthcare & Life Sciences chair. "In this case, marrying up the resources of Illumina to a small company that's made this fabulous discovery but needs to get to market, that efficiency, that integration, that cost savings, is very real."

The publication also highlighted Latham’s representation of Mallinckrodt in its Chapter 11 filing, succeeding in reducing the company’s total debt by approximately US$1.3 billion, and Latham’s win for United Therapeutics in an ongoing challenge to the Public Health Service Act's 340B program.