Early-stage pharma, biotech, medical device, and other life science startup companies require good legal counsel to succeed.
It’s not just about intellectual property protection either, but strong corporate and regulatory advice.
For that reason, Breaking Media is launching a new ranking of life science law firms, to be published both on ATL and our sister site, MedCity News. We’re going to deliver those rankings using criteria that matter to healthcare innovators.

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The project is in beta. But starting today we’ll begin tabulating the best firms for life science startups.
The rankings will be unveiled during the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference next January.
There are plenty of legal rankings out there. But there are few that address which law firms are the most active and relevant for life science companies. We’ll rank three categories — corporate, intellectual property and regulatory — and combine those ratings for a final score.
We have a myriad of criteria. For example, under the corporate category, we’ll review items including:

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- New clients
- Fund-raising by clients
- IPO activity
- M&A activity
We’ll also include factors such as number of patents issued, patent defenses won and regulatory approvals filed (in the United States or globally).
We’ll be meeting with entrepreneurs and law firms over the coming months to outline our criteria and approach and fine tune the process.
Earlier this year we completed research in corporate venture capital in the life sciences and are currently studying corporate investors focused on digital health.