Orrick Adds Seven-Person Regulatory Affairs Team in Boston, Washington

Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe adds seven-person health care regulatory practice in Boston and Washington, D.C.

Georgia Ravitz, who led the FDA regulatory practice at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, is moving to Orrick, the firm announced Thursday. Partners Amy Joseph and Jeremy Sherer are joining Orrick from Boston legal and regulatory boutique Hooper Lundy & Bookman.

The San Francisco-based firm has long worked with clients in the technology, energy and finance sectors. Orrick’s life sciences and healthtech platform has quadrupled to 53 partners in the past five years, according to the firm. Its lawyers work with more than 600 life sciences clients, the firm says, including pharmaceutical giants like Johnson & Johnson and Bayer AG, as well as biotech companies like Twist Bioscience and digital health company K Health.

The platform now represents “approximately 20% of our corporate, intellectual property and commercial/product liability litigation practices,” Thora Johnson, co-leader of the initiative, said in a statement.

The company helps clients navigate regulatory uncertainty, and that interest has been “bolstered” by the rise of “AI-driven innovation,” Orrick CEO Mitch Zuklie said in a statement.

“By combining this seven-person team of lawyers with our privacy practice, we can now provide targeted quality regulatory solutions to our growing portfolio of clients driving innovation in life sciences and health technology,” he said.

Wilson Sonsini said senior counsel Shari Fleishman Esfahani and Scott Cohn will also join Orrick.

Ravitz advises companies on food and drug law and regulatory policy. She joined Wilson Sonsini in 2019 from ArentFox, where she led the firm’s consumer product safety practice.

Joseph works with healthcare companies on regulatory and transactional matters, including compliance with federal and state anti-corruption laws and patient privacy regulations.

Sherer previously served as co-chair of Hooper Lundy’s Digital Health practice, where he advises healthcare clients on establishing and scaling virtual care delivery models across multiple states and navigating regulatory issues that arise in digital health endeavors.