Stradling Lures Lawyer for Life Sciences Push
By CHRIS CZIBORR
Newport Beach law firm Stradling, Yocca, Carlson & Rauth has lured a drug and medical device veteran to step up its medical technology practice.
Robert Funsten, former senior vice president and chief legal officer at Corona-based drug maker Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc. is set to join Stradling today. Funsten also is a former vice president and general counsel at Chiron Vision Corp., which Bausch & Lomb Inc. bought in 1997.
“Orange County is a huge location for medical devices, and the pharmaceutical sector is well established here,” Funsten said. “What I’ve noticed over my years as a chief legal officer is that no law firm has established itself as the preeminent firm on the West Coast for those kinds of companies.”
Stradling counts a number of life sciences clients, including Allergan Inc., Micro Therapeutics Inc. and Cortex Pharmaceut-icals Inc., all of Irvine. It also does work for Watson Pharmaceuticals, medical robotic products maker Computer Motion Inc. of Goleta and Bothell, Wash.-based Epoch Biosciences Inc.
Facing Competition
Stradling is looking to Funsten to develop more work with clients and to lure business to the firm’s life sciences practice.
“This is the first step in what we believe will be a very significant and sustained growth effort,” said Lawrence Cohn, chair of the life sciences practice group at Stradling.
As it looks to gain more life sciences work, Stradling stands to bump heads with longtime rival Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison LLP of San Francisco, which has an Irvine Spectrum office.
Brobeck, which is known locally for technology clients such as Irvine-based Broadcom Corp. and Newport Beach-based Conexant Systems Inc., has a sizable life sciences practice. It has done work for Emeryville-based Chiron Corp. and San Diego’s Dura Pharmaceuticals Inc. and IDEC Pharmaceuticals Corp.
Another rival: San Francisco-based Heller, Ehrman, White & McAuliffe LLP’s life sciences practice, which has around 100 attorneys and scientific advisers, mainly in San Diego and the Bay area.
Beyond that, several Orange County law offices count notable life science clients: Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP (Allergan), Lyon & Lyon (Boston Scientific Corp.) and Oppenheimer, Wolff & Donnelly LLP (Ed-wards Lifesciences Corp.).
Funsten said he believes there is a gap in legal services for medical device makers and drug companies on the West Coast.
“Many of the large firms would say they have a life sciences practice, but we’d go to those and suddenly their life sciences expert disappeared and became a dot-com expert,rates went up and service went down,” he said.
Stradling, which counts around 100 attorneys, has 10 lawyers in its life sciences practice. There’s another 10 or so in the intellectual properties area serving life sciences.
Litigation stands to be a big push. Stradling plans to add attorneys in intellectual property and patents, which stand to tie into the litigation practice. In life sciences these days, litigation often means fighting over patents and generic drugs.
“There are going to be multibillion dollars worth of products going off patent over the next five to 10 years,” Funsten said. “Each of these development projects will initiate some litigation regarding patent challenges, so even a small company could win quite large. There is going to be a big push at the firm to expand the IP litigation practice. They want to add a lot of firepower there.”
It’s too early to say how many attorneys the life sciences practice will add, Funsten said.
“A search is now under way,there’s always room for some growth with baby boomers growing older,” he said. “More people are going to spend on health care products regardless of whether the economy goes up or down. Stradling is looking to expand its life sciences practice in San Diego, San Francisco, Salt Lake City and the Pacific Northwest, Funsten said. Stradling, which has offices in Santa Barbara and San Francisco, doesn’t have plans to open any new offices, he said.
“There will be a healthy expansion for California in this industry but our ambitions won’t be limited to OC,” he said.
Following Tech Model
Stradling is looking to build its life sciences work the way its tech practice was in the past two decades, according to Funsten.
“After serving at Watson since 1998, I began looking for new opportunities,” he said. “And this was one area where I saw a real demand to establish a type of resource here. With Stradling, I found the firm had independently arrived at the same conclusion and already had been quietly building this resource.”
Funsten, a 1986 Stanford Law School graduate, led teams overseeing the buying of product rights and handled regulatory issues at Watson, which makes generic and branded drugs. He recently appeared on an ABC News special about the drug industry and patent rights.
