Ryan Lindsey oversees multiple aspects of the law at Edwards Lifesciences Corp. – from writing contracts to protecting the firm’s intellectual property.
The in-house attorney, who is a vice president surgical team lead for Irvine-based Edwards, earned a Business Journal General Counsel Award in the Specialty Counsel category in 2023.
We caught up with him to see how life at Edwards has changed this past year. One of the biggest legal transactions he worked on was the company’s sale of its Critical Care unit to Becton, Dickinson and Co. for $4.2 billion, which was completed in September. From there, he’s made a shift in priorities.
“We’ve undergone changes and sold one of our business units,” Lindsey told the Business Journal. “It’s been a lot of work at the company to manage the change. My job has shifted a little bit, to mostly focus on being the lead lawyer for one of the remaining business units, which is our surgical business unit.”
In his day-to-day role, he touches on multiple aspects of the law, such as IP, contracts and regulatory filings. Lindsey doesn’t oversee as much litigation as he previously did prior to his company’s business shift.
“I’m really deeply embedded in the business,” Lindsey said, adding that he acts as an advisor with a legal lens.
Focusing on the transactional side of Edwards’ business separates Lindsey from his colleagues in the most beneficial way possible, he told the Business Journal.
“I wake up every morning because of the company’s mission to serve patients. It’s a very personal thing for me,” Lindsey said.
“Edwards’ slogan is, ‘patients first,’ and we really do live that. To be able to enable stuff with my education and experience, to get a contract to a hospital so we can bring innovative products that help save patients’ lives is a pretty unique thing in the legal industry to be able to do that.”
He’s No Trojan Horse
Lindsey left the small town he grew up in just south of Portland and moved to Southern California, where he earned his bachelor’s and Master of Arts in biology from Occidental College.
Lindsey later earned his law degree in 2004 as a Trojan from the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law.
The combination of two biology degrees and legal education gave Lindsey the tools he needed to understand complex science areas while practicing law.
Lindsey had experience in patent litigation prior to joining Edwards. He split his time overseeing litigation and transactional cases at Edwards before transitioning away from trial work and focusing almost exclusively on his company’s science-themed mission.
Lindsey’s recognition last year was the second straight annual General Counsel award for a lawyer at Edwards, Orange County’s largest medical device maker with a $41 billion market cap (NYSE: EW). Linda Park, Edwards’ associate general counsel, won the award in 2022.