Byron S. Kalogerou is the founder of the Firm’s Life Science Industry Group and the senior partner in the Boston Corporate Practice. He helps clients execute on their growth strategies by guiding them through complex domestic and cross-border mergers and acquisitions and joint ventures and alliances. He also assists early stage life science companies in their capital raising efforts. Byron has extensive industry background in the life science, industrial and manufacturing sectors. He also acts as outside general counsel to a number of companies.

Byron spent 18 years in-house, where he served in various general counsel roles at Tyco International, including as general counsel of its fire and security and telecom businesses, and as general counsel of its international legal department, a function he created. Byron led many of Tyco’s largest acquisitions, including the $12 billion acquisition of AMP Inc. and the $850 million purchase of AT&T Submarine Systems, and handled hundreds of middle-market deals around the globe. Byron also handled Tyco’s initial foray into medical devices and led many of the deals that formed Covidien, now part of Medtronic.

Byron returned to law firm life 18 years ago with a desire to bring his keen sense of the “voice of the customer” to drive predictability, value and efficiency into the deal process. Byron is a legal project management pioneer and co-chair of the American Bar Association (ABA) Committee on Mergers and Acquisitions’ Task Force on Legal Project Management. He is co-editor of the ABA Guidebook “Using Legal Project Management in Merger & Acquisition and Joint Venture Transactions”, now in its third edition. Byron also created the first-of-its-kind web-based collaborative deal management portal, which the Firm adopted and embraced as part of Client Central. He is also one of the Firm’s primary contacts with the Association of Corporate Counsel.

Margaret J. Sampson, PhD, focuses her practice on global, strategic intellectual property transactions, and patent counseling surrounding the areas of life sciences, pharmaceuticals, research tools, and medical devices. Life sciences and technology clients turn to her for evaluating, structuring, negotiating, and documenting major transactions.

Margaret’s extensive experience includes advising clients in evaluating patent portfolio positions; analyzing freedom-to-operate issues; identifying and evaluating targets for potential investment, mergers, or acquisitions; Hatch-Waxman patent litigation; patent term extensions and adjustments; and patent office proceedings.

She is highly skilled in a variety of transactions such as inbound and outbound licensing and option agreements, development and collaboration agreements, clinical research agreement, clinical and commercial supply agreements, manufacturing agreements, sponsored research agreements, technology transfers, and royalty monetization transactions.

Margaret also has a significant research background, focused on molecular genetics, recombinant DNA and stem cell research, including making mouse knock-out models to better understand the function of genes in an organism.

During law school, Margaret was editor-in-chief of the Texas Intellectual Property Law Journal.

David M. Santangelo represents life sciences and biopharmaceutical companies in a variety of corporate transactions and commercial undertakings with peer companies, universities and academic institutions, including licenses and collaborations, product acquisitions and dispositions, distribution arrangements, development agreements, manufacturing and supply agreements, services agreements, clinical trial agreements, sponsored research agreements, quality agreements and technology transfers. He advises industry clients at all stages of the product life cycle on their strategic alliances and all manner of commercial contracting relevant to both their daily operations and long-term planning. David serves as an outside general counsel to many early stage and smaller clients, and as a trusted advisor to more mature, middle market and large cap companies, both public and private.

Prior to making the life sciences sector his key area of focus, David also counseled public and private companies in the energy, technology, telecommunications and consumer goods industries, advising clients on an array of transactions, including stock and asset acquisitions, mergers, spin-offs, tender offers and joint ventures. David also represented public companies in connection with public offerings and private placements of debt securities, high-net-worth individuals and family offices in connection with venture capital and early stage ventures and investments, and counseled various other clients on corporate governance and compliance matters.

Richard B. Smith focuses his practice on representation of life sciences companies and related transactions. He has served as counsel to public, private and emerging life sciences companies, advising those companies on strategic business transactions such as licensing, joint ventures, and collaborations involving research, development, marketing, supply, clinical development and co-promotion of pharmaceutical, diagnostic and medical device products.

Richard also advises companies on other corporate issues common to life sciences companies, including corporate formation of new ventures, venture capital, private equity, venture philanthropy and other forms of financing, mergers and acquisitions, as well as university and institutional licensing and intellectual property strategies.