McDermott Will & Schulte, a global law firm

Kristian (Krist) Werling is the global head of McDermott’s Health & Life Sciences practice, which provides regulatory and transactional counsel to health and life sciences industry leaders, changemakers, and investors.

Krist and the McDermott Health & Life Sciences team lead the most significant transactions, critical regulatory issues, and litigation matters that shape the health and life sciences industry. In his own practice, Krist represents life sciences companies, health service providers, private equity firms, and venture capital investors in a wide variety of transactional and regulatory matters. He has led cutting-edge industry transactions that have introduced cancer and gene therapy products to the global market, expanded access to fertility services, increased the availability of cost-effective outpatient surgical services, and transformed the delivery of physician services in a broad range of specialties.

Krist's decades of experience on the buy-side and sell-side of health and life sciences dealmaking spans the healthcare and life sciences landscape. He leads cross-disciplinary teams and delivers business-focused legal guidance to help clients pursue their most innovative strategies, working across borders and health and life sciences subsectors to connect and advise industry stakeholders. Krist is also skilled at developing creative transaction structures, conducting sector-specific due diligence, and providing forward-looking counsel to mitigate issues that can derail transactions or stunt long-term growth. His deep understanding of sector-specific regulatory nuances allows him to efficiently close transactions and maximize client outcomes.

Representative PE clients include Ampersand Capital Partners (buy-side and sell-side); Amulet Capital Partners (buy-side and sell-side); Windrose Health Investors (buy-side and sell-side M&A, and joint venture matters); Iron Path Capital (investments, carve-out acquisitions and new platform formations), Quad-C (new platform formation and investment and sell-side), PPC (buy-side).

Representative healthcare and life sciences companies include Baxter International and Vanda Pharmaceuticals (cross-border sales and acquisitions; licensing); REGENXBIO (strategic partnership with AbbVie); Cleveland Clinic, Hospital for Special Surgery and Northwestern Medicine (strategic innovation investments and joint ventures); numerous founder-owned businesses in strategic transactions with investors.

Stephen W. Bernstein specializes in e-health, “big data”, data engineering, deployment of digital health tools and solutions and health-related matters affected by the internet and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), as well as private equity investments, mergers, acquisitions, affiliations and joint ventures involving technology, digital health companies, hospitals and physicians. Stephen co-leads the Firm’s Digital Health Practice, which brings together McDermott lawyers from within and outside the Health Industry Advisory Practice Group to develop thought leadership, share information and collaborate on best practices. Stephen served as global head of the Firm’s Health Practice from 2009-2018, and as the Health Practice’s Partner-in-Charge of Health Practice Operations during 2023 and 2024. He has also served on the Firm’s Management, Compensation, Executive and Finance Committees.

Stephen has particular experience working with private equity funds, venture funds, as well as pharmaceutical, biotech and device companies concerning uses of health information for clinical and database research, product/disease registries and marketing matters, electronic health record development and implementation, including the ways these endeavors relate to personalized medicine.

Representative clients include the Best Buy Health, OMERS Private Equity, Modernizing Medicine, Nuance Communications, American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), Stanford University, Physicians’ Organization at Children’s Hospital (Boston), Cape Cod Healthcare, Summit Partners and Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ).

Stephen has practiced health law since 1988 in Boston, Massachusetts, and in Palo Alto, California. In Palo Alto, he provided on-site counsel to Stanford University Medical Center. Among other accomplishments at Stanford, Stephen participated in the negotiations for the affiliation between Stanford Health Services and Lucile Salter Packard Children’s Hospital. He lectures extensively on healthcare technology privacy/HIPAA and related security matters, digital health, collaborative transformations, data mining, clinical research and product/disease registries as well as electronic health record implementation. Stephen has been featured on National Public Radio’s syndicated program Here and Now and has been quoted by The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post on medical privacy issues.

Felicia Gerber Perlman focuses her practice on complex business reorganizations, debt restructurings and insolvency matters. Felicia advises debtors, creditors, lenders, investors, sellers, purchasers and other parties-in-interest in all stages of restructuring transactions, from Chapter 11 reorganizations to out-of-court negotiations, workouts and acquisitions. She frequently presents on bankruptcy topics and is featured in several notable publications.