Using their technical and legal expertise the companies will prepare agreements and perform due diligence reviews prior to the conclusion of deals. Offering this will assist companies that are increasingly reliant on collaborations, partnerships and work with external businesses.
This includes establishing agreements with contract research and manufacturing organisations (CRO, CMO). Forming these agreements requires technical and legal input and in many cases advisors in these two areas work independently of each other, explained the collaborators.
Lack of communication between legal and technical advisors can create a number of problems, according to the companies, and the collaboration aims to save time and money by eliminating these inefficiencies.
In particular the companies believe that by collaborating they can support the timely inclusion of technical, regulatory, legal and strategic aspects of agreements. This should help avoid loss of information, misunderstandings, duplication of work, delays and unnecessary costs.
Forming the relationship
The German-based companies often found themselves advising the same clients and consequently formalising and intensifying cooperation “seemed logical”. Clients have shown “great interest” in the collaboration, the companies added.
In addition to deals with CROs and CMOs the companies will also provide support for licensing, collaboration, partnering, mergers and acquisitions and equity financing rounds.
MLawGroup provides legal services in these areas, and others, to clients including Boehringer Ingelheim, Wacker Chemie, Alnylam, Emergent, MorphoSys or MediGene.
WS Partners is focused on the technical side, offering advice on areas of drug development, such as chemistry, manufacturing and control (CMC), production and business development.