Lawyers may be used to working under time pressure, but for the legal teams advising on the race for a COVID-19 vaccine, the intensity was different.

Major pharmaceutical companies had wasted no time in throwing their weight behind finding a solution to the virus that has, to date, taken 1.58 million lives around the world. So for the lawyers involved deadlines lost all meaning, replaced with a need to finish things as quickly as possible, not just for the client but for everybody, including themselves.