Medical technology companies require legal departments with increasingly deep skill sets in litigation, intellectual property and mergers and acquisitions. During the past year, Boston Scientific Corp. showed its considerable talents in all of these fields while continuing to build a global legal department, slashing outside counsel costs by nearly 60 percent, avoiding litigation and adopting additional improvements departmentwide.
General counsel Timothy Pratt moved over from Shook, Hardy & Bacon in 2008 and immediately launched a revamp that centralized most major duties — particularly product litigation — and set up alternative fee arrangement and case management systems for a preferred list of outside counsel. (For more on that score, see our take on the company's work with outside counsel on page 20.)
