Higher Education

Corporate and Finance

• Worked with a major university to spin out an academic healthcare system, including creating a tax-exempt parent entity and applying for tax-exempt status for hospital entities
• Advised an Ivy League institution on all matters related to its debt financing, including on the tender refinancing of tax-exempt conduit bonds—a first for a higher education borrower
• Advised on all tax aspects of a large-scale restructuring of a major academic medical center’s hospital operations, including its flagship teaching hospital
• Advised a leading research university on its first charter amendment and other aspects of governance
• Represented a prestigious Midwest university in restructuring its relationship with its faculty members and teaching hospital
• Advised several major nonprofit institutions on the Dodd-Frank implications for their direct investment activities
• Represent many of the nation’s most highly regarded colleges and universities in relation to the receipt of digital assets in connection with their investment activities

Academic Medicine, Research and Healthcare

• Represented California Northstate University in the development, financing and construction of a new academic research medical center in Sacramento that included a teaching hospital and medical school campus
• Advised Emory University and Emory Healthcare on the acquisition of DeKalb Regional Health System
• Represented George Washington University in the restructuring of its long-term hospital joint venture with Universal Health Services, Inc., a Pennsylvania-based for-profit health system, which now wholly owns and manages the George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C. 
• Represented the University of Kansas in the merger of 18 private foundations into a single freestanding faculty practice plan
• Represented a prominent university in the spinoff of the assets of its current institute of medicine into an independent for-profit entity

Complex Transactions

• Guided numerous universities in their mergers or affiliations with other institutions of higher education, including the Montclair State University merger with Bloomfield College, Boston University merger with Wheelock College,  Saint Joseph’s University merger with University of the Sciences, Berklee College of Music merger with The Boston Conservatory, and more
• Represented Antioch University in a strategic transaction to become the sole corporate member of Otterbein University, forming a novel private university system collectively known as the “Coalition for the Common Good”
• Represented Montefiore Medical Center in the spinoff and acquisition of the Albert Einstein college of Medicine. Through control of a new not-for-profit joint venture with Yeshiva University, under which Einstein had been an unincorporated division, Montefiore assumed operational control and financial responsibility for Einstein.
• Representing an Ivy League college and a research institution in negotiations concerning royalty payments for the intellectual property and contractual rights to technologies for COVID-19 vaccines and diagnostic tests
• A cross-practice team of Ropes & Gray attorneys represented the University of California, San Francisco in the acquisition of two historic not-for-profit hospitals in San Francisco: St. Mary’s Medical Center and Saint Francis Memorial Hospital, as well as the hospitals’ associate outpatient and urgent care clinics
• Advised a major university in various opportunities with professional leagues, teams, stadiums, concerts and events, and individuals in endorsement agreements and licensing opportunities
• Advising the University of Nebraska regarding the acquisition and management of its key trademarks outside the United States

Investigations, Litigation and Compliance

• Represent many of the nation’s leading research universities in complex, high-profile research misconduct matters
• Represent research universities and academic medical centers in connection with government investigations into faculty members’ failure to disclose foreign sources of research funding
• Public and private universities, including Brown University, the University of Rochester, and Southern Methodist University seek out the firm’s expertise in federally funded research and False Claims Act defense
• Advising a major university on a high-profile, class-action antitrust lawsuit
• Represented a major research university in an investigation by the Federal Select Agents Program concerning the inadvertent release of a Select Agent from a research facility
• Conducted an independent investigation of false data submissions to the American Bar Association by personnel at a law school
• Conducted an internal investigation involving a university’s men’s and women’s basketball programs and assisted in subsequent self-reporting to the NCAA
• Assisted multiple U.S. universities in analyzing the application of the GDPR to their research enterprise and developing appropriate policies
• Served as regulatory counsel to a major research university conducting medical research involving fetal tissue