Dallas-based Haynes and Boone has created a new practice area centered around emerging life sciences and technology companies, bringing two lawyers from McDermott Will & Emery to head the group in the firm's soon-to-open San Francisco office.

Roger Kuan and Jason Novak joined Haynes and Boone as partners, the firm announced Tuesday. Kuan will act as the practice chair for the new precision medicine and digital health team.

"Roger and Jason will be a tremendous asset to our clients and further some of Haynes and Boone's key strategic priorities," managing partner Timothy Powers said in a statement. Those priorities include "expanding our presence in California and developing recognized practices serving emerging industries and sectors," he said.

Kuan and Novak worked together previously at biotechnology company Thermo Fisher Scientific as well as K&L Gates before moving over to McDermott together in November 2017.

Kuan focuses on strategic intellectual property counseling for life science companies and also has experience in IP strategy and portfolio management, IP litigation and technology transactions, according to his firm biography. Before becoming a lawyer, Kuan worked as an engineer for four years at Johnson & Johnson.

"I am thrilled to join a firm that has such a great roster of patent prosecution lawyers, as well as an entrepreneurial spirit and collaborative culture," Kuan said in a statement. "Haynes and Boone is well positioned to provide clients in the life sciences technologies with a comprehensive suite of skills and services."

Novak does IP counseling, diligence, procurement, licensing and transactions for clients in the personalized and precision medicine space. Examples include companies that work on genomic sequencing platforms or molecular diagnostics. Novak also had a different career before venturing in the law—he was a research engineer for Kraft from 2000 through 2003.

Kuan said in an interview that while many firms are scaling back certain practice areas over fallout from the pandemic, the clients and companies he and Novak service are quite busy.

"We cover companies that do telehealth and virtual medicine," he said. "Lots of companies are exploring that space."

Haynes and Boone has had a busy couple of months on the lateral front. The firm added eight attorneys to its Palo Alto office in late March, taking Roger Royse and seven attorneys from the 27-lawyer Royse Law Firm.

But the firm also lost three IP attorneys in early March, as Phillip Philbin, Jamie McDole and Michael Karson left Haynes and Boone for fellow Dallas-based firm Thompson & Knight in early April.

Kuan and Novak expect to be working out of the new San Francisco office by July or August, they said. The office should have between seven and 10 attorneys to start, with several of those expected to be from the Royce group.

Kuan said he has a financial goal in mind for the new practice group, but he declined to elaborate on that. He said the primary goals will be transitioning clients from McDermott, then growing the capabilities of the practice area.

"We have strengths in the tooling, diagnostics and software side," Kuan said. "We would like to build out our team to handle therapeutics as well."

On its face, the move is an interesting one for Kuan and Novak, who leave a practice at McDermott that has a strong reputation across the industry, and a formidable national footprint.

But Kuan and Novak both said that the commitment Haynes and Boone showed to developing what is still a relatively new practice, as well as the ability to shape how that practice grows, were deciding factors in the move.

Both attorneys said they enjoyed their time at McDermott and looked forward to potentially working with their former colleagues in matters moving forward.

"McDermott has a fantastic health care practice," Kuan said. "We look forward to maintaining our relationship with them."

Haynes and Boone, which is ranked No. 94 in the 2020 Am Law 100, saw a slight decline in revenue in 2019, down 1% from the previous year. The firm did show a slight increase in revenue per lawyer, as it had a lower head count in 2019 from the year before.

Haynes and Boone is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year and will also be ushering in a new managing partner at the end of 2020. Powers, the current managing partner, turns 65 this year and is planning on retiring from the position at the end of the year.

McDermott did not immediately return a request for comment regarding the departures.

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