John Dougherty is a trial lawyer and adviser with nearly 25 years of experience handling multi-disciplinary litigation, investigations, and other strategic challenges facing public and private companies. Mr. Dougherty also counsels clients on risk avoidance, crisis management, and company-sensitive matters involving scientific, medical, and regulatory issues. He serves as co-chair of FLH’s Life Sciences Practice and is a member of FLH’s Executive Committee.

John acts as lead counsel, national coordinating counsel, and trial counsel in cases throughout the United States and abroad, representing companies in commercial, product liability/mass tort, consumer fraud, intellectual property, shareholder, and merger and acquisition disputes and class actions. He also serves as national resolution counsel, helping companies consider, design, and execute settlement and endgame strategies for mass actions or difficult one-off cases.

In addition to his courtroom work, Mr. Dougherty represents companies in internal investigations and proactive compliance reviews. He regularly counsels clients on commercial and merger and acquisition agreements, and related due diligence and risk apportionment. Mr. Dougherty regularly represents clients in collaboration and licensing disputes, including matters involving commercially reasonable efforts clauses, and consults on best practices in all aspects of alliance management.

Mr. Dougherty has built and managed global client-service teams, and works closely with clients to design effective and efficient outside counsel relationships. He is experienced in leading and coordinating “virtual firms” drawn from multiple outside law firms, and pioneered many techniques and systems for managing large teams and their budgets.