Lee & Hayes PLLC, a Spokane-based intellectual property law firm, says it’s expanding its footprint in the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan legal market and has hired a prominent Portland life sciences regulatory attorney to broaden its expertise in that practice area.

The firm has leased 6,100 square feet of office space on the sixth floor of the 805 Broadway Building, in Vancouver, Wash., a short distance from Portland, and expects move into the space in May, says Shaun Cross, a Spokane partner with the firm. It will relocate its offices there from a 2,500-square-foot space on the fourth floor of Vancouver’s 1111 Main Street building, a few blocks away, after remodeling work at the new space is completed, Cross says.

Carol A. Pratt, the prominent life sciences attorney, has joined the firm’s Vancouver office. She formerly practiced with K&L Gates in Portland. In addition to her law degree, she holds a Ph.D. in neuroscience and conducted research on the spinal control of movement for 16 years at the National Institutes of Health, Purdue University, and the Neurological Sciences Institute, a press release says.

Lee & Hayes describes Pratt in a press release as “a tremendous talent” and says she will add a new Food and Drug Administration practice to its growing Chemical and Life Sciences Practice Group.

In her FDA practice, the release says, Pratt provides strategic advice to early-stage and established life sciences clients on regulatory issues across the product life cycle, including pre-clinical and clinical research; pre-market requirements; labeling, promotion, and advertising; and post-market surveillance and enforcement. A distinctive aspect of her legal practice, it says, is her emphasis on coordinating regulatory and intellectual-property strategies to determine the most appropriate regulatory pathway and to optimize cost-efficient product development.

With her hiring, Lee & Hayes’ five-year-old branch office there now includes a total of five attorneys and two support staff members, but the new space will be able to accommodate up to 11 attorneys and a couple of additional staff members, Cross says.

He says the firm will be looking to continue to grow its practice there, following a pattern it has used in other markets of setting up a modest-sized office and then expanding after a few years as its legal work increases and it runs out of space. 

In addition to Spokane and Vancouver, it now has offices in Seattle; Austin, Texas; Atlanta; Rochester, N.Y.; and Washington, D.C. It has opened four of those offices since 2011.

In all, 156 people work at Lee & Hayes, including 89 attorneys. It employs 83 people, including 38 attorneys, at its headquarters here on the 13th and 14th floor of the Bank of America Financial Center, at 601 W. Riverside.

Lee & Hayes offers a range of IP assistance, analysis, and counseling, along with providing other corporate legal services. Along with its work in life sciences, its clients develop technologies, products, and services in fields such as electronics, computer software and hardware, network and semiconductor technologies, digital media, e-commerce, and telecommunications, its website says.

 Brett Nelson, a Spokane-based attorney with the firm who chairs its Chemical and Life Sciences Practice Group, says the attorneys in that practice area have undergraduate degrees and specialized expertise in life sciences fields and several hold doctorate degrees in such fields. The firm does life sciences legal work for large and small companies, including some here, in areas such as vaccines, treatments, genetic engineering, licensing, and joint research agreements, he says. A lot of the work, he says, is focused on preparing and pursuing patent applications.

On the academic side, Cross says Lee & Hayes is doing life sciences-related work for Stanford University, the University of Utah, the University of Oregon, Tulane University, Wayne State University, and Washington State University. 

He says the firm hopes to be able to secure more work with WSU as it progresses with plans to open a medical school here.