Goodwin

Founded more than a century ago, Goodwin has grown to nearly 1,800 lawyers in 17 offices throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. Goodwin describes itself as “a firm of insiders,” understanding and advising across the healthcare, investment funds, life sciences, private equity, real estate, and technology industries.

Ethics First

In 1912, Harvard classmates Robert Goodwin and Joseph Procter ran into each other in the street and decided to start a law practice together, opening Goodwin & Procter later that year. Two years later, the founders helped a sardine packing company issue preferred stock but later discovered that the company financials had been fabricated. They took out a $30,000 loan to buy back all the outstanding shares at face value and established an ethical standard for their new firm. Fraud would play another key role in the early days of the firm when Robert Goodwin served as the bankruptcy referee who sorted out the original Ponzi scheme perpetrated by Charles Ponzi.

Tech, Biotech, Buyouts, and Beyond

Goodwin’s strengths include investment funds, healthcare, private equity, real estate, technology, and life sciences. The firm’s corporate practice is among the top 20 in Vault’s General Corporate practice area rankings and includes everything from capital markets, debt finance, and financial restructuring to M&A, private investment funds, and venture capital.

The firm is recognized for a number of practice areas. Goodwin is a top 10 firm in Vault's Life Sciences and ECVC rankings. It has over 200 dedicated life sciences lawyers across its offices, supporting clients including life science companies, banks, and investors. The firm's technology practice is home to over 350 attorneys advising on AI, climate tech, digital currency and blockchain, industrial tech and manufacturing, and other new technologies. The firm's private equity practice represents sponsors and portfolio companies in acquisitions, financings, exits, and other transactions in a wide range of industries. The firm’s unique Proptech practice brings together real estate and technology lawyers to address the increasing intersectionality between real estate and technology.  

Across the Map

Over the past several decades, Goodwin has grown internationally too. Goodwin’s Hong Kong office represents private equity, venture capital, M&A, intellectual property, and capital markets clients, and it also features technology and life sciences, hospitality, real estate, and anti-corruption practices. With a focus on private equity, venture, and fund matters, the Singapore office is part of the firm’s full-service Asia practice that advises clients in the technology, life sciences, financial services, and real estate industries. The London office focuses on real estate, fund formation, private equity, hospitality, technology, life sciences, and dispute resolution. The Paris office advises on private equity and M&A work and has expanded to serve clients on complex real estate, financial restructuring, and tax matters. Goodwin’s Cambridge office in the heart of the Silicon Fen focuses on life sciences and technology, and the Luxembourg office works with the firm’s existing London-based Luxembourg desk to offer a single solution for clients raising and deploying capital in Europe. The firm’s Munich office opened in 2022 to grow its European private equity platform. The firm opened an office in Brussels in 2025.

• Advised Novo Holdings on the completion of its $16.5 billion acquisition of Catalent, which is considered the biggest healthcare merger in recent years.
• Advised OpenAI in what was reported to be the largest private company tender offer ever completed, a $10.8 billion transaction that valued OpenAI at $500 billion. 
• Secured a complete victory for Insulet Corporation in a trade secret misappropriation case following a $452 million jury verdict for Insulet, one of the largest trade secret jury awards in the past five years.
• Advised Blueprint Medicines on its $9.5 billion acquisition by Sanofi, which was one of the largest biopharma deals in 2025.

• No. 1 Firm for Global M&A by Deal Count, 2025—LSEG
• Practice Group of the Year: Life Sciences, 2025—Law360
• ERISA Litigation Law Firm of the Year, 2025—Best Law Firms
• No. 1 firm for Global Venture Capital Rounds by Deal Count, 2025—LSEG
• Corporate Firm of the Year, 2025—LMG Life Sciences