Alison Dennis

Taylor Wessing

Market lore has it that Taylor Wessing courted Alison Dennis for 10 years before she eventually accepted the offer to join. The firm’s co-head of life sciences and healthcare came on board in 2020 after more than a decade at Fieldfisher.

Soon after joining, Dennis, whose practice sees her acting for medical device companies on regulatory issues and intellectual property matters, worked on the launch of the firm’s new Dublin office. Far from being a post-Brexit safeguard, the hub will target tech and life sciences business as private equity interest grows, as well as US and Asian clients looking to install themselves in Europe.

She has been leading her team (which includes nine lawyers with PhDs) across the firm’s London and Cambridge bases. When Covid-19 loomed, Dennis worked with vaccine manufacturers opening in the UK and Europe, helping clients import pharma ingredients from Europe, set up diagnostics capabilities in quick time frames and work through the authorisation route for new products. She advised medical group Smiths as it worked on a ramp-up in the production of its ventilators from hundreds to thousands a month in response to a UK Government challenge to help save lives in the pandemic.

Dennis is now looking to capture work across the growing area of digital health.