The American Lawyer and Law360 Cover Barnes & Thornburg’s Pickup of 12-Lawyer Healthcare Team

In an interview with both publications, partners John Lawrence and Kelsey Jernigan, who lead the team, discussed why they made the move and what they bring to the firm.

“We were incredibly impressed with the growth of Barnes & Thornburg’s healthcare group over the last four years,” said Lawrence, who will serve as managing partner of the Raleigh office, to AmLaw. “Our areas of expertise are very similar, but we also bring additional areas as well so we can help create a really comprehensive group, and we’re so excited about that that will look like.”

Jernigan told Law360 that the team has longstanding relationships with institutional healthcare providers whom they’ve advised on all aspects of their business. “We handle transactions, litigation and prospective regulatory compliance," Jernigan said. “This provides Barnes & Thornburg and its existing client base a broad range of experience to draw from, including benchmarking, creative structuring of complex affiliation among providers, successful strategies in defusing government scrutiny and navigating the intricate regulatory landscape.”

Firm Managing Partner Andrew Detherage and Healthcare Department Chair John Kelly told The American Lawyer that Barnes & Thornburg made growing its Healthcare Industry practice a strategic tenet beginning when Kelly first joined the firm in 2022.

“When Andy and I met years ago, the vision he had for the healthcare practice was to shift it to an industry practice focus. It makes sense in this environment we live in today and the needs of our clients," Kelly said. "Now we have almost 140 lawyers in the healthcare industry practice that can service nearly every need a healthcare client has. We thought it would take five years to get there, and it took slightly less than that.”

The American Lawyer and Law360 noted that Barnes & Thornburg has been on a hiring tear throughout 2026, with this being the firm’s fifth major lateral group acquisition. Detherage estimated that the firm has hired over 70 lateral partners and more than 130 attorneys overall this year. 

“We've kind of blown up our budget in many respects because we added 71 partners and a good number of other lawyers,” he said. “We're doing really well, we're ahead of forecast, and we have every reason to believe we're going to finish really strong this year, which is extraordinary given how many people we've brought on.”

Click here to read The American Lawyer report.

Click here to read the Law360 report.