Robert "Rob" H. Laird Jr., a leading corporate and health technology attorney, has joined Baker Donelson as a member of its Corporate Group and a shareholder in the Nashville office. Prior to private practice, Mr. Laird served as in-house counsel for HealthStream, a publicly traded Nashville-based company that provides a suite of solutions to health care organizations. He was most recently the managing shareholder of the Nashville office of Maynard Cooper & Gale.
"Rob is well known and highly regarded in the Nashville legal community, and having known him for many years, I can attest that he's a great fit with our firm culture," said Brigid M. Carpenter, managing shareholder of Baker Donelson's Nashville office. "With his exceptional background in high growth companies and health care technology, he will be an immediate asset to our robust digital health initiative and Privacy and Technology Center of Excellence. With so many new companies coming to Nashville, our office is booming, and we are excited to add Rob's experience and talents to the team."
"Rob brings the invaluable perspective of having been both in-house and outside counsel to cutting edge health technology companies. He understands the critical intersection of business, technology, and the law,” notes Tonya Mitchem Grindon, chair of Baker Donelson's Business Department and a shareholder in the Nashville office. "He's an important addition to our business practice, which we have been expanding significantly to meet the extraordinary demand we're seeing from our clients as they participate in the current record-breaking levels of transactional activity."
Mr. Laird is the latest in a number of recent additions to Baker Donelson's corporate, technology and energy practices. The group's hiring spree has included a technology and privacy law attorney who previously was in-house legal counsel for one of the world's largest management consulting firms; a corporate attorney who previously served as in-house counsel for a Fortune 500 global power and utility company; an energy transactions attorney who formerly led the oil and gas practice at Womble Bond Dickinson LLP; and an energy project and infrastructure development and finance attorney who served as in-house counsel for an industry-leading independent power producer and was a leader of the energy team for a transatlantic law firm that handled projects around the world.
"I have known and worked with so many great Baker Donelson attorneys throughout my career and am excited to join the growing team. I am particularly pleased to be joining a law firm with such a strong focus on technology and data as well as a national firm with such extensive reach and resources. These days, almost every company is becoming a data and technology company. Moreover, the intersection of technology and health care is at a critical growth juncture. Baker Donelson is developing a Center of Excellence in a greatly expanding and critical area," said Mr. Laird.
With a focus on the intersection of health care and technology, Mr. Laird counsels private and public clients and private equity investors in corporate transactions, corporate governance, securities, mergers and acquisitions, information technology, and venture capital investments. He is listed in Best Lawyers in America® in the area of Mergers and Acquisitions Law, and he has been recognized among the Nashville Post's 2021 "In Charge – Legal" and the Nashville Business Journal's "Best of the Bar". He is a frequent speaker at continuing legal education programs sponsored by the Tennessee Bar Association, Nashville Bar Association, and other organizations on a range of corporate and securities law topics, including mergers and acquisitions, venture capital financing, formation of legal entities, and corporate governance.