Ropes & Gray Builds on Leading National Health Care Practice; Paul F. Danello, Internationally Recognized Corporate and Regulatory Health Lawyer, Joins Health Care Practice.

Business Editors

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 14, 2003

Ropes & Gray announced today that Paul F. Danello has joined the firm's Health Care Practice as Counsel, based in the firm's Washington, D.C. office. Paul is an internationally recognized corporate and regulatory health care lawyer who will focus efforts on corporate, tax, finance, and regulatory matters affecting the health care industry. He will also work with Dan Roble, a partner in the Health Care Practice, to build out the firm's capabilities in canon law as well as continue the focus on quality initiatives in the health care industry.

"As a distinguished health law practitioner with deep roots in both national health care policy and complex transactional work, Paul is a remarkable addition to our health care practice," said Douglass N. Ellis, Jr., Ropes & Gray's Chairman. "He exemplifies our firm-wide commitment to adding professional excellence and value in all practice areas."

With almost 30 years of international and domestic health law experience, Paul has served as both general counsel and special counsel to major nonprofit health systems; public hospitals; academic medical centers; and physician group practices. Paul has most recently served as a member of the Industry Guidance Group, an elite team of health care attorneys in the Office of the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In this capacity, he counseled the health care industry on the interpretation and application of federal fraud and abuse laws and on clinical joint ventures throughout the country. He developed corporate compliance plans for national health care systems and providers, and also developed clinical trial contracting and fraud and abuse compliance policies.

Paul has worked extensively with religiously affiliated health care systems on matters of both civil law and canon law. As an experienced practicing canon lawyer with specialty expertise in temporal goods and juridic persons and a Roman pontifical doctorate in canon law, he has in-depth familiarity with the complex canonical, moral, and theological considerations raised by the mergers, acquisitions, affiliations, and changes of sponsorship of Catholic health care providers. He has had extensive experience with compliance with canonical requirements governing the stewardship and alienation of temporal goods by institutes of consecrated life and societies of apostolic life, whether of pontifical or diocesan right, as well as archdioceses and dioceses; the establishment of public and private juridic persons; and oversight by American diocesan bishops and ordinaries of these transactions as well as appropriate canonical recourse to the relevant Vatican dicasteries of the Roman Curia.

Michele Garvin, the head of the firm's Health Care Practice, adds, "We are thrilled that Paul is joining us. He strengthens and expands our health care practice to a level unmatched in the country. In particular, we are now able to add extraordinary value in the areas of both civil law and canon law affecting Catholic health care providers."

For over three decades, the firm's Health Care Practice, one of the first established in the country, has been a pioneer in corporate and regulatory matters, including mergers, joint ventures, and disaffiliations; conversions from not-for-profit to for-profit status; and advising institutional boards. Throughout the last decade, Ropes & Gray has been an active voice on many policy issues around research, privacy, and compliance.

Paul is a member of the Bar of the District of Columbia, the Supreme Court of the United States, the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for the Federal Circuit, and others. He is a frequent speaker and lecturer at events sponsored by various health care groups, including the American Health Lawyers Association, the American Public Health Association, The American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics, the Canon Law Society of America, and The Catholic Health Association of the United States of America. Paul has been included in the Guide to the World's Leading Health Care Lawyers since its inception.

He received his A.B. and Diploma, cum laude, from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1971, his J.D. in 1975 from Columbia University School of Law, his M.A. (Oxon.) in Jurisprudence in 1977 from Oxford University, and his J.C.D. in 1996 and his J.C.L. in 1993 in Canon Law as well as his S.T.B. in 1991, summa cum laude, from the Pontificia Studiorum Universitas a Sancto Thoma Aquinate in Urbe ("Angelicum") in Rome.

For more than a century, Ropes & Gray has been a leading U.S. law firm serving the needs of businesses and individuals throughout the nation and the world. With more than 500 lawyers, Ropes & Gray creates solutions to complex legal problems across a wide range of legal disciplines, including: antitrust, corporate, creditors' rights, employee benefits, environmental, health care, intellectual property and technology, international, labor and employment, life sciences, litigation, private client services, private equity, real estate, and tax. The firm has offices in Boston; New York; San Francisco; and Washington, D.C.; and conference centers in London and Providence. For further information, please visit www.ropesgray.com.