Timothy M. McCrystal is an American lawyer based in Boston, Massachusetts, and a partner at Ropes & Gray LLP, where he chairs the firm's health care practice. He is known for transactional work involving health care mergers, acquisitions, and affiliations, as well as for advice on health privacy and data security.
Background
Timothy M. McCrystal's documented education began at Colby College, a private liberal arts college in Waterville, Maine, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1984. He then pursued legal training in Boston, the city where his later legal career took shape.
His early professional path combined the business of employee benefits with law. Before entering the legal profession in Massachusetts, he worked in the insurance industry, and his later practice centered on the legal and regulatory affairs of health care organizations in the Boston area.
Education
McCrystal studied at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, and received a Bachelor of Arts in 1984. Colby is a private liberal arts college whose undergraduate program emphasizes broad study across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.
He then attended Suffolk University Law School in Boston, where he earned a Juris Doctor in 1989. Suffolk was founded as a law school in 1906 by Gleason L. Archer to serve working adults, and it added a College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in 1934 and a School of Management in 1937. The law school awards the Juris Doctor degree and is accredited by the American Bar Association and the Association of American Law Schools. He was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1989, the year he completed his law degree.
Career
Before joining Ropes & Gray, McCrystal worked for a national insurance company, where he designed and marketed employee benefit programs for employers. He was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1989 and began his legal career in the Boston area.
McCrystal is a partner at Ropes & Gray LLP, an international law firm with a major office in Boston. He chairs the firm's health care practice group. His work covers mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and affiliations involving health care providers, hospital-physician relationships, and the formation and reorganization of multi-institutional health care systems. He also advises health care and life sciences clients on the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and he has represented clients in settlements with the United States Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights arising from data breaches involving protected health information.
His practice has developed alongside growing consolidation in American health care and an expanding body of state laws that regulate health care transactions to manage competition, quality, access, and cost. Recent transactions in which he has taken part include advising Walgreens Boots Alliance as health care regulatory counsel in its take-private acquisition by Sycamore Partners, counseling Summit Partners-backed Thrive Skilled Pediatric Care on its sale to Avenna Healthcare Holdings, representing Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe in its investment in Constitution Surgery Alliance, and counseling Advent International on its acquisition of PatientPoint, a digital health company.
Membership
The Massachusetts Bar Association is a voluntary statewide association of lawyers that works on professional practice and legal policy. McCrystal was a member of its Health Law Council from 1994 to 1996.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Best Lawyers client testimonial: "He instills confidence, and has thoughtful and innovative approaches to difficult issues."
