About the practice
Led personally by Wilhelm van Zyl.
JW van Zyl Inc gives international and regional life-sciences teams South African legal capacity for the agreements, governance, diligence and regulated transactions that have to be resolved locally.
The principal
JW van Zyl Inc is a South African legal practice regulated by the Legal Practice Council. Johan Wilhelm van Zyl, its director, is an attorney of the High Court of South Africa and leads every matter himself.
Background
The firm negotiates clinical-research agreements having previously negotiated them for sponsors at contract research organisations. Wilhelm van Zyl practised commercial and litigation work from 2011, then spent ten years on the industry side: clinical-trial contracting and study budgets for global pharmaceutical and biotechnology sponsors at international contract research organisations, a regional leadership role in global business operations across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and study start-up agreements across multiple African jurisdictions at an international public-health research organisation.
When the firm is engaged
Entering South Africa with a regulated product · Starting a South African clinical programme · Appointing or changing a South African distributor or regulatory holder · Acquiring or investing in a regulated South African healthcare business · Temporary South African in-house legal capacity under a monthly retainer. Each is described on its own page, with what tends to go wrong, what the firm owns and what sits outside the workstream.
Across every workstream
Transactional IP, data and privacy, compliance and governance run through each of the five. Where a matter needs patent, tax, competition, foreign-law or advocacy input, the firm defines the instruction and integrates that specialist's advice into the workstream it is running.
How engagements are structured
Scope, deliverables, fees and timelines are agreed in writing before substantive work begins. Where a matter needs foreign-law, patent, tax, regulatory-science or advocacy input, the firm defines that instruction and integrates the specialist's advice into the workstream it is running. The firm does not offer free consultations. Further detail is on the Professional Information page.