Healthcare companies, private equity firms, banks and healthcare specialty lenders trust Rob Harris for advice and counsel in strategic acquisitions, investments, and complex commercial finance transactions. A partner at Waller Lansden, Mr. Harris leads the firm's Finance and Restructuring practice.
During his legal career, Mr. Harris has built deep relationships within the healthcare services, investment banking, private equity and commercial lending communities throughout the United States and abroad. These relationships and his extensive transactional experience enable Mr. Harris to assist companies, investors, and entrepreneurs in achieving strategic objectives through mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, recapitalizations as well as public and private equity and debt financing. In the past five years, he has helped arrange more than $3,000,000,000 in financings for healthcare companies. Highlights of Mr. Harris' career include structuring a $745,000,000 credit facility for an investor-owned hospital system positioning itself for strategic acquisitions and the development of new facilities; providing counsel to a healthcare technology company in its recapitalization and accompanying $135,000,000 senior credit facility and mezzanine debt facility; and renegotiating and amending senior credit facilities for a private equity firm and its portfolio companies during the recent credit crisis to secure capital for strategic acquisitions, operations and expansion.
Distinguished nationally for his vast experience in the healthcare industry, particularly with respect to commercial finance transactions, Mr. Harris is recognized in Chambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business and The Best Lawyers in America (Woodward White, Inc.). Prior to joining Waller Lansden, he practiced law in the Washington, D.C. office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, LLP. Mr. Harris earned his J.D. from Columbia University and his B.A., magna cum laude, from Dartmouth College.
Education
J.D., Columbia University, 1993
Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar at Columbia University
Head Articles Editor, Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, 1993
Authored, “Goin' Down the Road Feeling Bad: U.S. Trade Laws' Discriminatory Treatment of the East European Economies in Transition to Capitalism,” Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, 1993
B.A., magna cum laude, Dartmouth College, 1990
Recipient of a Waterhouse Research Grant and the E. John Rosenwald Public Affairs Grant at Dartmouth College
Member, Tennessee, New York and District of Columbia Bar Associations
Civic and Other Activities
Member, Board of Trustees of the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) Association-Tennessee Chapter, a non-profit corporation dedicated to finding a cure for ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease)
Member of Steering Committee committed to bringing an urban debate program to Nashville's public schools.
