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Biosciences Division (BID)

How will you make an impact?

The Corporate Counsel will be a key Legal contact for the complex and dynamic business units within the Biosciences Division (“BID”) and member of the Life Sciences Legal team, part of Thermo Fisher Scientific Legal organization.

This role performs the critical tasks of drafting, reviewing, and negotiating commercial and intellectual property agreements with large industry-leading pharmaceutical, research and manufacturing companies, research institutes and also start-ups that enable BID to develop and sell products, exploit opportunities based on technology owned by our Company or third parties, and purchase raw materials and services.

This role supports BID principally in the United States and regions outside of Europe on a wide range of legal matters with a focus on general commercial, compliance, quality, procurement, regulatory, employment, and dispute resolution.

The Corporate Counsel will work with the BID Legal team, as well as Thermo Fisher lawyers and outside counsels to provide high quality and comprehensive legal advice and support to BID businesses.

The Corporate Counsel will also work closely with business functional colleagues, including Licensing and Commercial Supply, Business Development, Intellectual Property, Finance, Product Management, Global Trade Compliance, Quality, Procurement, and Regulatory, to facilitate business transactions and manage legal compliance matters and requests.

Also as a critical part of this position, the Corporate Counsel will serve as sound and strategic support for the BID business units General Managers providing a variety of general corporate and commercial legal counseling, reviewing legal data, metrics, and key performance indicators to determine the most appropriate legal action to be taken.

What will you do?

• Serve as central point of contact for the BID business units leadership team, support the BID Legal team members to provide guidance to business leaders and global team members on, and address a range of, legal, operational and business issues that impact the BID businesses and sites.

• Draft, negotiate, and, if appropriate, seek approval for the execution of a range of commercial contracts, including third parties OEM and supply contracts, technology in-licenses, out-licenses, technical collaborations, joint development agreements, quality agreements, term sheets and other commercial agreements of varying complexity, as needed. Resolve commercial and other Legal disputes related to same.

• Seek and provide appropriate guidance and involvement of/to other relevant functions, such as Licensing and Commercial Supply, Regulatory, and Intellectual property, and facilitate the approval of the appropriate management.

• Perform analysis on legal rights, obligations, and strategies to help the Company achieve its commercial goals and objectives.

• Develop new and update existing contractual documents and constantly work with the business on improving processes to ensure efficient support.

• Respond to inquiries and advise BID employees on laws and internal policies to help ensure business planning and activities are done in accordance with applicable requirements.

• Deliver Legal training programs to internal clients relevant to business and contractual matters.

• Promote PPI (process improvement) initiatives and adopt a process improvement culture within the Life Sciences Legal organization.

• Partner with BID business teams on a variety of commercial matters (e.g. sales, customer documentation support, product labelling requirements) and quality matters (e.g. customer notifications, quality agreements, regulatory audits). Facilitate review and resolution of customer concerns and complaints.

• Support litigation, IP, M&A, company secretarial, regulatory, employment matters impacting BID businesses.

How will you get here?

• J.D. degree (US) or its equivalent in another country, and admission to a state bar is required, or its equivalent in another country. A degree or significant experience working in life sciences is preferred, as is a basic working knowledge of patent law.

• This role requires a minimum of 8 years of relevant commercial contracts legal experience, preferably including in-house experience, representing life sciences and other relevant regulated-sector companies in either a multinational company Legal department or relevant department of full-service law firm.

Knowledge, Skills, Abilities

• Robust Legal acumen and business sense with strong influencing skills.

• Ability to develop practical processes/approaches, and to drive strategy to action and solutions to completion.

• Excellent communication and negotiation skills, robust and enthusiastic self-starter, excellent team player.

• Ability to perform duties independently with minimal instruction given on new projects or assignments.

• Fluent in spoken and written English.

• Ability to solve problems of diverse scope and moderate to high complexity. Multiple tasks must often be performed contemporaneously, involving commitments of moderate resources, and requiring understanding of issues surrounding contracts, technology and corporate structure.

• A willingness and competence to pay attention to details in contracts and regulations is essential.

• Recognize when to seek guidance from the Director, Divisional Counsel, General Counsel, and other company personnel or external consultants.

Travel is estimated at 10-15% (as business conditions permit).