About

When Robert Sexton, vice president and general counsel joined in 2005 the team had four lawyers in the Swiss headquarters. Known as the “International Legal Group” or “ILG”, the team now consists of over 30 lawyers and includes several paralegals and non-lawyer support staff encompassing multiple geographies. The team is based in Zug, Switzerland and covers virtually all of the 80 countries outside the US in which Amgen conducts business. Sexton says, ‘We have a critical mass of lawyers in Switzerland, and lawyers in 14 other countries throughout Europe, the Middle East, Turkey and North and South America.  All of our lawyers work on a matrixed basis, they each have individual expertise in certain areas of the law but they also have geographic responsibilities. We try to work as one integrated group across all geographies’. The majority of lawyers located outside of Switzerland sit on their local country management committees and have real-time input into commercial and strategic decisions at the local affiliate level. ‘In this capacity’, says Sexton, ‘the members of my team have a seat at the table and have input into commercial and strategic decisions affecting Amgen’s business, as they are being made’.The team sees investing in its members as a fundamental value and has offered solicitor training contracts for aspiring junior staff to qualify as English solicitors in conjunction with top London-based firms as part of a trainee exchange program.  The Amgen team is the only in-house legal department to offer such a program.