Key team members: David Lawless – head of legal, compliance and privacy; Martyna Brulinska –  senior associate legal counsel; and Sara Luccato – privacy associate and claims coordinator

What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

As the owner of one of the country’s largest pharmacy chains, and the leading provider of drug distribution services to global pharma, biopharma and life sciences companies in Ireland, challenges that arose during and after the pandemic created opportunities for the legal group to support commercial operations. 998

Consequently, the legal team was involved in major transactions, such as contract negotiations for vaccine distribution and storage. Additionally, we negotiated important supply-chain agreements to distribute critical medicines to hospitals, pharmacies, and the healthcare sector in general.

A significant moment from our perspective was the opportunity to negotiate the company’s role in the National Vaccine Program. This has been a source of enormous pride to our company and the legal team, who remained committed to establishing these agreements and removing barriers to getting the critical supply of medicines up and running immediately. We are proud to have played our part in a bigger picture.

What has been the number one challenge that has impacted you over the past year?

Like many departments in many companies, we sought to constructively manage the return to the office. We hired during the pandemic and saw that carefully considering workflows and agenda-setting can bring a team remarkably close- even while working remotely. We were also aware of the enormous benefit of meeting and socialising with colleagues in person.

Consequently, we considered hybrid-working methods that maximised colleague’s presence in the office. This included activities like lunch with members of the board, and dedicated strategy days. We are still determining what works best in terms of accommodating hybrid working – but having a superb team, where everyone is always interested, enthusiastic and keen to contribute – makes the process easier.

Has the increasing consciousness of climate change and sustainability affected your company and the team’s priorities, and if so, how?

Industry standards increasingly encompass solid commitments from partners responding to RFI’s and RFP’s relating to climate change and sustainability efforts. Therefore, the legal team is often required to work with internal stakeholders to continually assess our sustainability efforts.

As an in-house legal team, we must be able to explain legal and regulatory requirements. Therefore, while climate change and sustainability did not traditionally form part of a legal team’s day-to-day functions, it has become an increasingly regular feature in client and supplier interactions. Consequently, we need to view climate change and sustainability efforts as a strategic factor in business operations.