In June 2017, Maria João Maia assumed her current position as legal manager at the Portuguese arm of multinational pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, where she is accountable for a complete range of legal practice areas. When Maia joined the company she reveals she wanted to be part of the business and work as a business partner for all the departments and key functions: ‘I wanted to be part of the solution since the beginning and not a person that only shows up when something goes wrong’.

Since then she has decided to take accountability for the legal assistance on HR issues, lead the day-to-day legal advice preparations of opinions, employment contracts, pre-enquiry procedures, disciplinary proceedings, dismissals for redundancy, collective dismissals, coordination of legislative requirements with human resources departments, negotiation with workers, unions and clients in a range of disputes, resolution of employment disputes in court, and professional training in employment law issues. She took this large amount of responsibility on because she wanted to put her expertise in employment law to practice, in order to help the company remain compliant. ‘Being involved in the business, and working as a business partner, I could anticipate problems, so I implemented procedures that avoid legal risks, ensuring the company is compliant and bringing lots of savings, because we stopped paying external lawyers for these matters and avoided legal risks that also affect the company’s reputation’, adds Maia.

She has worked on a set of medicine arbitration proceedings, defending intellectual property rights on a significant IP international litigation of a medicine that represented the major part of the company turnover. Maia previously served as legal counsel on a secondment position at Samsung Electronica Portuguesa with a focus on employment law and compliance. She was also the legal advisor on a secondment role, covering employment law, pharmaceutical law and compliance at the National Association of Pharmacies.