About

Janssen-Cilag Pharmaceutical is a subsidiary of the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical company, founded in the early 1990s after a merger between Janssen Pharmaceutical and Cilag. Led by legal director Felipe Alves, the Brazil based legal team at Janssen-Cilag is made up of three lawyers and one assistant with a direct report to Alves and a separate team comprising of five lawyers and one assistant as an indirect report. Alves recognises and stresses the prominence of each team member within a function that boasts a work force with a variety of talents: ‘I´d like to reinforce the importance of the indirect reports (lawyers) especially the litigation, contracts and tax team that are crucial to making our strategies and legal team work so well’. Some of the most important changes to the legal team in the last two years have included the change of mind-set within the team to become more business orientated, being closer to the business strategic areas, adding value in robust projects with ‘collaboration, accountability and sense of urgency’ and knowing more about the business strategy in order to provide better legal and business solutions. In being so closely integrated into the business the legal team’s mantra has been to act as “one team and one strategy”. Alves says: ‘Our purpose is to provide patients with the best products to treat their disease, giving them the opportunity to have long, healthier and happier lives. We are part of the same team. And to reach this result it is necessary to always challenge the status quo, looking for alternatives but always in an ethical and compliant way, being collaborative, accountable and focused on execution’. In order to strengthen this relationship the team has implemented a new structure model in order to guarantee the best support for the seven business units and the strategic affairs and access areas, working in multidisciplinary teams to guarantee the best legal approach. Additionally, the team utilises PMO Skills and tools, in order to guarantee the execution of the initiatives totally align with business requests. The most significant and large scale case the team has worked on in the recent past is a technology transfer agreement of a highly important medicine to the Brazilian government, during which Alves says the legal team was ‘an important player who helped to make the transaction feasible’.