About

Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department?

My direct reports are responsible for supporting all business structures mainly in topics regarding regulatory, antitrust, IP, bids and NBD (new business development). We work very close to the nine business units, including the access and strategic affairs team, medical affairs, commercial teams, among others. The team is divided as follows: Juliana Ferrari is responsible for all public access, supporting one therapeutically area in legal matters. She is taking care of bids, patent, tech transfer agreements among other things. Gabriel Al-Cici is in charge of general legal support to two therapeutically area, including matters related to quality, medical, brand protection and clinical trials. besides he is also responsible for NBD and private access. Natalia Belliboni is in charge of general legal support to three therapeutically area including matters related to quality, medical, brand protection and clinical trials. Besides this, she is also responsible for NBD agreements focused on the TA’s above. Alexandre Cardoso is directly responsible for bids and also has been working to support NBD and tech transfer projects. On top of this he supports those three legal managers in their activities too. Elaine Alves is our administrative assistant and also is responsible for consolidating and controlling the use of our budget.

What are the most significant cases and/or transactions that your legal team has been involved with in the last two years?

In the last two years we were involved in several strategic cases and transactions. Most of them still under negotiation and are related to new partnerships with private entities. One example of this that is already public and I am able to talk on is the global acquisition in 2017 and now the finalised merger of Actelion here in Brazil (2019).

Another important case was the submission and approval of the Golimumab Tech Transfer (PDP) Executive Project by the Minister of Health. It is a partnership involving Janssen, a public and national private lab in which Janssen will be responsible for transferring the technology of this complex biological product to these two entities. Its important to remind that in 2014 we signed the first Janssen tech transfer of a complex biological product to a public entity in the world.

Finally, I’d like to share one case related to the mind-set change of legal team in the last two years. Since 2017 I’ve been working to remodel my structure in order to be closer to the business and increase the agility improving the level of service and the value added in our partnership with the business. As a result, we increased in two head counts, brought lawyers to the team with different mind-set and backgrounds in order to guarantee diversity in the way of thinking. As a result, based on the business internal research, we improved our level of service perception index in 12.5%.

What attributes are essential for an in-house legal team to possess?

I like to say that legal hard skills, business knowledge and the sector environment comprehension are the basic conditions to make a professional more complete. But to make a difference, add value and be recognised as a partner, in my point of view, the in-house lawyer must have an extreme capability to learn fast, negotiation skill, make decisions under pressure and accountability. Those skills will guarantee the attitude that an in-house lawyer needs to have.

What are the most difficult hurdles to overcome when attempting to demonstrate value added by the legal team?

In my point of view every time that legal team were involved in the projects since the beginning it was easier to build together and add value on this, being transparent and looking for alternatives to make feasible the challenge presented. But to achieve this level it is necessary to overcome some hurdles such as: lawyers’ mind-set and a proactive attitude – the lawyer must be open to new ideas, challenge situation and act as owner.

What “legal tech” products does the team utilise? What is useful about the products and how could they be improved?

My team is not using legal tech products directly but part of the legal team responsible for contracts and litigation are already using an internal tool to manage all contracts and they are developing another tool for litigation.

Is diversity and inclusion as a matter of internal policy on the agenda at your company? How much influence do you, as an in-house legal team, have on the diversity and inclusion policies of your organisation?

Absolutely. D&I is one of the priorities in Janssen. We have a robust institutional project achieving in five different areas: women leadership, race, generation, LGBT and people with special abilities. As in-house lawyers we are also doing a lot. First, I’m part of the WLI (Women’s leadership inclusion) initiative and the D&I Latin America team, working a lot in some initiatives focused on gender and unconscious bias.

Most recently in the D&I Latin America team, we started also to understand the different backgrounds and experiences of our team in order to guarantee that we are looking for the diversity and taking advantage of different skills and background. Just to give a practical example, when I was building my team two years ago, I had as an objective to guarantee diversity at least in terms of gender and different backgrounds, mixing people with strong backgrounds in the company or sector to bring some innovation and fresh air for the team.

Have any new laws, government policies, regulations or judicial decisions greatly impacted your company’s business or your legal practice?

All changes in regulatory areas, such CMED, ANVISA, ANS, antitrust and IP, potentially impact our practices. More recently I would say that the biggest impact will be LGPD law.