About

After 10 years in private practice with A&L Goodbody, Diarmaid Cunningham left the firm in 2009 to join ICON as general counsel. In 2009 the ICON legal function was not fully centralised, with some lawyers reporting into the corporate division, but a higher number reporting directly into ICON’s business units under a dotted line structure with corporate legal. That changed in 2011 when the legal department went fully centralised. Cunningham identifies that this ‘helped to improve legal service and output, as there was greater consistency and control across the legal group once we were all part of the same reporting structure. I feel that solid reporting lines are more effective in legal functions than dotted reporting lines as dotted lines have less clarity’. In 2016, Cunningham’s role expanded and he added chief administrative officer to his general counsel position, which is something other US listed companies do with the general counsel position This expansion entails the responsibility of ICON’s client contracts, quality assurance, procurement and facilities groups as well as the legal group. Regarding this change, Cunningham adds that, ‘the reason I was able to take on this broader role is that the members of the ICON legal team had been delivering and continue to deliver to very high standards, and have been taking on additional responsibility which freed me up to get involved in non-legal areas’. The team’s main hub is in Dublin with 30 members of the legal team based there, as well as people in Spain, Chile, the US, France, Holland, Hungary, India and China. As ICON continues to grow and enter into new markets, provide new services and make more acquisitions, the legal team continues to partner well and proactively with internal clients and understand and address the evolving legal landscape. After centralising all of ICON legal, a senior member of the legal team was appointed as general counsel to each business unit. This meant each business unit had a dedicated and high performing lawyer and his or her team working for it as a key part of its senior team. Cunningham identifies that ‘having these key senior high performing lawyers “in the tent” with each business unit allowed legal to be a strong partner and enabler for that business unit as well helping our lawyers better understand the business unit and its opportunities and challenges’. In terms of transactions one that has stood out was ICON’s acquisition of PMG. PMG is an integrated network of patient research sites in the US. Cunningham identifies that ‘having PMG as part of ICON enables it to leverage PMG’s network to help our customers enhance clinical trial feasibility and improve patient enrolment timelines. This means we can get patients onto clinical trials quicker and help take cost and time out of the drug development process. In addition, this helps our mission of getting patients the treatment that they need as efficiently as possible’.