Key team members: Rory Sullivan, legal lead; and Muireann Mangan, legal director

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

Over the last year we have continued to provide commercially-focused and varied advice to a broad range of Pfizer clients in Ireland including those in R&D, manufacturing, sales, and finance.

Pfizer’s key purpose is to make breakthroughs that change patients’ lives. Throughout the pandemic, we saw the importance of operating efficiently across multiple jurisdictions and have further moved to enhance cross-jurisdictional cooperation across our legal division. Meeting demand and distributing medicines to the right place at the right time while anticipating future need has become more critical than ever. Our colleagues have worked across time zones, jurisdictions, and competing priorities to ensure that demand was met.

As a small team, where efficient resource use continues to be a priority, we have moved standard day-to-day legal support towards a Principal Based Advice approach. We have developed a local Pfizer Ireland legal intranet site to enable easy access to legal resources, training materials, and frequently asked questions. It is now the first port of call for the business’ day-to-day legal queries, further increasing efficiency, empowering business colleagues, and freeing up the team to focus on strategically important matters.

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

The company has a huge focus on innovation in lots of different areas and this requires in-house lawyers to adapt to change and adopt new sets of skills, legal knowledge, and expertise to continue to add value to the business.

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

Absolutely. Pfizer is very committed to making a significant impact in this area and last year announced its intent to adopt the voluntary net-zero standard, launched in the lead-up to the 2021 UN Climate Change conference. This standard commits long-term action to reduce company emissions by 95% and value chain emissions by 90%. Pfizer aims to achieve net zero by 2040, ten years earlier than the expectations set by this standard. As a science-guided organisation, Pfizer takes a proactive approach to its environmental initiatives. Over the past 20 years, Pfizer has already taken significant voluntary steps to reduce its environmental impact, reducing greenhouse gas emissions from operations by more than 60%. Innovation and best practice sharing are key to achieving this goal and Pfizer is also urging its suppliers to make a commitment to integrate ambitious climate impact reduction targets into their management processes.