About

The Amgen legal team is a highly experienced department, with the average lawyer in the team possessing between 10 and twenty years of professional experience. The team, known as the International Legal Group (ILG), is fully equipped to support the world’s largest biotechnology company. The ILG consists of over 30 lawyers and almost 10 non-lawyer support staff and is located throughout the world. It is based in Rotkruez, and covers virtually all of the countries outside the US where Amgen has business. A critical mass of the ILG lawyers are located in Switzerland, with the others dispersed in 19 other countries throughout Europe, the Middle East, Turkey and North and South America. The lawyers generally work on a matrixed basis, each having individual expertise in certain areas of the law and also geographic responsibilities. Vice president and general counsel, international, Robert Sexton, particularly emphasises the team’s collegial and business-savvy qualities and the manner in which they promote, facilitate and advance Amgen’s business objectives and goals in a compliant and cohesive way. ‘The team members all very generously share their time and knowledge with one another. I seek to strongly encourage this behaviour and my team members are evaluated on it in their annual reviews. To deal with the challenges of managing a geographically dispersed team, we have established regular “country counsel meetings” and other periodic peer-to-peer information sharing sessions as best practice’, says Sexton. The ILG has dedicated substantial resources over the past two years to supporting the commercial launches of a number of important innovative biologic drugs, most notably Repatha, a novel molecule targeted at lowering LDL cholesterol. ‘Everything we do at Amgen is focused, at the end of the day, on the patient. So, our lawyers are not only client-centric but also, just as importantly, patient-centric’, Sexton adds. In addition to their involvement in several acquisitions, the ILG has provided strong and effective support to Amgen’s extensive clinical development programme in order to obtain approval for Amgen’s pipeline products. Another testament to the ILG’s management is its low turnover of staff. ‘In fact, the ILG has become the institutional memory of the company on a number of important matters because of the much higher turnover in other functions. I would suggest that this relative stability of the ILG is the result of a clearly defined team and work structure, a pleasant, collaborative and collegial team spirit and overall high morale’, says Sexton.