Why In-House Experience Matters
Overview
The Crowell Life Sciences team includes former biotech in-house counsel, venture capital senior managers, and pharmaceutical contract specialists. This valuable perspective and insight help to create an exceptional service experience for clients. We are able to engage effectively in developing creative and pragmatic solutions to difficult problems and help our clients achieve compelling outcomes that thoughtfully balance risks and rewards. Our in-house experience also allows us to understand what it means to live with a deal for its duration, focusing on the client’s long-term goals rather than just the immediate impact.
Providing practical and actionable advice
Timothy LaBua is a former in-house attorney at a private equity investment firm.
“We have a sensitivity to the challenges of in-house attorneys. We understand how they think about the guidance they solicit from outside counsel. They are in need of actionable advice. By leveraging our team’s in-house perspective, we are able to provide legal advice that adequately considers the risk of both action and inaction, and our clients benefit from our collective and unique experience.”
Clients' interests are top of mind
Jodi Stanfield worked for several years at the European headquarters of a global contract research organization, handling clinical trial agreements and compliance matters for pharmaceutical and medical device clients.
“We focus on structuring an agreement that aligns long-term interests with solutions to potential problems. The time that we spend as in-house counsel provides us with practical experience regarding what works and what doesn’t work for our clients in the real world.”
Stanfield explained that outside legal teams without this valuable experience and insight may not fully understand the implementation of their agreements in the real world, which can actually create future problems for the client. With a combination of calculated risks and insightful precautions, we guide our clients towards optimal outcomes, while addressing potential conflicts from the start.
We know the worry of depleted capital and the consequences of an inadequate partnership deal.
Experience living in the deal
Our team doesn’t solely focus on the immediate outcomes of a transaction. Our in-house backgrounds have provided us with the first-hand experience of living in these deals for their duration, and seeing how modest adjustments to governance provisions, financial incentives, or liability allocations can improve alignment of interests toward achieving our client’s long-term goals for the transaction. “When you work in house, you have to live with the consequences of your deal,” explained Gregory Ikonen, a partner who served as CEO of a successful chemistry platform-based biotech and agbio company in the Bay Area.
“It gives you an understanding about the practical consequences that are driving the deal. You have the experience to apply judgment about what risks should and should not be taken… what provisions to negotiate and what provisions to let go.”
Living in the deal also involves collaborating with an individual or entity that was previously on the opposite side of the table. When negotiating against someone you may end up working with, helpful resolution is essential.
“While in-house, I have been in deals where my company had good and bad leverage,” stated Mark Cooper, who previously served as VP and Assistant General Counsel for Business Transactions, Research & Development at Pfizer. “There are a lot of points where it makes sense to come up with practical resolutions. Your opponent becomes your partner. As in-house attorneys, we understand that it is sometimes in the client’s greater interest to foster collaboration going forward.”
Consideration for our clients’ finances
As former in-house counsel, our attorneys also know first-hand what’s at stake in a pending deal. Startups deal with limited budgets and the outcome of a deal can mean the difference between business success and failure, which necessitates a sense of urgency for getting the deal done.
Partner Mark Cooper, who previously served as VP and Assistant General Counsel for Pfizer, further spoke about the economic consideration gained from in-house experience.
“When in-house, you have sensitivity to the scale of things. Particularly with clients at the early stages of their businesses, service at a cost that matches value, scale, and pragmatism are important. This sensitivity can be very pronounced in early stage companies, and can impact the company’s very existence.”
Joe Faber is also a former in-house counsel, and one of the founders of Faber Daeufer & Itrato, the life sciences firm that joined forces with Crowell.
“As in-house counsel, sitting at the table for Management Team meetings or project team meetings, we do our job best when we are seen as counselors and not just lawyers with particular technical skills. That means not just supporting drafting and negotiation of a transaction but also advising clients on:
- How to prioritize and achieve their most important goals;
- How to make trade-offs to finalize transactions within timeframes often set by external forces;
- How to think holistically about maintaining leverage in a collaboration; and
- How to achieve all of this within a budget that we recognize may be redirecting critical resources away from R&D activities.”
We offer a compelling solution and approach to emerging clients. We are uniquely focused on the business of the life sciences community, delivering experience within a value-driven construct, and distinguished by the experience of nearly all of our senior lawyers and contracts specialists who previously worked in-house for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.
