Associate Counsel, Life Sciences

Overview

This role supports the organization’s U.S. legal contracting function, providing practical, business-focused legal guidance for life sciences and technology agreements. Responsibilities include drafting, reviewing, and negotiating a broad portfolio of contracts while helping enable a disciplined, scalable contracting process through clear templates, playbooks, and escalation standards.

Responsibilities

• Draft, review, and negotiate master services agreements; commercial and service agreements; SaaS and software license agreements; data privacy agreements and DPAs; vendor and consulting agreements; reseller agreements; development/developer agreements; and related amendments, escalating novel or high-risk issues as appropriate.
• Manage assigned matters from intake through signature, maintaining clear status, required approvals, and organized matter records.
• Apply legal playbooks, templates, approval thresholds, and fallback positions consistently; identify recurring issues that should be addressed through updated guidance, templates, or process improvements.
• Advise business stakeholders in plain language and collaborate closely with Sales, Finance, Privacy, Security, Procurement, and Commercial Operations.
• Review revisions that introduce legal or complex commercial terms (including revisions to evaluation agreements) and route matters for senior escalation when needed.
• Support Legal ownership of order form and task order templates, including quality checks and controlled self-service.
• Respect the operating boundary: Commercial Operations populates and executes order forms and task orders, while Legal owns the framework, legal terms, templates, and escalations.
• Contribute to knowledge management, training, metrics, template maintenance, playbook updates, and coordination with alternative legal talent/provider resources.
• Balance contract velocity and risk using sound judgment, strong organization, and responsive stakeholder communication.

Requirements

• Juris Doctor (or equivalent law degree) and active membership in good standing in at least one U.S. jurisdiction.
• Approximately 1–3 years of relevant commercial transactions experience at a law firm, in-house legal department, or comparable environment.
• Strong foundational drafting and negotiation skills, particularly for MSAs, services agreements, SaaS/software licenses, SOW-related frameworks, and privacy/data-processing terms.
• Sound judgment on when to resolve issues independently versus when to escalate.
• Strong organization, attention to detail, responsiveness, and comfort managing multiple matters and deadlines.
• Interest in contract playbooks, template maintenance, knowledge management, and process improvement.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with life sciences, pharmaceutical, biotech, health technology, software, data, or professional-services transactions.
• Working familiarity with privacy and regulated-data issues; exposure to HIPAA and GDPR is preferred.

How Success Will Be Measured

• Assigned agreements progress promptly and accurately in line with Legal playbooks and approval requirements.
• Escalations are timely and well framed, with clear facts, options, and recommended paths.
• Matter status, approvals, key dates, and supporting records remain accurate and complete.
• Templates and repeatable guidance are applied consistently, and recurring issues are surfaced for improvement.
• Business partners receive practical, clear, and responsive support.

Compensation & Benefits

Not specified in the provided job description.

Location

U.S. legal contracting function (no specific city/state provided in the job description).