General Counsel

The Arc Institute is a new scientific institution that conducts curiosity-driven basic science and technology development to understand and treat complex human diseases. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Arc is an independent research organization founded on the belief that many important research programs will be enabled by new institutional models. Arc operates in partnership with Stanford University, UCSF, and UC Berkeley.

While the prevailing university research model has yielded many tremendous successes, we believe in the importance of institutional experimentation as a way to make progress. These include:

Funding: Arc will fully fund Core Investigator’s (PI’s) research groups, liberating scientists from the typical constraints of project-based external grants.

Technology: Biomedical research has become increasingly dependent on complex tooling. Arc Technology Centers develop, optimize and deploy rapidly advancing experimental and computational technologies in collaboration with Core Investigators.

Support: Arc aims to provide first-class support—operationally, financially and scientifically—that will enable scientists to pursue long-term high risk, high reward research that can meaningfully advance progress in disease cures, including neurodegeneration, cancer, and immune dysfunction.

Culture: We believe that culture matters enormously in science and that excellence is difficult to sustain. We aim to create a culture that is focused on scientific curiosity, a deep commitment to truth, broad ambition, and selfless collaboration.

With $650M in committed funding, the vision in the first 2-3 years is to grow to a team of roughly 150 team members, with plans for further significant growth over the decade ahead.

About the position

Our team is growing quickly and we’re looking for a strong partner to direct the corporate governance, business development (including agreements and maintaining close relationships with external partners, such as university collaborators, industry, clinical trials providers, etc.), IP/licensing, legal (including investigations and any disputes), policy and compliance (e.g., employment, research, privacy, exempt organization, etc.) activities at Arc Institute. You’ll also oversee our relationships with Stanford, the University of California at Berkeley, and University of California at San Francisco, and any institutions that become part of the multi-institutional collaboration that Arc is part of. A successful General Counsel will be highly collaborative and proactive, with a positive and creative approach and a passion for changing the way science is done.

In this position you will

Direct all legal advisory and execution, delegating to in-house team or outside counsel as warranted, including corporate governance, business development, IP/licensing, legal (including investigations and disputes), policy-making and compliance, and as further described above

Serve as a legal advisor on a broad range of topics including life sciences contracting, risk mitigation, privacy and data management

Work closely with business colleagues to support transactions and provide related legal guidance

Manage, structure, draft, review, negotiate and close contracts and transactions.

Provide legal and strategic support across the institute

Assist with other related transactional services as required to meet the strategic and operational objectives of the company

Analyze legal risks and opportunities to Arc in light of evolving competitive environments

Build and manage the legal function at Arc

Maintain open lines of communication with family office GCs of donors and other donor representatives

Down the road, we envision setting up a fund to invest in spinout licensees, which would require oversight of outside counsel for the structuring and formation, then going forwards oversight of same; and potentially also a degree-granting program

Requirements

15+ years of academic / healthcare / life sciences in-house and/or reputable law firm experience with expertise in healthcare regulatory, general corporate, nonprofit, transactional, research and development, intellectual property, employment, general commercial, and compliance issues.

Comprehensive commercial contract drafting and negotiation skills and experience transacting with pharmaceutical and biotech companies.

Strong ability to quickly build productive relationships with external legal counterparts

Substantive experience across biotechnology and technology licensing, data use, and clinical trial agreements.

Flexibility and willingness to work on a broad variety of legal matters.

Strong strategic thinking and planning ability

Be comfortable in an extremely fast-paced environment under tight timelines and successfully multitask and manage several projects simultaneously.

Ability to stay nimble while staying compliant in a heavily regulated environment.

Excellent clear verbal and written communication skills.

Juris Doctorate and Member of the CA state bar.

At a minimum, occasional travel to the Institute’s main campus in Palo Alto, CA will be expected.