Viewpoint of Biotech General Counsel

Mar 5, 2026

Jonathan Graham, Amgen's Executive VP and General Counsel, brings decades of in-house and litigation experience. He discusses how litigation hones strategic legal skills. He explores intellectual property as biotech’s economic lifeblood. He examines AI’s role in discovery versus wet labs, the rise of biosimilars, and the tension between pricing controls and innovation.

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ADVICE

Use Litigation Skills To Pivot In House

Use litigation training as strong preparation for in-house general counsel roles because it builds rapid issue spotting and persuasive communication.
Jonathan Graham moved from Williams & Connolly to GE and found trial skills translated to corporate breadth and pacing.

ANECDOTE

Joining Amgen For A Patient-Driven Mission

Jonathan Graham joined Amgen to work at a mission-driven company focused on serving patients.
He described Mission Week where patients' stories visibly connect every role, from cafeteria staff to scientists, to patient impact.

INSIGHT

Lawyers Are Strategic Partners In Biopharma

In biopharma, legal teams are strategic partners because the industry is highly regulated and fast-moving.
Jonathan Graham says companies like Amgen give lawyers a seat at key tables rather than treating them as a 'department of no.'

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John is joined by Jonathan Graham, Executive Vice President and General Counsel and Secretary of Amgen, one of the world’s largest biotech companies and one of the pioneers of the industry. They discuss in-house legal leadership in major biotech companies and how science, intellectual property, and regulation shape strategy. Jonathan began his practice clerking for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, then became a litigator for a large firm. Later, his career shifted in-house. He believes that litigation training develops useful skills, including rapid issue spotting across unfamiliar domains, crisp written and oral advocacy, and an ability to understand stakeholders’ incentives.

The biotech industry is unusually purpose-driven because the output is medicine that can extend life and restore quality of life. That mission creates urgency across functions, as delays can mean patients wait longer for needed therapies. The sector is also highly regulated and fast-moving, which elevates the importance of legal teams that operate as strategic partners rather than as a “department of no.”

Intellectual property is the economic lifeblood of biological drug development. Bringing a molecule to market often costs billions of dollars and requires years of lab work, clinical trials, and manufacturing scale-up. Without enforceable patents, competitors could free ride, undermining investment incentives. This reality drives frequent, high-stakes patent disputes that can be hard to settle because exclusivity is enormously valuable.

Patent doctrines often lag behind technology, forcing courts to fit new technologies into older legal frameworks. Artificial intelligence is potentially a powerful tool for discovery and analysis of molecules, but not a substitute for wet-lab validation or human inventorship. Regulators still require clinical evidence before any medicine is approved and likely will for the foreseeable future.

Biosimilars are currently a booming market with many parallels to generic drugs. A company may participate in the market as both innovator and biosimilar supplier by leveraging its research and manufacturing capabilities. Finally, government-driven drug pricing controls may slow innovation over time, even though scientific progress and therapeutic potential remain strong.

Podcast Link: Law-disrupted.fm
Host: John B. Quinn
Producer: Alexis Hyde
Music and Editing by: Alexander Rossi