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Job Opening

Corporate Associate (Junior to Mid-Level, Boston area)

Boston area | posted

Overview

Faber Daeufer & Itrato (www.faberlawgroup.com) is a dynamic, independent law firm providing sophisticated, customized, transactional counsel for life sciences clients in the US and globally. Since its founding in 2003, we have built a premier boutique practice working with over 2,000 companies, research institutions and investors. Our firm includes 27 lawyers and 11 contracts specialists and paralegals and has primary offices in Boston, New York and the San Francisco Bay area.

Our firm is a growing and diverse team of professionals whose collective experience handling life science business transactions, in many cases leveraging prior in-house operational knowledge, is extraordinary in a law firm. We will maintain our established standards of excellence by hiring individuals with the highest professional capabilities and potential, a dedication to client service and an enthusiasm for contributing to our unique culture.

‍Hybrid Work Opportunity and Training/Mentoring Program

  • Our offices are currently open. We offer the opportunity for a regular, hybrid work schedule that would allow the hired individual to split their time between a firm office and their home office. We have a strong in-house IT team and provide equipment, furniture, smartphone and internet service, and/or other reasonable accommodations needed to be fully-functional from home.
  • While we will consider candidates who are unable to work regularly from one of our offices, we prefer candidates who are proximate to our office in the Boston area. We expect the hired individual to participate significantly in the extraordinary supervision, training and mentoring programs for newly-hired professionals and in our physical corporate recordkeeping processes. We believe those activities, together with maintaining and strengthening the firm’s culture and interpersonal relationships, benefit significantly from periodic, but regular, in-person presence.

Compensation/Benefits/Advancement

  • Faber was founded by senior lawyers and contracts specialists who sought an independent professional working environment, and a business model that optimized four key elements – financial reward, professional time commitment, working environment and culture, and intellectual challenge.
  • We provide our employees very competitive salary and bonus compensation, exceptional benefits, strong mentoring and professional development support, and work-life balance (reflected in our annual target (not minimum) for non-principal lawyers of 1,600 billable hours). We will consider candidates who seek a part-time commitment.
  • We determine title, regular billing rate, and annual salary and target bonus based on the relevant skills and experience of the individual. Generally, our associates are paid a FTE annual salary rate of $150,000-210,000 with an annual target bonus of 10%, our counsel (senior associates) are paid a FTE annual salary rate of $220,000-270,000 with an annual target bonus of 14%, and our senior counsel and of counsel (lawyers with mature skills and experience) are paid a FTE annual salary rate of $270,000-310,000 with an annual target bonus of 18%. (We do employ US-licensed lawyers who live outside the US. Salary ranges for these lawyers are generally aligned but do vary based on the firm’s strategies for managing exchange rate risk.) All lawyers are eligible to receive allocation of business origination and retention credit (BORC) for clients where the lawyer has a substantial role in originating and/or strengthening the firm’s professional relationship with the client (in collaboration with colleagues in the firm). This BORC allocation provides an additional annual bonus opportunity, subject to the firm’s determination of other performance measures.
  • We have a strong commitment to provide opportunities for learning and advancement, including carefully constructed career ladders and on-going personalized professional development planning. We provide long-term careers for lawyers who want to focus on providing professional service to clients and do not have timelines for promotion/departure. We also believe that each lawyer has the opportunity to become a principal of the firm if they demonstrate the capability and desire to cultivate client development, practice management, teaching, and leadership skills in addition to achieving the highest levels of proficiency in providing professional service to clients – since our inception more lawyers have become principals of the firm through promotion than through direct lateral hiring.

Our benefits program is exceptional, and includes:

  • PPO Medical and Dental Insurance Plans (In-Network and Out-of-Network coverage), with our firm covering 100% of family insurance premiums and deductibles for full-time employees
  • 401(k) and Profit Sharing Plan, with our firm contributing 3% (up to legal limit), and in past years contributing an additional 2% profit sharing
  • Parental Family Leave up to 12 weeks, with all 12 weeks paid
  • Life Insurance and Long-Term Disability Insurance, with our firm covering 100% of premiums
  • a generous employee referral bonus program
  • Black Civil Rights Employee Education Experience, with our firm covering costs for employees to travel with their families to visit the EJI Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, AL

Equal Opportunity Employer Pursuing Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

  • We are an equal opportunity employer, and do not discriminate against any candidate or employee on the basis of race, national origin, sex, marital status, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion or veteran status. We are committed to increasing participation by minorities and women in the legal profession and expanding the opportunities for minorities and women within the profession. We are proactive in recruiting minority and women lawyers, contracts specialists, paralegals and staff and strongly encourages the interest of these candidates in our firm.
  • We believe that we are better able to provide judgment and counsel to our clients based on the diverse experiences and perspectives of our team; we believe that we are better able to provide employees opportunities for professional growth based on our deep commitment to creating and maintaining a work environment that is welcoming, inclusive and intellectually stimulating; and we are an enthusiastic participant in community life through social engagement, philanthropy, and pro bono legal service.

Responsibilities

We have an extensive practice devoted to counseling our clients on company launch, equity incentive plans, venture financing, research foundation financing, royalty financing, and M&A transactions. We are seeking an individual to join this practice as a mid-level Associate. Responsibilities for this role include, but are not limited to:

  • providing counsel to entrepreneurs and senior management as they form and grow businesses;
  • assisting with development and negotiation of term sheets and capitalization tables for venture financings;
  • drafting definitive agreements for financing transactions, including convertible notes, SAFEs and preferred stock financings based on NVCA model documents; and
  • advising senior researchers in academia on industry consulting agreements.

Qualifications

Education: JD degree required, and admission to practice (or eligible to seek admission to practice) in Massachusetts, New York or California (and, if applicable for hybrid remote work models, in the state of residence).

Experience And Substantive Background: At least 2 years’ experience working in a corporate practice at a private law firm (with strong training/supervision), primarily concentrated in the support of venture-backed companies. Familiarity with leading venture capital firms is preferred. Understanding of intellectual property licensing practices and biotechnology business development practices is preferred.  Familiarity with biology and chemistry principles relevant to pharmaceutical design and function and with the regulatory framework for therapeutic development and approval for commercial sale, is preferred.

Essential Capabilities

The ideal candidate should have:

  • strong attention to detail;
  • mature project management skills;
  • excellent written and verbal communication skills;
  • sophisticated communication skills and the comfort and confidence to interact directly with senior management at biotech and pharmaceutical companies; and
  • ability to prioritize and manage multiple tight deadlines in a frequently high-paced environment.

We strongly value the ability to effectively teach, supervise, manage and mentor junior colleagues, and to work collaboratively with colleagues to share expertise, experience and perspectives.

Technical Skills: Advanced proficiency with Microsoft Word and Excel is critical. Facility with common technology tools is expected, including other components of Microsoft Office, PDF document usage, document comparison software, document management systems, and teleconference and videoconference tools. Familiarity with transaction management software and/or Carta, Shareworks or similar web-based equity tracking systems, is preferred.

Who we are

We are a firm of former biotech in-house counsels and business leaders, venture capital professionals and pharmaceutical contract specialists.

Working at Faber

Faber was founded by senior lawyers and contracts specialists who'd worked for Millennium Pharmaceuticals who now sought an independent professional working environment, and a business model that optimized four key elements – financial reward, professional time commitment, working environment and culture, and intellectual challenge.

We have adopted an individualized approach to return to office, with employees and supervisors working together to create employee specific hybrid work schedules, so that employees may split their time between a firm office and their home office. We have a strong in-house IT team and provide equipment, furniture, smartphone and internet service, and/or other reasonable accommodations needed to be fully-functional from home.

View our Offices

We compete for talent with the few “big firms” that have sophisticated transactional practices in the life sciences. We determine title, regular billing rate, annual salary, and target bonus for our lawyers based on the relevant skills and experience of each employee. We also provide additional bonus opportunities based on allocations of business origination and retention credit (and, in 2021, 100% of our lawyers with at least 2 years tenure at the firm qualified for additional bonus through this program). Comprehensively, we believe we provide our lawyers a pay/benefits opportunity that, when adjusted for actual billable hours, is higher than at competitor “big firms.”

We provide our employees very competitive salary and bonus compensation, exceptional benefits, strong mentoring and professional development support, and work-life balance.

We understand the value of flexible working arrangements such as reduced hours schedules, flex-time, compressed workweek schedules, and an annual billable hours target (1600 for full-time lawyers and 1440 for full-time contracts specialists) that is lower than “big firm” billable hours minimum requirements. We work with our employees to find mutually beneficial solutions to work balance needs, including part-time and flexible schedules.

We do training differently at Faber.

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