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Would not having a science undergraduate degree limit in house job opportunities or being able to get work on Life Science deals?

None of the IB, big law or in-house folks I know in that field know anything about science aside from what was required as part of the core curriculum in college.

I am a senior corporate associate who specifically works on life science deals (collaborations and M&A). We usually tell people it’s a bonus but not a requirement, and if you look at the partners at Covington, Ropes, Cooley, etc very few have that sort of technical background. Deals in this space have their own quirks and it is difficult enough finding associates who can do them without the additional and probably unneeded requirement of a B.S. in biochemistry (for example).

Anonymous User wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 23, 2021 12:13 pm

I am a senior corporate associate who specifically works on life science deals (collaborations and M&A). We usually tell people it’s a bonus but not a requirement, and if you look at the partners at Covington, Ropes, Cooley, etc very few have that sort of technical background. Deals in this space have their own quirks and it is difficult enough finding associates who can do them without the additional and probably unneeded requirement of a B.S. in biochemistry (for example).

Can you elaborate on the "quirks and difficulties" in this area? Like regulatory issues?

It being a highly regulated industry adds to the complexity, but the deals are also very technical. I don’t have time to get into all the specifics, but you may just want to look up some publicly filed deals. Your best bet are the smaller publicly traded biotechs like Neurocrine, Voyager, Repare or Denali. Even a $3B deal won’t be material for a big pharma, but the big pharma-biotech deals will get filed by the biotechs (with lots of redactions).

Are you a law student?

I’ve worked on a number of life sciences deals with no science background. It helps to be willing to do some reading on your own when you first start out about some of the more technical aspects on the deals but you don’t need a science background.

Anonymous User wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 23, 2021 4:49 pm

It being a highly regulated industry adds to the complexity, but the deals are also very technical. I don’t have time to get into all the specifics, but you may just want to look up some publicly filed deals. Your best bet are the smaller publicly traded biotechs like Neurocrine, Voyager, Repare or Denali. Even a $3B deal won’t be material for a big pharma, but the big pharma-biotech deals will get filed by the biotechs (with lots of redactions).

Are you a law student?

I am a law student and will join a life science practice in the fall. Really appreciate the information you provided!

No one cares for deals. Only for patent prosecution and portfolio management and to a lesser extent lit (and for patent work a PhD is standard for life sciences)

I do life science corporate work, first at a firm and now in-house. I was a liberal arts major who got out of science requirements in undergrad by taking rocks for jocks type courses. Generally agree that if you want to do standard corporate work (VC, M&A, capital market, etc.) for life science companies, which is what I do/did, no science background needed whatsoever. Maybe it would be nice to have, but you can pick up whatever you need to know just by being in the space.

If you do licensing/collaboration work, it's not truly necessary, I know people who made good careers here without a real science background, but for that it's helpful since this kind of work gets more into the weeds of the science. Just be willing to learn enough on your own to understand what's going on.

Patent work, obviously, requires strong background in the relevant field. Can't speak to lit at all.

Anonymous User wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 23, 2021 9:51 pm

I do life science corporate work, first at a firm and now in-house. I was a liberal arts major who got out of science requirements in undergrad by taking rocks for jocks type courses. Generally agree that if you want to do standard corporate work (VC, M&A, capital market, etc.) for life science companies, which is what I do/did, no science background needed whatsoever. Maybe it would be nice to have, but you can pick up whatever you need to know just by being in the space.

If you do licensing/collaboration work, it's not truly necessary, I know people who made good careers here without a real science background, but for that it's helpful since this kind of work gets more into the weeds of the science. Just be willing to learn enough on your own to understand what's going on.

Patent work, obviously, requires strong background in the relevant field. Can't speak to lit at all.

Agreed with the above although I wish I had a science background so I wouldn’t misspell so many damn words during business section drafting sessions.

Anonymous User wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 23, 2021 9:51 pm

I do life science corporate work, first at a firm and now in-house. I was a liberal arts major who got out of science requirements in undergrad by taking rocks for jocks type courses. Generally agree that if you want to do standard corporate work (VC, M&A, capital market, etc.) for life science companies, which is what I do/did, no science background needed whatsoever. Maybe it would be nice to have, but you can pick up whatever you need to know just by being in the space.

If you do licensing/collaboration work, it's not truly necessary, I know people who made good careers here without a real science background, but for that it's helpful since this kind of work gets more into the weeds of the science. Just be willing to learn enough on your own to understand what's going on.

Patent work, obviously, requires strong background in the relevant field. Can't speak to lit at all.

How does life sciences/biotech in house exits compare to other industries wrt pay and QoL? Is it known to be a high paying or progressive (wfh friendly) space?

lawlo wrote: ↑

Thu Jun 24, 2021 1:20 am

Anonymous User wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 23, 2021 9:51 pm

I do life science corporate work, first at a firm and now in-house. I was a liberal arts major who got out of science requirements in undergrad by taking rocks for jocks type courses. Generally agree that if you want to do standard corporate work (VC, M&A, capital market, etc.) for life science companies, which is what I do/did, no science background needed whatsoever. Maybe it would be nice to have, but you can pick up whatever you need to know just by being in the space.

If you do licensing/collaboration work, it's not truly necessary, I know people who made good careers here without a real science background, but for that it's helpful since this kind of work gets more into the weeds of the science. Just be willing to learn enough on your own to understand what's going on.

Patent work, obviously, requires strong background in the relevant field. Can't speak to lit at all.

How does life sciences/biotech in house exits compare to other industries wrt pay and QoL? Is it known to be a high paying or progressive (wfh friendly) space?

Not the anon you're quoting, but it's not a monolith, especially nowadays. Pfizer, 23andme, small therapeutics startup, and even FitBit all arguably fall under life sci/biotech, but as you can imagine they are not necessarily similar.

Anonymous User wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 23, 2021 12:13 pm

I am a senior corporate associate who specifically works on life science deals (collaborations and M&A). We usually tell people it’s a bonus but not a requirement, and if you look at the partners at Covington, Ropes, Cooley, etc very few have that sort of technical background. Deals in this space have their own quirks and it is difficult enough finding associates who can do them without the additional and probably unneeded requirement of a B.S. in biochemistry (for example).

Anon because I do primarily licensing work at one of the firms mentioned above and have a strong technical background - everyone here is completely correct, no science background needed. I’d add too that all of the firms that do this kind of work have at least a few people with strong science backgrounds that can answer one-off questions when things get complicated (sample size of one, but I’m always happy to do that) and for truly complicated patent licenses or something they’ll just staff those people.

lawlo wrote: ↑

Thu Jun 24, 2021 1:20 am

Anonymous User wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 23, 2021 9:51 pm

I do life science corporate work, first at a firm and now in-house. I was a liberal arts major who got out of science requirements in undergrad by taking rocks for jocks type courses. Generally agree that if you want to do standard corporate work (VC, M&A, capital market, etc.) for life science companies, which is what I do/did, no science background needed whatsoever. Maybe it would be nice to have, but you can pick up whatever you need to know just by being in the space.

If you do licensing/collaboration work, it's not truly necessary, I know people who made good careers here without a real science background, but for that it's helpful since this kind of work gets more into the weeds of the science. Just be willing to learn enough on your own to understand what's going on.

Patent work, obviously, requires strong background in the relevant field. Can't speak to lit at all.

How does life sciences/biotech in house exits compare to other industries wrt pay and QoL? Is it known to be a high paying or progressive (wfh friendly) space?

I can only comment on my situation and what I saw when doing in-house interviews a few years ago, but for the start-up/biotechs I was mainly looking at, pay for a midlevel seemed to be around ~$180K base, give or take, bonus in the 15-25% range, equity that was hard to value since it was a private company, decent work hours (9-5ish if nothing too pressing was going on, but expected to work more if there was a big deal or during an IPO or something), good/cheap insurance. Work from home was not a big thing pre-Covid but I was able to work remote when needed without issue, and now I think it's going to be pretty easy to work remote for substantial periods since it worked pretty well with no one in the office for over a year, at least at my company.

One thing that I like about the industry is you're generally dealing with professionals that have PhDs or the like, rather than some annoying startup bros like you have to deal with in the tech sector. That, and it does feel better to know I'm working somewhere that has a goal of helping people with a disease or condition, not just helping the financial engineering for some PE deal or a parasitic iphone app. Sure, I'm the least important person there in terms of developing a new drug, and that drug might never actually get approved, and even if it does that drug will probably be priced sky high to maximize how much the company can syphon from insurers and the healthcare system generally until it goes generic, but it's still nice hearing about how we're at least theoretically trying to improve people's lives.