Experienced lawyers for complex tasks in a broad area from administrative law to pharmaceutical legislation

Do you want to work with law, where the answer is rarely found in a guidance, and where decisions matter for whether companies may manufacture medicines, and for whether the medicines can reach the patients? Then we currently have three vacant positions that are right up your alley! We are seeking three experienced lawyers for the Section for Law & Legal Security: a legal officer and two specialist/chief consultants, who will be part of an organization that creates value for citizens and businesses in the field of medicines.

What you will be working with

Your tasks will span from administrative law to medicine legislation. The section's total portfolio is so broad that you cannot cover it all. Your experience and the needs of the individual teams will determine which legal areas you start with. For example, you may work on drafting bills in close cooperation with the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs, just as you may be responsible for drafting regulations and legal notes.

You will also be required to advise on medicine legislation and contribute to answering questions from the Parliament's Health Committee. Control and supervision of companies within the pharmaceutical industry is a major part of the section. Here you will assess, together with our professionals, how deviations from the law are best handled, for example through injunctions or reports to the police, with cooperation with the public prosecutor’s office.

Security of supply and emergency preparedness also feature, including mandatory stockpiles, supply difficulties, product defects and medicine readiness. The area is rapidly evolving, among other things with the implementation of the Critical Entities Resilience (CER) Directive, and the legal basis often has to be mapped from scratch and secured in a short time.

Other important agendas in the section include work on medicine subsidies, such as decisions on subsidies for opioids and medicines for the treatment of diabetes, including participation in meetings of the Medicines Subsidy Council, and the implementation of the Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Regulation. We also handle a large number of cross-cutting tasks, including collaboration with other agencies, regions and interest organizations.

A meaningful part of something

You will become part of the Section for Law & Legal Security, where we are a total of 20 lawyers and four students spread across three teams. We solve our tasks in close cooperation with our health professionals, who are distributed across the professional units. The two teams with vacancies at the moment are Medicines Supply & Administrative Law and Subsidies & Pharmacists.

The Medicines Supply & Administrative Law team consists of a team leader, seven lawyers and four students. The team handles particularly complex legal tasks with a focus on patient safety and the quality of medicines. This is where control and supervision, as well as supply and emergency preparedness, are located, and the team also handles rules on controlled substances, the agency's law program, special rules for impartiality and workers’ compensation cases.

The Subsidies & Pharmacists team consists of a team leader who is also the section head, and six lawyers. The team provides legal assistance on subsidies for medicines, regulation of confidential prices and HTA. In the area of pharmacies there may be a need for legal sparring when designating new pharmacists, organizing the pharmacy structure and controlling the pharmacy sector.

The legal tasks in the section often have threads across many regulatory frameworks, with a solid anchor in general and special administrative law. When problems land on our desks, it is because they are quite complex—and that is what makes the tasks both exciting and challenging.

No one handles everything, and no one works alone on a difficult case. We distribute portfolios so that they hang together technically, adjust them along the way, and discuss the difficult questions with each other.

We care about helping each other – also across the section. You will therefore also be able to take on tasks in the other teams, regardless of which team you join.

What we offer

The good collegial atmosphere is at the forefront of our priorities, where we allocate time for sparring on tasks. In the teams we hold weekly meetings, where professional and legal issues are discussed.

No one walks in with the medicine area fully sorted, but you will learn that with us. On the other hand, the legal craft must be in your backbone.

You will quickly take responsibility for your own cases, but you will have colleagues who have time to discuss them with you. Once you are professionally settled, the idea is that you build your own field, where you set the direction and are the go-to person for the unit.

We have many tasks, and we are busy. But your portfolio should fit within a normal workweek, and you will receive help with prioritization. When you are well established, there is the possibility to work from home one to two days a week, and we offer flexitime for legal officers and specialist consultants, as well as the option to arrange paid time off for chief consultants.

We have breakfast together in the section on Thursdays. We have an active staff association that regularly organizes a wide range of activities, and an art association that arranges ongoing exhibitions. We have board game afternoons, a good canteen, and training facilities with the possibility of a shower.

Your experience and personal qualifications

• You have a Master of Law (cand.jur.) or a Master of Mercantile Jurisprudence (cand.merc.jur.) and have several years of experience as a lawyer, preferably from the central administration.
• You have in-depth knowledge of administrative law and experience with complex administrative-law problems.
• You have experience with legal case handling and with making professional judgments that must be qualified together with other professional groups.
• You must thrive with a varied and sometimes busy everyday life, and be able to keep an overview of your cases and speak up in time if there are too many.
• You have experience writing legal notes and perhaps have tried your hand at regulations or bills.
• You can convey law briefly and clearly to non-lawyers, both in writing and orally. We write to individuals, companies and the ministry.
• For the consultant positions, we also expect that you can independently drive the heaviest cases and be a steady sparring partner for the professional units.
• It is an advantage if you have worked with EU regulation, preferably in the medicines area, and if you can handle English in writing and speaking.

How to apply

Are you interested? Then send your CV, application and diploma.

Feel free to contact us

If you want to hear more about the positions, you are welcome to call the Acting Section Head Michelle Aagaard at 2153 7009 or Specialist Consultant Sabina Lysdahl Søgaard at 2330 5627.

About the appointment

You will be employed, depending on your qualifications, as either a legal officer, specialist consultant or chief consultant in accordance with the applicable agreement between the Ministry of Finance and the Danish Association of Researchers, which means 17.1% pension, flexitime arrangement and much more. You will be employed for 37 hours.

In the Danish Medicines Agency we make decisions in administrative matters, and it is important to us that our impartiality cannot be questioned. Therefore it is a condition that you do not own shares, equity interests or similar in a medicines and/or pharma company. However, you have a grace period to sell them if you currently own so-called employee stock options in a medicines and/or pharma company.

We expect to conduct the first interviews in weeks 43-44.

Application deadline: October 18