About the firm
The Firm Origin Story
Too much work, not enough bandwidth, and no outside support that truly understood what it meant to be inside a life sciences company under pressure. I wasn’t looking for a temp who was in between jobs or a lawyer who didn’t really understand what it was like to be on the inside. I was looking for a partner who could integrate, think, and deliver at the level the work required.
I founded Lapis Legal in part because that support didn’t exist the way I needed it to. Every service we offer traces back to that experience, to knowing firsthand what it feels like to be on your side of the table.
After 20+ years in practice, with nearly 15 years of that in senior and executive in-house roles at GlaxoSmithKline and Jazz Pharmaceuticals, I’ve seen what great legal partnership looks like from the inside. I’ve also seen what happens when legal becomes a bottleneck instead of a resource, when teams are afraid to ask the hard questions, and when launches stall because no one built the right foundation early enough.
Lapis Legal exists to change that.
Meredith LeConey
Founder & Managing Partner | Licensed in NJ & PA
20+ Years
Legal Experience
~15 Years
Senior and Executive In-House Roles at
GSK and Jazz Pharmaceuticals
12+
Product & Indication Launches
BigLaw Trained
as a Commercial Litigator
The Experience
Over 20 years in legal practice and almost 15 years as in-house counsel in pharma sounds like a credential. What it actually means is this:
I have been there when the company received a CRL on a bet-the-company asset. I’ve negotiated with FDA on label language. I’ve sat in the room when someone wanted to push a claim that didn’t have data to support it. I’ve been the person who had to say “not that way and here’s why,” and then find a way to get them to yes compliantly. I’ve worked with my clients to navigate huge swings in the legal and regulatory landscape that changed the way they do business. I’ve built and led commercial and global R&D legal functions from scratch, led legal teams, and supported more than a dozen product and indication launches across therapeutic areas ranging from respiratory to oncology to rare disease.
At GlaxoSmithKline, I advised global teams across the full product lifecycle, from drug development through commercialization, FDA advertising and promotion, healthcare fraud and abuse, compliance, contracting, and investigations. At Jazz Pharmaceuticals, I was appointed to build and lead the company’s first North America Commercial Legal function, and later its first Global R&D Legal function, partnering directly with executive leadership during periods of significant growth spanning R&D, clinical trials, tech ops, commercialization, pharmacovigilance and drug safety, REMS, collaboration, licensing, and asset sales.
I know what compliance looks like. I know what risk looks like, too. I know the business needs to move as quickly as possible and that most decisions ultimately belong to the business. My job is to make sure they’re made with a clear understanding of the risk and a full appreciation for how various risks that span across business areas fit together.
That’s not something you learn from reading case law or OIG Advisory Opinions. It’s something you learn from being in it and a leader in it for twenty years.
My Approach
There’s a version of legal counsel that makes people nervous to ask questions. There’s a version that’s unapproachable for any myriad number of reasons. Those versions slow things down, add complexity, and leave teams feeling like they need to run everything through a filter before they can have a real conversation (or maybe even not at all).
I lead with curiosity. I listen before I advise. I ask about the business objective before I assess the legal risk, because the right recommendation depends entirely on understanding what the business is actually trying to accomplish. My job is not to find reasons to say no. It’s to find the best path to yes whenever possible.
Clients tell me they feel comfortable bringing me the hard questions. The ones they’re not sure they should be asking, the ones with no obvious answer, the ones that have kept them up at night. That’s exactly where I want to be. Because in a regulated environment, the questions that don’t get asked are the ones that become problems.
And when the situation is urgent—when the launch is live, when the investigation just opened, when something breaks at the worst possible moment—I’m the person in the room with the lowest heartbeat. Not because the stakes aren’t real. Because I’ve been here before, and I know how to find the path forward.
The Firm
Lapis Legal is a boutique firm.
Engagements are led or supervised by me. That’s intentional. What you’re hiring is my judgment, my relationships, and my experience. But behind that is a bench of experienced attorneys and support professionals who extend the firm’s capacity across matters, practices, and client needs.
Engagements are structured as hourly, flat-fee project, or subscription, depending on scope and fit. We’ll figure out what makes sense together.
Beyond the Work
I originally left litigation because it often felt like I was just chasing money at the end of the day. That work was important and mattered, of course, but not in the way I needed the work to matter. “Impact” is my life word. I’ve kept a sticky note on my desk for years with that word on it. I went in-house, into life sciences, because the work ties to something bigger: to patients and their families. That’s not a marketing line. It’s the reason I’m still here 20+ years later, and it’s the thread that runs through everything else.
I believe everything is connected. The work, the people, the place I live, how I live, and the things I give my time to. It’s all the same thing expressed in different rooms. It’s about impact.
I live in a small town in Southern New Jersey, the kind of place most people drive through on the way to the Jersey Shore, marveling at our adorable Main Street and the beautiful, bucolic farmland setting. Not to be missed: the adjacent town boasts the only fossil park in the world where you can dig in an active research quarry and walk out (with permission) with something 65 million years old in your pocket. It’s a good place to raise a kid who matters to me more than anything else in my life, including the law. My son named this company at age seven and has since asked for royalties, so clearly he has a future.
It’s also a good place to watch birds, which is what I do now, apparently. I got a bird feeder camera for Mother’s Day, and I spend more time than I’d like to admit watching what shows up at it. My favorite is the Northern Cardinal, because it reminds me of my late mother and that she is always near.
The same belief is why I do the community work I do. For years my family led an annual back-to-school backpack drive across Southern New Jersey and Philadelphia, collecting nearly 25,000 backpacks over the life of the drive. It started because raising a child with a social conscience matters to us, and by about age three, a kid understands a backpack. I serve on the Board of Directors of Your Place at the Table, a food pantry serving my local community, because access to basic needs isn’t a charitable footnote, it’s a foundation. I’m a member of Women Owned Law and a mentor to young professionals finding their footing in this industry. I believe the most meaningful thing you can do with time, experience, and love is to make them accessible to others who need them.
That’s also how I show up for clients: to make an impact. A client once told me my optimism is relentless, and I’ve never forgotten it. When things are on fire and falling apart, I’m the lowest heartbeat in the room. I will find a way. I will keep things steady. That’s not a personality trait I perform. It’s how I’m built.
If you care about the work mattering and the people on the other end of it, we’ll do good work together.
Meredith LeConey
Founder & Managing Partner
Curious if we're a fit? A short call is the easiest way to find out.