Embedded general counsel for healthcare & AI

Embed legal judgment into your organization.

RAA builds and operates legal functions for growing healthcare and AI companies, working inside the team to help the business move and make thoughtful decisions.

Start a conversation See the work

The approach

Counsel inside the team.

RAA works directly with founders, executives and functional leaders where the business already operates. Ask a question in Slack, bring counsel into a working session, or work through a negotiation together. Shared context means less time re-explaining the business and more time resolving the question.

The work spans customer, partner, vendor and provider relationships, product counseling, regulatory questions, governance and strategic transactions. RAA sets priorities, drives negotiations and coordinates specialists, connecting their advice to practical decisions and taking responsibility for moving the work forward.

In healthcare and AI, that starts with understanding how the business works: what each party does, how money and data move, and which regulatory frameworks apply.

Ways RAA works with teams

What this looks like in practice.

Building an early legal function

For growing companies that need a senior legal partner inside the team.

RAA can serve as the company’s embedded General Counsel, working directly with founders and functional leaders across commercial, regulatory, corporate and product questions. That includes developing enterprise contracting frameworks, handling board and equity matters, and coordinating specialists so advice translates into decisions and the work moves forward.

RAA also develops AI-enabled tools directly within the company’s systems and workflows, turning company-specific compliance guidance into practical support for recurring questions, with a clear path to counsel when judgment is needed.

Adding experienced commercial capacity

Senior legal leadership for the commercial workstream.

RAA takes ownership of commercial legal work, setting priorities with business leaders and internal counsel and driving contracts from initial review through negotiation and execution. The work can span customer and partner agreements, service arrangements, healthcare data protections, data licensing and commercial risk allocation, bringing experienced judgment and day-to-day responsibility for moving the work forward.

Structuring strategic partnerships

Aligning economics and mutual commitments for long-term success.

Partnerships that shape a company’s go-to-market strategy often depend on sustained commitments from both sides, bringing together service delivery, technology, intellectual property and equity. RAA helps structure and negotiate how those pieces fit: commercial terms, licensing and data rights, warrants or investment arrangements, governance and implementation responsibilities. The objective is an agreement that reflects both the business relationship and the commitments needed to make it work.

Leading M&A, financings and strategic transactions

Transaction leadership from inside the business.

Drawing on Richard’s in-house transaction leadership, RAA can serve as the central legal point of contact between company leadership and the full suite of outside deal counsel, connecting advice across firms and legal disciplines. That means driving timelines and dependencies, resolving open negotiation points, advising on key decisions and coordinating specialists so the company can move from terms through approvals and execution. RAA also handles drafting and negotiation within the agreed scope, with specialist counsel engaged for the transaction’s needs.

Legal infrastructure

Make recurring judgment useful.

Work like this builds a foundation the team can use again: templates, playbooks, compliance guidance and governance processes grounded in the company’s actual decisions. The aim is lasting capability within the business: guidance its people can use, processes they understand, and institutional knowledge that stays with the company. As its needs evolve, the legal leadership and team can evolve with them, with continuity in the work and relationships already built.

Custom AI-enabled compliance tools and workflows can make company-specific guidance easier to use: gathering the relevant facts, surfacing established positions and helping people recognize when to involve counsel. These tools need appropriate oversight and a clear path to human judgment. They support the legal relationship and keep counsel involved where context and judgment matter.

The person behind the practice

Meet Richard.

I’m based in Los Angeles and built RAA around the work I enjoy most: working closely with teams, learning how complicated businesses work, and building legal infrastructure that makes the next problem easier.

Away from the desk, you’ll often find me on a bike, near the ocean, reading or writing.

Experience behind the practice

Before founding RAA, Richard spent five years at Transcarent, joining as employee #23 and ultimately serving as Vice President & Associate General Counsel. He helped build its legal infrastructure across commercial, regulatory, operational, governance and risk matters, and led or supported transactions including the approximately $621 million take-private acquisition of Accolade and the acquisition of 98point6’s AI-powered virtual-care platform and care business. His work also included venture capital and growth debt financings supporting Transcarent’s growth.

Earlier, Richard practiced at Latham & Watkins and Wilson Sonsini, advising on more than $10 billion in public and private M&A, venture financings, governance and strategic transactions.

Let’s talk about what you’re building.

Engage RAA to build and own an early legal function, lead a substantial workstream, or add experienced capacity to your existing legal team.

Start a conversation

richard@raa.law