Doug Sandberg, general counsel, First View Financial. (Photo: John Disney/ALM)

Doug Sandberg became the first general counsel for WorldPay US Inc. in 2000 and spent 18 years there before leaving after the company was purchased.

He’s stayed in financial technology, though, serving as executive vice president, general counsel and chief compliance officer of Atlanta-based FirstView Financial. Under a new CEO, the 15-year-old prepaid credit card company has acted like a startup by focusing on a new market—pharmaceutical companies that help patients purchase expensive new medications soon after their release to the market. FirstView provides prepaid cards—plastic and virtual—to companies that serve the pharmaceutical companies in this effort.

FirstView also has customers such as BitPay, which exchanges Bitcoin for currency; FirstView provides prepaid cards for those transactions.

Sandberg graduated from Emory University School of Law in 1987 and joined WorldPay after 12 years in practicing corporate law and commercial litigation, said looking back on his time there, “I learned how to be a GC, how to work with people and understand the business.”

“Payments infrastructure is something people don’t usually think about,” he said, “but it’s critical to commerce.”

Sandberg said he saw the industry grow out of banking and shift to integrated service providers that created specific management software for businesses. “Payments became one  the components in the ISP offerings,” he said, using as an example a restaurant management system and software that has a payments component along with an accounting piece, inventory management module, HR module and reservations system.

These integrated service provides thrived, but he added, ”Bank channels are still significant.”

FirstView Financial is on the “issuing side” of the payments industry—prepaid cards, plastic and virtual—giving him an interesting perspective on health care through the company’s work with pharmaceutical companies. He cited statistics showing that many patients stop taking medication when it comes too expensive, often after only a few months.

Sandberg is the only lawyer at the 45-person company, and he says he uses Arnall Golden Gregory, which worked for him at WorldPay, as outside counsel, along with handing some work to Allen Matkins in California and Holland & Knight.

Asked about critics who say in-house counsel share some blame for mental health pressures on lawyers at firms, Sandberg noted, “A lot of businesses beat the crap out of their law firms.”

Personally, he said, he has no interest in a relationship with his outside counsel like that. He said  that a lot of lawyers experience the “double whammy” of billable-hour requirements and “high maintenance customers.”

He added that there is a difference between an abusive client and one that expects a professional response from an outside lawyer, even one that is overworked.

Earlier this year he told the Daily Report in an article on lawyers dealing with an increase the pace of business, “I’d prefer a right answer to a fast answer.”

As for CEOs, COOs, CFOs and board chairs who want quick answers to take advantage of business opportunities, Sandberg says managing the executives’ expectations is critical to ensuring lawyers have enough time to get to the right answer.

Taking the time to wrestle with the legal issues is “part of the benefit of having a good counselor,” he says.