Law360 (August 19, 2020, 9:17 PM EDT) -- McKesson general counsel Lori Schechter has been guiding the company through a storm of litigation and regulatory dealings stemming from the company's alleged role in the opioid epidemic before she assumed the role — and it's more stressful than her previous BigLaw career, she said.

Schechter has been at McKesson Corp. for over eight years, having spent the prior 23 at Morrison & Foerster LLP, where she was litigation chair. The in-house job has given her a more profound sense of satisfaction, connection and responsibility, she said.

"I think it's the different perspective or platform that you have when you are both a guardian of the company in terms of ensuring compliance of laws and ethics [and] you are the client yourself," she said. "You are the one who is trying to help drive value ... for your company, your shareholders and your employees [in a way] that I never felt quite as deeply as I did when I was just outside counsel."

Schechter is among 13 corporate counsel named Legends in Law by the Burton Awards this year. Sidley Austin LLP partners Sara Brody and Meena Datta nominated Schechter for the honor, citing her work as a board member for the Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts and the National Center for Youth Law.

That's not to mention her work at McKesson. For one, Schechter brought McKesson's law, compliance, corporate governance and public affairs functions together as an efficient, integrated group, and has more recently added brand, marketing and communications.

"She has also led a number of initiatives focusing on positive impact on McKesson and the broader communities in which McKesson operates, including an innovative advocacy program that empowers McKesson employee volunteers to meet with their local representatives and an initiative focused on national and local pro bono projects," Brody and Datta said in a written statement.

Brody is representing McKesson in a shareholder derivative suit stemming from drug price-fixing allegations. Schechter was slated to be honored in-person at the Burton Awards' June 2020 ceremony at the Library of Congress, but the event was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. The next ceremony is scheduled for June 14, 2021. Law360 is a sponsor of the Burton Awards.

Schechter joined McKesson after having represented the company as outside counsel. It took the previous general counsel two years to woo her away from her BigLaw job, she said.

"After 23 years, I really loved what I did and I had a great combination of health care cases and large impact cases in government investigations, constant challenges, as well as having had the opportunity at Morrison & Foerster to do significant impact litigation on a pro bono basis, so it was hard for me to think about making the transition," she said.

But after taking the reins of McKesson's legal team, Schechter was able to find similar fulfillment by establishing a pro bono and volunteer program there, which has provided pro bono legal aid for people seeking relief under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, provided help to nonprofits, and taken part in other, nonlawyering volunteer efforts.

Schechter also helped to establish the Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts, which was seeded with $100 million from McKesson to provide grants to programs and agencies nationwide seeking to advance solutions to the opioid crisis. She said her involvement with that makes her feel like she's a part of the solution to the opioid crisis, which is a relief from dealing with the litigation and fallout stemming from past allegations.

"The tough issues that everyone has been facing in terms of how to best ... address the crisis, the most important takeaway for me is [that] being general counsel and being at a company like McKesson was a great opportunity to take a challenge and turn it into an opportunity to make a difference," she said.

Additionally, during the COVID-19 crisis, she and others in the company have been drawing on internal expertise and partnerships to overcome the logistical challenges of getting equipment into the hands of health care providers.

"That, in and of itself, was incredibly challenging but enormously rewarding — to make sure you were actually making a difference on the front line," she said. "I don't know if I ever felt I had an experience like that in private practice."

--Editing by Breda Lund and Emily Kokoll.

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