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Lau, the top lawyer and corporate secretary at internet domain registrar GoDaddy Inc., is poised to resign Nov. 17 from those roles ahead of her return to McKesson. Lau joined GoDaddy in mid-2021 after spending more than 13 years at McKesson, where she was most recently the company’s chief corporate, governance, and transactions counsel.
The transition will see one former lawyer from Morrison & Foerster, which has close ties to McKesson, succeed another. Lau is a former corporate associate at the law firm, where Schechter spent 23 years and once led the litigation practice.
The changing of the legal guard at McKesson also marks another move at a company that found itself embroiled in a public health crisis related to opioids.
Schechter helped McKesson and three other major drug distributors reach a $26 billion settlement in 2021 to resolve thousands of US lawsuits linked to an addictive painkilling medication. McKesson’s portion of that landmark agreement saw the company agree to pay $7.4 billion over 18 years.
A 50-lawyer team from Covington & Burling is representing McKesson in opioid litigation, including a $400 million settlement last year by the company and two others in West Virginia, which opted out of the broader multistate accord.
McKesson said Wednesday Schechter will resign as an executive officer at year’s end and retire from the company in June 2024. In the interim, Schechter will serve as a board and enterprise risk adviser to McKesson, which tapped her to take on the company’s general counsel job in 2014.
Schechter didn’t respond to a request for comment about her decision to depart. She joined the company in 2012, a year after counseling McKesson on an $82 million settlement of a drug price-fixing class action during her time at Morrison & Foerster, where she made partner in 1995.
Morrison & Foerster has advised McKesson over the years on several settlements with state and federal regulators, including a $175 million deal in 2020 to end opioid derivative litigation.
The firm has also provided a pipeline of legal talent to McKesson, which in 2019 moved its corporate headquarters from San Francisco to Irving, Texas. Morrison & Foerster opened its first office in the Lone Star State last year.
Ryan Hassanein, a former Morrison & Foerster partner and in-house lawyer at McKesson, returned last year as head of enterprise quality management. Lauren Grady Murphy, an attorney and ex-research analyst at Morrison & Foerster, also joined McKesson in 2022 as senior manager for international tax planning. Lau left the firm when McKesson first hired her in 2008.
A GoDaddy spokeswoman said the Tempe, Ariz.-based company is in the process of identifying a successor to Lau. GoDaddy’s most recent proxy statement disclosed that Lau received almost $5.2 million in total compensation in fiscal 2022, down from more than $6.7 million in 2021.
Schechter earned more than $5.2 million in fiscal 2023 and similar sums during the two years prior, according to a proxy statement filed by McKesson in June.
That same month, McKesson promoted assistant general counsel Jenny Wallner to chief compliance officer, replacing Laura O’Donnell, who left the company to lead the legal team at Alphabet Inc.’s health technology subsidiary Verily.
