Kate Arthur
DIRECTOR OF COMPLIANCE AND ETHICS,
MCLANE COMPANY, INC.
COMMITTEE AFFILIATION: COMPLIANCE AND ETHICS COMMITTEE
Tell us about your background and your law department.
I am a native Texan and received a Bachelor of Music as well as my JD from the University of Texas at Austin. After graduating from law school, I landed my first job as in-house counsel with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas. After working for Blue Cross Blue Shield for almost five years, I moved to North Carolina and took a position with LabCorp, which had recently entered into a Corporate Integrity Agreement (CIA) with the Office of Inspector General. I very much enjoyed helping to create and implement the policies, procedures, and operational controls that LabCorp needed to achieve compliance with the terms of its CIA. The experience would serve me well when I returned to Texas and joined the legal department at Scott & White Healthcare (now known as Baylor Scott & White Health). After working for Scott & White for just over 14 years, I found myself wanting to try something completely outside of the healthcare realm, which lead me to my current position as director of compliance for McLane Company, Inc. McLane, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, is a US$48 billion supply chain services company that provides grocery and foodservice supply chain solutions for convenience stores, mass merchants, drugs stores, and chain restaurants throughout the United States.
What interested you in the in-house practice of law?
Initially, I assumed that I would work for a law firm like most of my law school classmates. However, when I interviewed with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, I realized that an in-house practice would allow me to work on a wider variety of issues and have more input on how a business was to be conducted. That, combined with the constant challenge of finding practical, client-focused solutions to complex legal issues, makes an in-house practice incredibly enjoyable.
What is the single greatest challenge facing your law department today and how are you dealing with it?
McLane has more than 75 distribution centers located throughout the United States. Keeping up with the constantly changing employment laws of the various states and municipalities where we do business is a tremendous challenge. We have three employment lawyers on our staff who are in close communication with the human resources managers at each of our locations. I attribute the company’s success in resolving employment issues to the vigilance of these individuals, and the communication lines they maintain.
In October 2016, you were elected as chair of the Compliance and Ethics Committee? How did you initially get involved?
I am fortunate to have a great boss, Larry Parsons, who is the former chair of the Compliance and Ethics Committee. When I joined McLane, he encouraged me to join ACC and become active with the committee. Naturally, I followed his advice!
What are some of the ways that the Compliance and Ethics Committee provides value to its members?
Each year, our committee surveys its members to ascertain what topics are of most interest/concern to them. We review those survey results with our sponsor, Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, and then strive to provide high-quality education on those topics to our members. Legal Quick Hits are one of the primary ways in which we deliver education to our members. In the time since I’ve been on the committee, we have presented a Legal Quick Hit at 11 of the 12 monthly committee meetings each year.
What substantive practice issues does your committee address?
The committee’s goal is to explore and contribute to the professional dialogue regarding different approaches to addressing compliance and ethics issues. The committee’s activities are directed at enabling in-house lawyers to provide legal services efficiently and effectively to their corporate clients on matters including, but not limited to, the development and implementation of effective compliance and ethics standards, policies, and programs.
