For in-house leaders who relish challenges and thrive during crises, the novel coronavirus pandemic presents an opportunity. 

One corporate counsel who has been busy in the trenches with her legal department during the COVID-19 outbreak is Deborah Rasin, senior vice president, chief legal officer and secretary for global medical supply company Hill-Rom Inc. 

Rasin arrived at Hill-Rom's corporate headquarters in Chicago in 2016 during a time of significant change. The company had just completed a more than $2 billion acquisition of Welch Allyn Inc., which makes medical diagnostic devices and monitoring systems. 

Taking the reins of a legal department in the wake of a merger and in the midst of a restructuring effort wasn't all that challenging for Rasin, who described the integration of the two firms as being expertly planned and "amazingly seamless."  

But COVID-19 has been a true test for Rasin and Hill-Rom's legal department. She spoke on Wednesday with Corporate Counsel about what she and her legal team have been doing to step up and help Hill-Rom navigate the coronavirus crisis. The conversation has been edited for clarity and length. 

Corporate Counsel: How is the coronavirus pandemic affecting your legal department operations?

Deborah Rasin: Well, for one thing, we are very engaged in all the company activities that are going on. We've got three active working groups/task forces right now. One is focused on employee health and safety. We have another task force that is focused on our customer needs. We are the No. 1 manufacturer and distributor of hospital beds in the U.S. and as you can imagine we're anticipating that there's going to be some demand for our products. And then we have a third task force focused on external communications. The No. 1 impact is that it's suddenly become almost a full-time job for a lot of my team. There's just so much going on and it's moving quickly and we're very engaged in all of this. I'm on the steering committee for the company handling our response. It's been, all of a sudden, kind of drop a lot of things and focus on this. 

CC: Are some of your staff working remotely at this point?

DR: We've always had a flexible working-from-home policy. At this time we haven't changed that policy. But we are in the process of developing a kind of enhanced work-from-home policy, but it's going to have to be done on a site-by-site basis. We have more than 10,000 employees worldwide and we have field service employees who are servicing hospitals. So there's a huge wide variety in the opportunity for people to work from home. Luckily, so far, nobody in our company has been diagnosed with the virus. But we have facilities all over the world and we're monitoring everything closely. 

CC: Looking ahead, do you think that dealing with the coronavirus might lead to significant changes in legal department operations and policies? You might notice some weaknesses or areas where your department can improve?

DR: In a way, I hope not, because I hope we go back to normal. But one thing it's highlighted is the need for a really good crisis response plan and enterprise risk management approach. We have that in our company, but we haven't really had to activate it that often. So in a way it's definitely a good test of pulling things off the shelf. What I would want to do is incorporate some of the learning to make those programs better for the future. Hopefully, we'll never need it again, but it's a good exercise to improve our crisis response and our whole overall ERM [enterprise risk management] program. It's highlighted some new risk areas that we may want to pay some attention to once the dust settles. 

CC: I've heard before that a crisis presents a legal department, and not to be too cliché here, with a time to shine. That you have a chance to be an all-star when a crisis happens.

DR: It's a chance for us to step up a little bit and really demonstrate value. We're lucky because we have a really engaged and smart and energized legal department and everybody's ready to jump in and participate. I think the whole company is appreciating that. We do get to show the value that we add all the time. I know that. I've always known that. But in a way this gives us the chance to show that to everybody, too. 

Rasin was going to be a featured speaker at ALM's SuperConference scheduled for April 28-29 in Chicago, but Hill-Rom has prohibited employees from attending group conferences through the end of May. The SuperConference is still slated to take place as planned as the event's organizers continue to monitor the coronavirus situation.

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