In 2021, after working as general counsel for medical supply firm Medline for 22 years, Alex Liberman, ’89, had covered a large spectrum of corporate legal work, from dispute resolution to compliance issues. But that year, he had the opportunity to participate in a leveraged buyout when three private equity (PE) firms and two sovereign wealth funds bought 80 percent of the company, a professional experience he describes as transformative.
“It was really, really rewarding to experience that—to go from being family owned to PE owned; learning and leading these aspects of a leveraged buyout; being in the company of excellent professionals at firms like Goldman Sachs and Wachtell, Lipton; and going through it all with the other executive officers and senior leaders at Medline who had worked together for decades.”
The experience illustrates that, even after many years as Medline’s top legal staffer, Liberman still finds challenges in his job, where he leads a team of about 25 lawyers in a $26 billion global enterprise that comprises more than 43,000 employees and operates in more than 100 countries and territories.
Professional growth
When he joined Illinois-based Medline in 1999, Liberman initially focused on counseling and dispute resolution, which is how the family that owned the business as well as the senior leadership saw the value lawyers would bring to the company.
He then moved on to compliance, risk, governance, and regulatory issues amid the changing regulatory and enforcement climate. While Medline grew and became a global enterprise, he refocused again as the company started to think of legal and compliance responsibilities more expansively. That included privacy, trade compliance, sustainability, and the more specialized counseling functions within legal, such as intellectual property and labor and employment.
“And then all of these functions had a worldwide remit to them,” he says, “as we really leaned into the notion of being one company as opposed to having autonomous discrete businesses elsewhere in the world.”
Throughout his career at Medline, Liberman, whose job title changed to chief legal officer in 2023, has relished the professional growth opportunities that working as in-house counsel has presented.
“At a corporation—at least at one like Medline—if you’re effective and you learn the business, you’re able to influence and even lead dozens of things a day, hundreds of things over the course of a year.”
Alex Liberman, ’89At a corporation—at least at one like Medline—if you're effective and you learn the business, you're able to influence and even lead dozens of things a day, hundreds of things over the course of a year.
Team player
Of course, these opportunities also bring the challenge of adapting to a changing legal landscape. Liberman has had to evolve his skillset over the years, which he says can be daunting. Case in point, Medline recently filed a Form S-1 registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission as it explores a public offering.
“So that’s more change and work for my staff and me,” he says. “I’ve also dealt with it by hiring some incredible people; I really think we have an excellent senior staff in legal and compliance and other control functions to handle a growing company, whether we’re public or private.”
He points to the strength of his team as a means of his success. Hiring the right team members, he says, is an essential part of his job. While he initially hired lawyers with subject matter expertise and practice area expertise in mind, he realized that it was more important to hire based on fit with the corporation’s culture.
“Our culture is very front footed with a bias toward action,” he says. “We need lawyers who are able to thrive in that environment, who are willing to learn the entire business and become the sort of lawyers that commercial colleagues are willing to defer to.”
