Health Law Career Questions Forum

[AndyAirbender]

Hello,

I'm currently an undergraduate looking into law school. Particularly I'm very interested in health law. Overall, I am still quite a novice at law terms and I sometimes have trouble understanding terms when researching types of health law careers. I do not want to be a litigation type of lawyer and go to court. I'm definitely more interested in the regulatory and transactional type of health law. I'm sort of confused as to where careers are in this area. Would this be just classified as In-house Counsel to organizations like hospitals and pharmaceutical companies? Where else do health lawyers that do not go to court work? Further, I'm confused about the concept of law firms. Are health law firms mostly litigation focused, or do they have lawyers that strictly do transactional/regulatory work as well? I just don't really understand who you would be "working for" as a transactional lawyer in a firm if you weren't representing someone in court. I hope that all makes sense. Thank you!

[NonTradHealthLaw]

Happy to answer your questions about the wild world of health law. Think of the non-litigation side (which is the vast majority) as counseling clients on the business and regulatory aspect of health care -- keeping non-profit health care entities open and for-profit entitieds profitable. Or insurance companies. Or providers. Many health care attorneys work for large firms, or small firms, or hospitals, or consulting firms, or CMS, or state health departments. The world is wide open when 1/6th of the nation's economy is at issue.

[AndyAirbender]

Happy to answer your questions about the wild world of health law. Think of the non-litigation side (which is the vast majority) as counseling clients on the business and regulatory aspect of health care -- keeping non-profit health care entities open and for-profit entitieds profitable. Or insurance companies. Or providers. Many health care attorneys work for large firms, or small firms, or hospitals, or consulting firms, or CMS, or state health departments. The world is wide open when 1/6th of the nation's economy is at issue.

Thank you so much for the reply. That makes a lot more sense and is very reassuring. So I understand what health lawyers are doing in hospitals or nonprofits because they are working for that specific organization, but I'm still confused about health non-litigators in firms. Of course there will be people who need litigators with dealing with things such as medical malpractice, but what exactly is the point of nonlitigators in this situation? Do they just do the background research to help litigators? Again, thank you!

[NonTradHealthLaw]

Health care litigators aren't generally doing malpractice. That's more like insurance defense. Health care litigators are primarily doing antitrust work, False Claims/white collar, certificate of need (depending on the state) petitions, and regulatory/administrative litigation-lite.

[NonTradHealthLaw]

Sorry. You were asking about nonlitigators. They (we) represent the hospitals in deals, negotiate their agreements with vendors, review policies and bylaws, ensure compliance with the acronym soup (HIPAA, AKS, HOPD, ACA, MSSP, etc.), counsel on strategic transactions, set up corporate entities, handle hospitals real estate matters, file licensure and accreditation and registration paperwork, liaise with federal regulators during inspections and audits... Hospitals often do not have huge in-house departments to handle these things, and Hiring Outside Counsel maintains privilege. They also often lack associates to do grunt work (e.g. due diligence).

[AndyAirbender]

Sorry. You were asking about nonlitigators. They (we) represent the hospitals in deals, negotiate their agreements with vendors, review policies and bylaws, ensure compliance with the acronym soup (HIPAA, AKS, HOPD, ACA, MSSP, etc.), counsel on strategic transactions, set up corporate entities, handle hospitals real estate matters, file licensure and accreditation and registration paperwork, liaise with federal regulators during inspections and audits... Hospitals often do not have huge in-house departments to handle these things, and hiring outside counsel maintains privilege. They also often lack associates to do grunt work (e.g. due diligence).

Ooooh alright, I gotcha. Wow, thank you so much for this! Very appreciated.