Find your niche, advises adjunct health law professor

Tad Myre, co-chair of Wyatt Tarrant & Combs LLP’s Health Care Service Team, also is an adjunct health law professor at Brandeis Law.

He concentrates his practice in the areas of health care, taxation, nonprofit organizations and general business law. He has extensive experience in the areas of health care organizations, including hospitals and physician practices, tax-exempt organizations, small business and joint ventures.

He took some time to discuss his approach to teaching health law and the many career paths within that field.

Many of the students in your class had health care-related jobs. How did their careers connect with your course? 

Students in the class included a nursing home administrator, an owner of a physical therapy business, a former medical staff coordinator, folks clerking in health law firms, the son of a doctor and the son of a health care lawyer. 

Each brought his or her own perspective, which added to the excitement. Did I say excitement? Bottom line, everybody has intersected with health care and the health care laws in one way or another, law student or not. In our class, we focused on brass tacks; there was very little that was theoretical in the class (except maybe my teaching ability). It was a good, lively, intelligent group, including one St. Louis Cardinal fan.     

What advice do you have for law students interested in a career in health law?

Read. Read the paper, read magazines, read the law. I heard there was something called the Internet. Read that too.

Health laws only get more intense as time passes. Nobody’s going to throw out the HIPAA regs (although they should). Laws, including stupid ones, never get repealed; they just take on a life of their own. They grow like kudzu and then get tangled up with each other and you can never, ever get out. That might be an overstatement.

Having some other connection to the health care industry also helps, so take a summer job, or a year or two off before law school, or volunteer time somewhere. Get a foothold. Same with health law. Nobody can take it all on; it’s too vast. 

In health law, there are specialties and even subspecialties within the specialties (and a few super-specialists who are never allowed out in public). So pick an entry point — preferably one of interest — and come on in. Law students interested in a career in health law might also, once they get into practice, have a mental health counselor standing by. I’m just saying.            

In teaching health law to today’s students, are there any areas to which you pay special attention? 

Not really. There are so many areas, and so many that are dense thickets, that folks should try to sample as many as possible to get a sense of what they enjoy, what kind of mind they have and what kind of stress they can manage.

Patient care issues can get into real-life stuff, sometimes with advice demanded immediately on a late night with a bad connection and with somebody screaming or dying in the background. Welcome to the provider world. So that’s one area. Then there’s the more removed regulatory morass, with potentially draconian penalties swirling for mistakes, even small or unintended ones. 

Pick your favorite area of those, for there are many. Some are mathematical, some are intuitive, some are both. You can be a prosecutor; you can be a defense lawyer. You can be in a law firm; you can be in-house. You can be a plaintiff med mal lawyer; you can be a defense lawyer.  You can give regulatory advice; you can be a qui tam lawyer. Or, if you’ve got what it takes, you can be a tax lawyer. Tax lawyers in health care are special people. I mean that. Very special. Plus, they’re usually well-read, witty and debonair.

What about practicing health law might surprise attorneys not as familiar with that field? 

Everything. Warning: the following is not responsive to the question, but I’ll play like a politician and ignore the question and give my own answer to another question.

Last spring was my first time teaching and I had a blast. Great class and wonderful guest speakers, including Sheila Schuster, Mark Carter, Shirley Powers, Sue Stout Tamme, Dr. Hiram Polk, Joe Steier and Dr. Mark Wheeler, non-lawyers all, and attorneys Carole Christian, Marty Kasdan, Kent Wicker, Mike Fine, Tyler Thompson, Ed Monarch, Chris Melton, Kevin Winstead, Doug McSwain and Kathie McClure. 

A stellar cast and I can’t thank them enough. Looking at all these names, one might even ask: “What did you do, Professor Myre?” to which I would answer: “I introduced speakers in a distinctly professorial manner.” Thanks also to Susan Duncan, Grace Giesel and finally to my man Billy Hopkins, who did all the work and explained to me what the Internet is.     

This article originally ran in the November 2016 issue of Bar Briefs, a publication of the Louisville Bar Association.