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Law Firm Develops National Practice From Relationship With Trade Group
The National Law Journal
September 08, 2008
Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren's novel relationship with a hospice trade group -- which is marketing the firm's legal "toolkit" to its trade group members -- is helping the Wisconsin firm develop a national hospice practice.
Reinhart Boerner, a Milwaukee-based business law firm with more than 200 attorneys, has created so-called toolkits to help hospices handle typical legal issues. The firm's toolkits include sample contracts and summarize key legal issues hospices might face, including regulatory and reimbursement issues.
"We have hundreds of hospices who are not our clients but are buying our toolkits," said Mary Michal, a shareholder who leads the firm's hospice and palliative care and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act attorney teams. "That's the model we thought would get the most useful information into the hands of the most hospices."
Although only five of the firm's lawyers are in the core hospice and palliative care group, the practice is national, and the group relies on the firm's litigators, employment lawyers, tax attorneys and others to support its many dozens of hospice clients, Michal said.
"We're using the resources of our entire firm to support our hospice clients," Michal said.
The firm developed the toolkits because hospices face intense regulatory scrutiny but are often small nonprofit organizations that need to keep their legal costs in check, Michal said.
Contracting with nursing homes, for example, is a huge regulatory risk area for hospices, she said.
"It's complicated, and it has to be done right," Michal said. "[Hospices] were very excited to see a product that laid it all out."
The toolkits offer contract templates that hospices can bring to local law firms, she said.
Judi Lund Person, the national hospice organization's vice president of regulatory and state leadership, said the organization is selling Reinhart Boerner's toolkits because hospices really need them.
"They are stepping in to help hospice providers with some complex regulatory issues," Person said.
Marketing relationships of various types between trade associations and law firms are "not brand new," but many trade associations are reluctant to appear to endorse particular firms, said Susan Saltonstall Duncan, president of Old Lyme, Conn.-based law firm consulting company Rainmaking Oasis Inc.
"Some firms have [found] a way to offer services to trade association members and to be introduced to new members," Duncan said. "It's a way to get a foot in the door."
Duncan has most commonly heard of law firms producing books about doing business in a particular area that local Chambers of Commerce give to members and businesses considering relocating to the area.
McDermott, Will & Emery has developed and hosted three or four fraud, enforcement and compliance seminars for medical device trade group Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed) since 2006.
The seminars are technically AdvaMed's, but the relationship gives the firm exposure to the "hundreds of device companies, large, medium and small, that are members of AdvaMed," said Chicago-based health law department partner Bernadette M. Broccolo.
Reinhart Boerner sells its Hospice and Nursing Home/Assisted Living Contracting Toolkit, which was rolled out last year and updated last month, for $895 through its own Web site, at the discounted rate of $450 to its own clients and for $495 to members of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization.
