In today’s video, we talk about the question healthcare startups and mature healthcare companies routinely ask us: How do we know if we’re a good fit?

I’m Michael H. Cohen, founding attorney of the Cohen Healthcare Law Group. We help lots of healthcare industry clients just like you navigate healthcare and FDA legal issues so they can  launch, or continue to scale, their health and wellness products or service.

Let me answer by telling you a little about our internal process and how we work.  We take great care in our customer service, and we invest a lot more into our customer service i believe more than most lawyers and law firms .

When you send us a legal query, we have a 3-step process, at least 3 steps.

One: Intake Form. 

Two: Wheelhouse Check. 

Three: Legal Strategy Session.

Let me go over these steps and how they help ensure that we’re a good fit for each other, and that we know that even before you get to your attorney counsel.

The first thing we do is send you an Intake Form.  This Intake Form provides 12 questions that are designed to help us decide whether to take the next step together.  Here are just four of these questions and they are deliberately and consciously designed .

One: What services does (or will) your healthcare business provide. Please be specific about your present situation and future plans.

Next: What specific questions would you like us to address?

After that: What have you done so far to resolve this?

Once we get this intake form done, if our Team looks at these questions and determines from them that your Matter is definitely not within our wheelhouse, we will let you know.  In other words, we’re not chasing every potential new client that comes our way.

We’re discriminating, We want “A” clients, we define “A” Clients. We want to do as much as we can, before the legal consultation, to assess whether you’re in out of our wheelhouse. We want you to have a great experience!

For example, we don’t do medical malpractice, and we don’t represent patients who have HIPAA complaints.  Those are outside of  our wheelhouse, and we decline those clients, those are not a good fit for us.

Once we’re confident that your matter is in our wheelhouse, we believe we’re a good fit because we’re healthcare lawyers.  That means, we’re guardians of esoteric knowledge: we have a good working awareness of the main ways the vast libraries of legal rules in healthcare is organized, on both the federal and state level.

Do we know everything? No.

Can we guarantee you an answer, or can we guarantee an answer that you’ll like? I don’t think anyone can.

Do we walk in slow motion, like superheroes, toward the marble columns of a courthouse?  No, there’s no slow-mo in our videos, so far.

What we do is we provide a lever of legal and risk management advice so you can make  coherent business decisions that move the needle forward.  We Advise on business structure.  We have knowledge of how the healthcare laws work and affect you, backed by research during the time we have for your Matter and then we allocate toward it.  We want to give you powerful a-ha moments that help you steer your venture.

The third thing we do is, normally we start you with a Legal Strategy Session.  This is dedicated Attorney time in which the first half is time the Attorney spends on their own, preparing for your call; and the second half is your conference call together.  During that first half, on their own, the Attorney spots issues, makes notes, does legal research if needed, begins to put the puzzle, the analysis together.

After the Legal Strategy Session, you’ll likely need more work – we call it Retainer work or Deep Dive.  Think of it as getting your dental checkup and then if you have cavities, we schedule that phase.

Throughout the process, our Care Team is in touch with you, to make sure that you are having a great experience.

Now some people get very afraid of hiring a lawyer without first having all the answers to their legal questions.  This is putting the cart before the horse, in my opinion.  It’s like asking the doctor to perform surgery before they’ve done lab tests, read the results and rendered a diagnosis and crafted a treatment plan.

No business I know works like that, no professional service…. However, some law firms will try to seduce clients with so-called consults and promises of freebies.

How do I know?  Been there, done that.

I practice, our attorneys have practiced at other law firms.  And i made a conscious choice that we don’t give that inducements. Not here.  We have standards.  We review your detailed Intake Form, check if you’re in our wheelhouse, and typically we start you out with a Legal Strategy Session. That’s our process.

Now, some clients also wonder why can’t i get to a lawyer right away who can size me up and start giving me advice. We just don’t feel this is productive.  You get what you pay for, if it’s free, it’s free.  The attorney can’t give you any real legal advice until retained.  Would you base a million-dollar or multi million-dollar business strategy on a free call? Do you need to know what i look like or what i sound like?

Many clients have felt the same way, wondering whether they are making the right choice at the beginning; but what they found is that they did make the right choice, and they were able to move the needle forward.  Look to our extensive client roster – over a thousand clients; our testimonials; and most of all, our endless content.

Content, content, content.  I’ve been writing for years. We address healthcare and FDA legal issues right and left on our Healthcare & FDA legal blog, and in our video library all over our website.

Ultimately, we believe that by showcasing our legal expertise across a range of healthcare issues, we provide our clients with great comfort and ease that they’re in good hands from the get-go.

There’s one more thing to handle.  Recently, one of our prospective clients dismissed the Legal Strategy Session as a “discovery” call.  Certainly, there’s discovery, there is always discovery, both by you and your attorney, whenever you talk.  If there was no discovery, you wouldn’t be talking, it would be listening and watching this video.  But the Legal Strategy Session is a legal consult.

And here’s what you get:

1. Unparalleled advice from a highly trained and experienced Healthcare & FDA Attorney.
2. Discovery of key legal issues that are holding you back from meeting the business goals of your healthcare venture. That’s discovery of key legal issues. We’ve already addressed the fit in our Care calls and our intake form, anbd our wheelhouse check.
3. You get not just that, but initial recommendations and next steps to help you move toward your goals as efficiently as we know how.
4. You get powerful “Aha!” moments, ignited by our Attorneys who have supported 1,000+ health and wellness businesses between us.

What is that Aha moment worth?  Is it just an emotional satisfaction?  Some of our clients have literally gone on from startup to tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue.

So give us the opportunity to rock your world.  We care and we want to help you.  This is what we do, this is why we do what we do.

Thanks for watching. If you still have questions, click on the link below, cohenhealthcarelaw.com/contact, to send us a message or book an appointment.

Here’s to the success, truly of your healthcare venture. From me and my care team, and our attorneys, we look forward to speaking with you very soon.