Let’s say that you’re a telehealth company and you’ve got some complicated healthcare, regulatory, legal, and compliance questions. You’ve got HIPAA you’re concerned about, but maybe you have a vendor taking care of some of that, but still, you might be using the data in unusual ways.

You’ve got some corporate practice of medicine concerns in states that have really sticklers about CPM and fee-splitting. Let’s say that you’ve got some… anti-kickback and stark concerns. Just general issues with liability and exposure. What could get you in where? Is it going to be the FDA? Is going to be the FTC because you’ve made health claims, claims about your products that are maybe a bit strong on the marketing side, but could present potential risk.

So, how do you deal with this panoply of legal and regulatory threats really that you’re looking at in your environment? And that’s where we come in.

Hi, I’m Michael H. Cohen, I’m president and founding attorney at Cohen Healthcare Law Group. We help businesses just like you deal with the morass of legal and regulatory thorny issues that can be right in your path when you’re trying to get from here to there. And we deal with them very practically, we’re seasoned lawyers, we’ve been at other firms, many firms, and we’ve honed our skills, writing lots of memos, reading statutes, pouring through regulations, just like other attorneys. I think what makes us different, or at least in my own mind, we try to elevate ourselves in a number of ways.

Number one, we provide very practical solutions and strategies for you to help mitigate your risk. We don’t over promise, and we don’t pretend that we’re going to guarantee your path or take care of every single thing, and get you all the answers that you need because I don’t think any lawyer can do that. If you find such a lawyer, send them and we’ll hire them. But I think it’s called AI 30 years from now. But meanwhile, we can present shades of risk and risk mitigation.

I want to talk today a little bit about values because, look, I deal with the 80/20 rule or 90/10 rule. 80 to 90% of your clients and customers are delightful and delicious, and we love working with you. And 10 to 20% are difficult, why are they difficult? I don’t know what it is about getting legal services, but somehow, it seems to trigger an awful lot of background noise. It may have to do with other attorneys that they’ve had in the past, might have to do with other relationships, things where they didn’t quite get a straight answer.

And it’s difficult because it all comes up when people get the invoice, and we invoice fairly, honestly, that’s my belief. We layout the invoice in exquisite detail. I’ve got good software, we have an FAQ on it under cohenhealthcarelaw.com/externalpolicies. And it’s something really, I don’t want to devote any screen time to except to say this, which is that recently, a client asked for a discount, and it’s not something that I’m in the habit of asking for because, frankly, I don’t want that to just come right back to me. But we gave him a little bit of time on us just to make him happy because he’d been a good client, but then he wanted more, and at that point I just said, “I just don’t think this is a good idea.” And so, he wrote back and he said, “Well, I guess our values are different. Let’s just finish up and I’m splitting.”

My feeling is that’s fine. And if you want to talk about values, please don’t focus on your desire to chintz down the cost to something that’s going to satisfy you. Focus on the language we use, the verbiage we use, the messaging that we choose. It’s very thoughtful, and very thought out, and it’s for a reason. This may seem like a total leap here in a non-sequitur, but it… Yep. I was told don’t even put in the frame, so I won’t.

Let’s just say that what we do, we do out of service. Of course, we expect a fair exchange of value. We give advice, in turn we get paid. It’s not just how I earn a living, but the attorneys, the marketing staff, the sales staff, the office staff, everybody derives a benefit from the company as your staff do in your company, and in exchange for that, we accept value just like you do.

I’m looking at this beautiful land, in the old days they would trade, so we’re trading, just happens to be currency. So, our values are very clear. We provide legal strategies and solutions to businesses that accelerate health and wellness. We don’t bill ourselves as number one. I don’t need to be number one. We want to give you honest work, we want to get an honest wage, and we want to provide value and receive value in return.

And that’s who we are. Hope this is helpful for the 10 to 20% of you that surface from time to time. It’s great talking to you. We hope at least you’ll do a legal strategy session with us and get it started. And we look forward to speaking with you soon. If you have any questions, go to cohenhealthcarelaw.com/contact to send us a message or book an appointment. Here’s to the success of your venture.