Close Encounters of the Healthcare Legal Kind

Transcript

Hello, this is Michael H. Cohen, president and founder of Cohen Healthcare Law Group.

Some Clients don’t convert

Do you ever think about famous people you’ve met, or celebrities who are … Maybe it’s a millionaire, or a hundred-millionaire, or a billionaire, and that you could have converted them into a client, or perhaps your whole life would have changed if you’d pursued those opportunities? But maybe it wasn’t the right time, or maybe the meeting was about something else.

I was thinking about this today because I’ve met some amazing luminaries in my life, and for whatever reason, these meetings have led to other kinds of discoveries, revelations, or relationships. They haven’t necessarily led to more clients.

Now, this may seem a little bit odd, because right now, while scaling my healthcare law firm, I’m very much concerned with what entrepreneurs think about day-in, day-out, which is, of course, leads, of course, clients, great customer service. Providing great services in the healthcare space and also the “conversion process,” as it’s called, where we convert leads into clients, and clients into what we call “raving fans.” This is very important. At the same time, some meetings were simply destined to be something else.

Monks chant a lawyer up

In this episode, I’m going to tell you about four people who profoundly changed my life, not by becoming clients, but simply by being who they were in my encounters with them at the time. Stay tuned, because you may recognize some of these names.

The first was a gentleman named Barry. I met Barry when I was a lawyer at a large Wall Street law firm, doing M&A, doing securities, big banking, and a lot of corporate transactional work. Now, I’m not going to give away, of course, any confidential client details. Most of the people I’m talking about, whatever it was that I did with them, it was a long, long time ago. I’m going to keep this fairly generic in terms of the actual legal work.

Let’s just say that I was a lawyer doing pro bono work for volunteer lawyers for the arts, and Barry was involved in a project where he had to negotiate some intellectual property rights with monks that had come over from India and from Tibet. I was representing Barry. Now, on the surface, this was a pro bono activity for a large Wall Street law firm, and my client was an author who didn’t have necessarily funds to hire a big fancy lawyer law firm on his own, so it was all pro bono.

But what actually happened was that I was in a series of meetings with these monks. In and out of the meetings they were meditating. They were chanting. They were probably praying that I become a Buddha, and all I can say is that mysteriously, a few months after this, my life just exploded in terms of spirituality. I mean, literally, I started meditating. I would go inside, and I would see visions. I would have encounters with spirit, and everything just started opening up.

How much of that was my own karma, my own spiritual destiny, my own “magic,” if you will, and how much of it was me being a lawyer, and my narrow yellow power tie, and my tight leather Italian shoes, and my Brooks Brothers’ suit being there with the monks backstage while we were hashing out the details of this project? Which of course involved spiritual imagery, and that involved the buddhas.

There you go. The Buddha early in my life as a lawyer.

The next person I would like to talk about was actually a physician who was very highly credentialed, and he wrote a lovely review of my book, Complementary Alternative Medicine: Legal Boundaries and Regulatory Perspectives. He wrote a terrific review, and I had a nice cup of Turkish coffee with him, and he talked to me about his career at Columbia University, the medical school there, physicians and surgeons. Various other things … Told me about his life. About his dad, and we had a very nice, intimate chat.

I’m grateful for the review. Shortly thereafter, he went off, and he met someone named Oprah Winfrey, and he became very well known as Dr. Oz. Now, that would have been a terrific opportunity for me, to get on his show, to have a client and represent him, and all of these ventures, obviously because very successful.

At the time, we were both academics. He was a medical school professor. I had written a scholarly legal book about complementary alternative medicine, which he was deeply interested in. He had very good graces, and wrote a lovely review. If I ever come across him again, it would be nice to remember back to those moments back early on in the career, when he was not so internationally famous. That was a great encounter that I had back then.

Praying moodily

Then there was the time when I was still at the Wall Street law firm doing mega-mergers, and banking loan documents with big banks like Morgan Guarantee, and big deals … securities deals, securities offerings, registration statements, monster documents that were to be drafted and then reviewed by the Securities Exchange Commission.

Around that time, I was still doing volunteer duties for the arts. I had a client who was a composer. He was very interested in the fact that I also was studying and practicing hypnotherapy. I might have even done some hypnotherapy with him, to help him with his composition. But at any rate, he was doing a score for this unknown kid, and this kid made a film called Praying with Anger, which is an odd title, but it was essentially about him and his life growing up.

There’s one pivotal scene in this movie, where the kid is actually witnessing this mob scene about to erupt in India between the different religions. He basically single-handedly stops this killing from occurring. I just found it so incredibly beautiful. Again, I was so moved, I was literally moved to tears. I stood in front of this … when I was introduced at the screening … I was introduced to the film superstar. The guy who made the movie.

I thought it was such an incredible movie, and I was profoundly, sincerely, from my heart feeling this gratitude for this incredible work of art that he had produced. He was very young, like maybe in his early 20s. I stood in front of him, and I poured out my energy. Really gave him a blessing.

Now, I’m not saying that I was single-handedly responsible for his future career success, but that was my reaction. It was just total, total transformation into a dimension of love. Really, a just beautiful, bright, golden light that I was experiencing from the guy’s film. No, I didn’t end up becoming his lawyer. I’m not an entertainment lawyer. I did not end up representing him. It was simply that beautiful moment.

It turned out that he was actually quite talented, and commercially recognized. M. Night Shyamalan, who went on to produce many more noted movies. I didn’t necessarily follow his career, but I will always remember that moment from Praying with Anger, and the impact that it had on me.

Is it religion or healthcare?

My next encounter with a potential client involved a woman from an Eastern country who came to me as a lawyer with a question as to whether what she was doing could be protected as a religion as opposed to healthcare. Normally, it’s very hard to define, describe an activity as religious when it encompasses health, because the Tenth Amendment is very strong, and there’s a concern that the state protect the public’s health, safety, welfare, and morals. Typically, if there’s a collision between a religion and healthcare, healthcare regulation wins. I wrote about this in my book Complementary Alternative Medicine: Legal Boundaries and Regulatory Perspectives, which was my first academic book about healthcare law, and specifically about law regulating physicians and lay healers who practice complementary medicine, alternative medicine, holistic medicine, also known as integrative care.

Deeper into healthcare vs spirituality

I was speaking to this person through a translator, and as I looked into her eyes, and went deeper into the exploration of who this person was, and what she was doing, I became convinced that her practice really was religious, and spiritual. I asked her what she did, and in a nutshell, she told me that the buddhas would come to her, and they would transmit specific healing ash to her, which would manifest in the palm of her hands.

I asked her to show me, and she actually did it. I had never seen anything like this before. I was witnessing physical reality being manifested from the buddhas into this woman’s hand. Now, I didn’t see the buddhas. I was not clairvoyantly open to that. But what came through each of her hands was unmistakable, and I was able to touch it.

There was no act of magic. There was nothing up her sleeves. She was not a trickster. It was a lot of concentration. It was so profound, it actually made me cry. It was just one of the most beautiful and transformational moments of my life. She did not convert into a long-term client. She’s still practicing today, and what she does for people is extraordinary.

Where she’s doing it, how she’s doing it, I haven’t kept up, but I know that when I had that encounter with her, that was a sacred moment. That was meant to be, and it was absolutely to show me that I was on track in terms of what I was doing, and that healing and healthcare, of course, encompass everything, from the physical to the metaphysical. It’s a sublime journey, and I was exposed to one of its many dimensions.

It was just absolutely fantastic that because of my work, I would have the opportunity to meet this person … some people would say a master. A master of knowledge. A master of wisdom. A channel of transmission between the realms. Somebody who could literally transmute, or be witness to the transformation of spiritual reality into the physical plane. I didn’t have to go to India to meet her. I didn’t have to go to a cave. She came to my office and that was simply amazing.

Wrap up

You’ve been listening to the Healthcare Legal Adventures Podcast. This is Michael H. Cohen, president and founder of Cohen Healthcare Law Group. If you’d like to hear more episodes, simply go to cohenhealthcarelaw.com. Go to the tab that says Blog/Podcasts, and you can download more episodes. Or visit our other website at healthcarelegaladventures.com, where you’ll find online courses, DIY forms, and other resources to help you with your healthcare legal adventure. We look forward to seeing you on the next episode.