Category: Teaching Health Law

Tips from a former medical student – Part II

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By Deborah Cho

[See Part I here]

Last week, I wrote the first of a two-part series on tips that may be helpful for law students and lawyers interested in or working in health/medical law.  I continue with Tip #4 here.

4. If you need to learn about a disease, procedure, or drug that you know nothing about, your best starting point is probably Wikipedia.  Google will lead you to some incorrect answers, and diagnose-yourself websites will give you answers that are much too broad to use practically in legal practice.  Once you have familiarized yourself with the general topic on Wikipedia, you can then go back to your search engine of choice for more specific terms and weed out the wrong information.  Starting on PubMed or GoogleScholar probably isn’t the best idea either because most of what you’re reading will be highly technical and the articles you find will likely be about novel uses or instances of whatever you’re searching.  Another fantastic source is UpToDate, an evidence-based Wikipedia-like source for healthcare providers, but many people may not have access to all the information on this site.

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Ten Faculty Fellowships Awarded to Promote Public Health Law Education

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Official Press Release:

Atlanta – Georgia State University College of Law and its Center for Law Health & Society have selected 10 faculty fellows to participate in the Future of Public Health Law Education: Faculty Fellowship Program. The program is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to foster innovations and build a learning community among those who teach public health law at professional and graduate schools. For more information, visit law.gsu.edu/phlfellowship.

The fellows, chosen from across the country, will develop interdisciplinary courses and programs in public health law at their respective universities during the fellowship year. Their projects will strengthen interdisciplinary education in public health law and promote collaborations with public health agencies and organizations in the fellows’ communities.

The fellows are:

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Tips from a former medical student – Part I

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By Deborah Cho

As a student in the Disability Litigation Clinic, one of the many fantastic clinics here at Harvard Law school, I’ve come to appreciate the value of hands-on experience as an essential component of legal education.  One issue that we as students are often faced with, however, is a lack of familiarity with the particular subject matter we are assigned to work with.  Now, I know that topic-specific knowledge typically comes on the job, but I’m starting to see that many of us trying to practice law touching the medical field never really have a chance to learn the basics of the medical world and just how essential that basic knowledge really is.

As a short introduction to this post, I will say that I spent several of my college years volunteering and doing research at various hospitals and clinics, went to medical school for two years, have an M.A. in Bioethics (noting this to add to my hours spent in a hospital), have interned in the health care division in state government, have interned in a health law nonprofit firm, and, as noted above, am enrolled in the Disability Litigation Clinic right now.  All that to say, please take everything I write here with a grain of salt.  I am by no means an expert on this, but have found that this information has helped me throughout my healthcare-related legal experience so far and I hope that this will spark dialogue and interest on this subject.

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Open Questions in Health Law?

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By Christopher Robertson

As I prepare to teach the health law survey course here at HLS in the spring, I am putting together some exercises for students to work on “open questions” in the field. For example, I am thinking about tasking a group of students to explore ways that insurers could or already do structure their contracts with patients and providers to prevent pharmaceutical companies from using coupons to undermine cost-sharing burdens. (Medicare simply does so with the anti-kickback statute.) I have another question about whether the inventor of a new medical device could use crowd-sourcing (e.g,. kickstarter) to raise funds for product development, without running afoul of the FDA proscriptions on unapproved marketing. I would love to get your ideas about open questions in other areas, including bioethics, medical malpractice, public health law, scope of practice, etc. Please post them in the comments or contact me. I’m happy to reciprocate.

Friday, 11/15: Health Law Opportunities at Harvard Law School

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Health Law Opportunities at Harvard Law School

Friday, November 15, 2013 12:00 PM

Wasserstein Hall 3019
1585 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA

1Ls and 2Ls will have the opportunity to learn more about different classes and extracurricular activities available at Harvard Law School that relate to health law. Opportunities range from classes on FDA regulation, healthcare access, and food policy, to internships and research assistance. Panelists will include:

  • Robert Greenwald, Clinical Professor of Law and Director, Health Law and Policy Clinic of the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, WilmerHale Legal Services Center at Harvard Law School
  • Emily Broad Leib, Clinical Instructor and Lecturer on Law, Director of the Food Law and Policy Clinic, and Associate Director of the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation at Harvard Law School
  • I. Glenn Cohen, Professor of Law and Faculty Co-Director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School
  • Mark Barnes, Partner, Ropes & Gray LLP

This event is free. Lunch will be served.

Cosponsored by the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic, and the Petrie-Flom Center.

Health Law Opportunities at Harvard Law School

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Health Law Opportunities at Harvard Law School

Friday, November 15, 2013 12:00 PM

Wasserstein Hall 3019
1585 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA

1Ls and 2Ls will have the opportunity to learn more about different classes and extracurricular activities available at Harvard Law School that relate to health law. Opportunities range from classes on FDA regulation, healthcare access, and food policy, to internships and research assistance. Panelists will include:

  • Robert Greenwald, Clinical Professor of Law and Director, Health Law and Policy Clinic of the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, WilmerHale Legal Services Center at Harvard Law School
  • Emily Broad Leib, Clinical Instructor and Lecturer on Law, Director of the Food Law and Policy Clinic, and Associate Director of the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation at Harvard Law School
  • I. Glenn Cohen, Professor of Law and Faculty Co-Director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School
  • Mark Barnes, Partner, Ropes & Gray LLP

This event is free. Lunch will be served.

Cosponsored by the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation and the Petrie-Flom Center.

National Health Law Transactional Competition

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By Christopher Robertson

Our friends at Loyola University Chicago’s health law program just announced the Fourth Annual L. Edward Bryant, Jr. National Health Law Transactional Competition.   “Three-person teams of J.D. students will prepare a legal memorandum that summarizes their legal and business advice for a hypothetical health care client. These students will then appear in a boardroom environment before distinguished attorneys serving as the client’s ‘Executive Management Team’ to present their analysis of the client’s position and recommendations on how the client should proceed.”  More information is available on their website.

Faculty Fellowships in Public Health Law – Call for Applications

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Applications are invited for 10 faculty fellowships in public health law education.

DESCRIPTION 

Georgia State University College of Law and its Center for Law, Health & Society are leading an initiative funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for a faculty fellowship program to promote public health law education. Ten faculty members from law schools or schools/programs of public health will be selected to participate in a yearlong fellowship program designed to foster innovations in educational programming (including clinical, externship, and other experiential learning) and to build a strong learning community among faculty who teach in the public health law field.

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