In-House Counsel

Playing The Lawyer Card

Sadly, playing the lawyer card can be necessary even with members of your own team.

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cardsPerhaps it’s just me and my overly inflated ego, but every time I hear a non-lawyer tell me a business operation is legally required or interpret a new rule or regulation, I practically cringe.

It’s like nails down a chalkboard. I would rather attend a Gilbert Gottfried and Fran Drescher duet concert than sit through another meeting where some non-attorney colleague chimes in on how our organization needs to make drastic business changes in order to be compliant with a new regulation.

I was once roped into an extensive e-mail chain where a team was planning for the implementation of a new state law that would be coming into effect soon. Somehow it took them until week three of the chain before they thought to rope in legal, but hey, I was happy to even be thought of at all.

Within minutes of sifting through the chain and reading the “new law,” I politely replied the law would not be implemented in the near future, would have no business impact on the organization, and we could safely close the issue for now.

Any hopes I had at quietly dismissing the issue were quickly dashed as the leader of the group responded in short order telling me how wrong I was in more ways than one. And yes, she used the “Reply All” function.

While I normally advocate that in-house counsel should be humble and approachable in order to encourage our colleagues to solicit our advice, sometimes playing the lawyer card is necessary. If nothing else, it can help serve as a reminder of why we exist in the first place.

Sure, it might have been petty, but I opted to use the same “Reply All” function to inform the team I was confident the new law would not impact our business as it was not a new law at all, but rather a proposed resolution that had never even been voted out of conference committee. A resolution which had been proposed two years ago no less.

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Oddly, no one replied to my e-mail, but I do know no further planning was conducted.

Sadly, playing the lawyer card can be necessary even with members of your own team. Whether they think they have become lawyers simply by working for the legal team, or if it is a genuine effort to impress the boss, I have had to gently play the lawyer card on several occasions with my employees.

Recently a detective from a local law enforcement agency reached out via e-mail to a member of my team while investigating a case of potential identity theft. After the cursory introductory e-mail, the detective asked if my employee could send him our patient’s entire medical record as soon as possible.

My employee immediately set off printing the patient’s information and popped into my office to inform me of what they were about to send. Naturally, I immediately halted his actions and inquired a bit further into the matter.

As a disclaimer, I will happily comply with law enforcement when asked and in no way wish to make a difficult job more complicated, but this “detective” could have easily been a Nigerian prince who needed my help collecting his fortune. Also, there is this pesky little thing known as HIPAA which required a touch more than an e-mail before we could turn over a medical record.

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Despite my employee’s protest, I kindly played the lawyer card and ticked through the numerous reasons we could not simply turn over the information as easily as he wished. Thankfully they relented, and I was able to secure proper documentation from the detective to turn over the information, but not before playing my card.

Sure, we lawyers can dampen the day or be overly cautious in any given scenario, but every once in awhile we have a pretty special card we can play. One that if played effectively, can save our client a great deal of wasted time planning for a resolution which will never be signed into law or from an investigation by the federal government for a data breach.

Just be sure to use it wisely or that Ace can just as quickly turn into a deuce.

Stephen R. Williams is in-house counsel with a multi-facility hospital network in the Midwest. His column focuses on a little talked about area of the in-house life, management. You can reach Stephen at stephenwilliamsjd@gmail.com.

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