Since the start of the year, we have been engaged in a rather sizable payment dispute with one of the hospital’s largest insurance payors.
Both parties have retained outside counsel and have more or less paid them to do what they do best. Beat their chest. Make thinly veiled threats. And run up the proverbial billable-hour clock.
To their credit, over the past few months both sides of the Biglaw table have helped advance the conversation to the topic of a settlement. But each time a serious settlement proposal has been offered, inevitably the deal collapses at the last minute, in part thanks to some unnecessary legal papering of the proposal.
Keeping Law School Accessible When Federal Loans Fall Short
As federal borrowing caps tighten financing options for law students, one organization is stepping in to negotiate the terms they can't secure alone.
With each side injecting unnecessary terms covering topics like attorney fees, future indemnification, admissions of fault, or lack thereof, the receiving opposing counsel would reject the proposal outright before even reviewing the merits of the proposal.
After having watched several of these potential deals fall apart before they even started, our team suggested we temporarily put both of our Biglaw bulldogs back on the leash and meet face to face to see if we could resolve the dispute. We even told the opposing party we were willing to meet at their headquarters provided they came with the authority to settle if we reached an agreement.
Thankfully they obliged, and we set a meeting for the following week.
Before any Biglaw readers rip their hair out and chalk us up as yet another difficult client, I promise that you were our first call after the meeting was scheduled. In fact, we set up a proverbial war room over the coming days where we undertook mock meetings and discussed all the scenarios we could think of that could come up during the meeting.
LexisNexis Practical Guidance Rolls Out Dedicated Practice Area for AI & Technology
The new generation of AI-related legal issues are inherently cross-disciplinary, implicating corporate law, intellectual property, data privacy, employment, corporate governance and regulatory compliance.
In no way did we discredit your counsel or strategy, but at the end of the day, when it was time to close the deal, there was no substitute for having the original parties in the room together. We viewed the other party not as our enemy, but rather as one of our largest insurance payors that we would need to continue to work with, and they viewed us as one of the largest healthcare providers in the state that their insureds would continue to count on for treatment.
Put more simply, we both knew we still needed each other and the cutthroat, scorched-earth mentality brought forth by our respective Biglaw partners would not help seal the deal.
On the day of the meeting, a funny thing happened. Yes, both sides came to the table well prepared and ready to battle, but it never came to that. As we sat down across from each other without our Biglaw shields, we engaged in a conversation befitting old friends, not two opposing parties attempting to settle a multi-million dollar dispute.
Each side recognized that we would need the other for the years to come and engaging in a bloodbath would do little to foster such a relationship moving forward. And after a little over an hour, we had hammered out a framework for a settlement that we agreed we could both live with.
Sure, there are obvious times when it is best to let Biglaw take the ball and run with it until a conclusion is reached, but keep in mind it is never too late go back to the beginning and meet face to face without the Biglaw bulldogs in the room.
Sometimes you just may walk-out with the settlement you never thought would happen.
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 [email protected].