Encouraging Pro Bono Engagement This year, the AHLA Young Professionals Council and the AHLA Public Interest Committee are working together to produce an interview series that is focused on encouraging pro bono engagement. Our interview series will appear in the November 2013, February 2014, and May 2014 issues of the AHLA Connections magazine, and each article will each feature two or three interviews with AHLA members from a variety of work settings and practices who have devoted a substantial amount of time to pro bono service. By conducting these interviews, we hope to learn about our interviewees experiences so that we can better understand how to get involved, how to balance pro bono service with our other work obligations, and why it is so important to make pro bono service a regular part of your entire legal career. Our hope is that by sharing our interviewees stories and advice, we may be able to inspire others to become involved in pro bono service too. In this issue, you will be able to read about Justin Pitt s experiences with the Williamson County Legal Aid Clinic, Bradley M. Thompson s experiences with the Gospel Justice Initiative, and Professor Kathy L. Cerminara s experiences with the Wounds of War symposium and her efforts to help create a veterans clinic at Nova Southeastern University. We then hope to share similarly diverse experiences in our February 2014 and May 2014 articles. This Public Interest Pro Bono Interview Series is just one of many ways in which AHLA, through its Public Interest Committee, encourages and informs its members about the many ways in which health care attorneys can help the neediest in our communities. Visit www.healthlawyers.org/ probono for information on how to start a pro bono program in your own place of employment; resources at the state and local levels; information regarding national pro bono connections; and to read about AHLA s Pro Bono Champions. Their stories are truly inspiring and it s clear how each Champion s commitment to providing pro bono services has impacted the lives of one or many. If you know someone who has been actively involved in pro bono service and would be interested in sharing their experiences in these future articles, please contact me. Jennifer L. Touse Associate Counsel BayCare Health System Inc. Clearwater, FL Jennifer Touse (Jennifer.Touse@BayCare. org) is an Associate Counsel for BayCare Health System Inc., a leading communitybased health system in the Tampa Bay area with 12 not-for-profit hospitals numerous outpatient facilities and services, and over 20,000 employees. Ms. Touse is involved in negotiating physician employment and affiliation agreements, negotiating information technology agreements, addressing fraud and abuse matters, and handling other transactional matters. Jennifer received both her undergraduate and juris doctorate degrees from the University of Florida, graduating as valedictorian of her undergraduate class. 34 AHLA Connections November 2013
Justin Pitt, Vice President Litigation and Administration, Community Health Systems Professional Services Corporation, Franklin, TN Interviewed by T.J. Ferrante Associate, Carlton Fields, Tampa, FL 1How did you become involved with pro bono work? Since I graduated from law school, I ve always tried to do a lot of pro bono work. I started at a very small law firm, and we had a lot of people walk in needing help who didn t have the resources to pay for an attorney. It was difficult to turn so many people away so I ve always tried to make pro bono work a significant part of my practice. I took that approach with me when I moved to a big firm in Nashville and later to CHS. 2Please describe your initial involvement with the Williamson County Legal Aid Clinic. When I was in private practice in Nashville, I was involved with the Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands which provided a walk-in legal clinic once a month. Later, when I left my private law firm practice to work in-house for CHS, the Legal Aid Society contacted me to see if I would continue to volunteer with a new Williamson County Legal Aid Clinic (Clinic) they were starting up. I agreed and began volunteering at the Clinic once a month. One day, I had to explain to our General Counsel, Rachel Seifert that I needed to leave an important meeting in order to get to the Clinic on time. She became curious and started asking me questions about the Clinic. Eventually, she started attending walk-in clinics with me once a month as well. After both of us had been volunteering for a while, she decided that our Legal Department could partner with the Clinic to provide our in-house lawyers with a regular opportunity to provide pro bono assistance. The Clinic is now staffed with CHS lawyers every first Tuesday of the month. 3Please share a particular story of a pro bono client that you helped. The most meaningful case that I ve had through the Clinic occurred when I was standing outside the Clinic being interviewed by a local newspaper. There was an elderly gentleman sitting a few feet away who was listening to me intently during the interview. When the interview with the newspaper was over, he walked over and sat down with me and began to tell me his story about how he had been injured as a result of a toxic tort. I listed to this gentleman for almost two hours and as we started finishing up, he started weeping heavily not just a tear, but sobbing. He then looked at me and said that he had been dealing with this for about nine months and that I was the first person who had ever listened to him. This was one of those moments where I realized that, yes we are there to provide advice, yes we are there to try to help people with their legal problems and all the other things that attorneys do, but primarily, in legal aid clinics like this one, sometimes what people need most is just having someone to listen to them and treat them with dignity. 4What suggestions do you have for young attorneys who may be hesitant to get involved with pro bono activities because they feel they lack expertise? My advice is that pro bono cases are actually the best way to get that first experience. The best way to learn something is to do it. When I first came out of law school, I was in litigation, and I knew I needed courtroom experience. I knew that if I took a pro bono landlord/tenant case or a pro bono car accident case, or something similar, that I could go down to general sessions court and try that case within two months. Pro bono cases are the perfect cases for when you don t have a lot of experience. My advice for younger lawyers whose expertise is in health care law and are hesitant about taking a litigation case or a divorce case or another case outside of their area of expertise healthlawyers.org 35
would be to find someone in their law firm or professional network to be a sounding board. This doesn t mean you need to ask this person to partner with you on the case, but rather, just ask them to let you periodically bounce ideas off of them. 5Does your organization, CHS, provide any additional pro bono training? There are two kinds of training. The Legal Aid Society provides lawyers to walk us through how the process works at the Clinic. The other way we receive training is to pair up our new lawyers with a lawyer that has more pro bono experience for the first few Clinic sessions. This gives our new lawyers a feel for how the pro bono process works. I am thankful that CHS has always been very supportive of the Legal Department s pro bono initiatives. 6What advice do you have for young lawyers who are faced with challenges associated with time constraints? The biggest challenge when I was a younger associate in a big law firm was making my billable hours. To deal with this, I learned to let the partners I worked for know how many pro bono cases I had, what the cases were about, and why I was taking them. For example, if you take a pro bono case that s going to go to trial, my advice would be to approach your partners and explain to them that you re taking the pro bono case to gain trial experience and that trial experience will make you a more effective lawyer, while also assisting someone in need. You will get much more buy-in from a law firm when you are open and candid with your firm about what you are working on for pro bono and explain to the firm why it benefits the firm and benefits you professionally while also providing a service to the community. This may not completely do away with time constraints, but it will usually result in the law firm being more giving of its time. Ultimately, however, there is no getting away from the fact that taking on pro bono work as a young lawyer, especially in a large law firm, is a sacrifice. But we are fortunate people, and there are a lot of people out there whose lives are much harder than ours. I think it is incumbent upon us to make the time because there are so many people who need help. 7How do you estimate in advance the resources and time that a pro bono matter may take? Find the lawyers in your firm who appear to be doing a lot of pro bono work and pick their brains. People who do pro bono work tend to be passionate about it and are usually willing to talk about it. Talk to those people and you can often get advice and a sense from them of how much time a case will take. The other great resource is the full-time lawyers with your local legal aid society. When I moved to Nashville, I befriended one of the lawyers at the legal aid society. I would often approach her and let her know, for example, that I had about 20 to 30 hours in the next four months to dedicate to pro bono work and would ask whether there was anything in the pipeline that would fit that time commitment well. I would really encourage people to use their local legal aid society. It is a great resource and they are very helpful in helping you pick the right kind of case. 8Have you ever taken on a pro bono case or project that ended up being too much for you to handle alone? Yes. Once, I took on a divorce case that ended up having some difficult child custody issues. I finally reached a point in that case where I had to reach out to a friend of mine who worked at another law firm and was a full-time divorce lawyer. After a lot of begging and pleading, he agreed to help me with the case. When it comes down to it, you can t be afraid to ask for help when you think you need it. 9Do you have any Dos and Don ts when agreeing to pro bono representation? I think the biggest Do is to listen. You have to remember that a lot of potential pro bono clients are not sophisticated business people and do not understand the legal system. As a young lawyer, there were times when I did not listen long enough to my client and I jumped to the wrong conclusions. I think that with some pro bono clients, it takes a while to figure out what the real issues are. The other big Do is to treat your pro bono client like you would your other clients. Define the attorney-client relationship like you do with your other clients. Terminate the attorney-client relationship like you would with your other clients. Do this not only because they deserve to be treated that way, but also because it will serve you well. 36 AHLA Connections November 2013
If young professionals don t have a pro bono 10program in place where they work, what would you suggest that they do first to set up a pro bono program? If you are in an organization that doesn t already have a pro bono program, try to get one started. What I have found with respect to pro bono work is that most everybody deep down wants to do it, but many lawyers believe they don t know how to do it. For example, a HIPAA lawyer may be afraid to branch out into a courtroom or may not know how he can otherwise contribute. If you want to make a difference, figure out the how. I think that if you figure out the how, not only will other lawyers in your firm participate, but I believe your company will be more likely to participate. People want to do good; they just need to figure out the how. What general advice can you give to young 11health care lawyers? Make sure that your pro bono work puts you in actual contact with people in need. These are the people who come into your client s hospitals. These are the people who walk into your physician client s offices. These are your client s clients. I think this type of pro bono work gives you a fantastic perspective and experience and really teaches you how to listen. Also, on a bigger scale, even though we are all worried about billable hours and advancing our careers, it is important to remember that pro bono activities will give you an overwhelming sense of perspective. Often, I ll hear myself or one of our other lawyers grumble about going to the Clinic and the drive across town after work, fighting rush hour traffic, to get there, but the day after, we are always grateful that we went to the Clinic. Justin Pitt (justin_pitt@chs.net) currently serves as Vice President of Litigation and Administration at Community Health Systems Professional Services Corporation (CHS). Justin Pitt joined CHS in 2009 after nine years of private practice in commercial litigation, health law and government relations. He provides litigation and operational support for multiple divisions and departments and is responsible for the legal department s administrative matters. Pitt received his undergraduate degree, cum laude, from Carson-Newman College, and his law degree from Washington University (Order of the Coif), where he was a William Webster Fellow. He is a current member and former Chairman of the Tennessee Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance. Mr. Pitt is an active AHLA member and serves on the Dispute Resolution Council. Thomas (T.J.) Ferrante (TFerrante@ carltonfields.com) focuses his practice on a wide range of transactional and related regulatory issues for health industry clients, including for-profit and not-for-profit hospitals and health systems, multi-specialty physician practice groups, and long-term care providers. He also advises health care clients in all aspects of federal and state regulatory matters and handles federal and state tax matters with respect to individual, corporate, tax exempt organization, and pass-through entities. Mr. Ferrante received a BA in Philosophy in Spanish from the College of the Holy Cross (2007) in Worcester, MA, and an MBA in Finance from the Sykes College of Business at the University of Tampa (2009). Mr. Ferrante then received his JD (2011) and LLM in Taxation (2012) from Boston University School of Law. healthlawyers.org 37
Bradley M. Thompson Epstein Becker & Green PC, Washington, DC Interviewed by Lauren DeWitt Associate, Weber Gallagher, Warren, NJ 1Why did you initially become involved in pro bono work? It was my Christian faith that initially prompted me to get involved in pro bono work. I felt called to help people in my community who might otherwise not have access to legal representation. I became involved with the Gospel Justice Initiative (www.gji.org), which allowed me to utilize my legal skills, along with my Christian beliefs, to help others. The Gospel Justice Initiative connects experienced attorneys who volunteer to provide legal services to society s most vulnerable and underrepresented populations through Christian legal clinics (also known as Justice Centers ). The Gospel Justice Initiative also provides attorneys with a framework to support and sustain a Christian legal clinic in their area. At this point, we have 50 Christian legal clinics in the United States, and our goal is to establish 1,000 clinics. 2What type of skills do you rely on most in your pro bono work? I find I utilize vastly different skills in my pro bono work than I do in my food and drug practice, drawing primarily upon my human relations skills. The single most important thing I can do for a client is to listen to them. I have learned how important it is that you show pro bono clients that you care; intently listening will generally do that on its own. As a pro bono attorney, you have to allow the client enough space to share their story. I give the clients the opportunity to share with me everything that they feel they need to in conveying their reason for seeking the clinic s assistance. I can talk with a client for an hour or more and wind up with one or two paragraphs of legally relevant facts, but it is important that they feel like they have been heard. Follow-up questions are also important, and that is where I utilize more of my traditional legal skills. I figure out what are the best questions to ask, identify potential legal issues and forward the client on to the resource that would most benefit them. 3Please describe an unexpected benefit of the pro bono work that you do. I have gained humility and an increased ability to empathize from my involvement with pro bono work. Through my involvement at the Christian legal clinics, I have the opportunity to understand better what people struggle with in this country. As lawyers, we are a privileged group of people and we do not always recognize that. 4What suggestions do you have for young attorneys who may be hesitant to get involved in pro bono activities because they feel they lack expertise? My advice would be to find organizations where you do not necessarily need expertise. There are not many opportunities to practice food and drug law on a pro bono level. Legal clinics formed through the Gospel Justice Initiative utilize a three step process. First there is an intake screening, the client is then routed to the department within the clinic that focuses on that area of the law, and finally, the client may be routed to someone in our network of volunteer attorneys who specialize in various areas of the law. I do the intake on Saturdays at my local legal clinic. Doing the intake has given me the opportunity to help people without having any expertise in the particular area of law pertinent to that client. I utilize those skills that we all have as lawyers: listening, questioning, critical thinking and identifying issues. I work with a team of people and together we try to meet the client s needs. Sometimes the clients don t need legal help but rather need guidance on where they can obtain social services or assistance of another kind. For example, one day while doing intake at the clinic an 80-year-old woman hobbled into my office using a walker. She had severe diabetes, with all of the side effects that accompany the advanced stage, including loss of eyesight and loss of the function of her extremities. I asked her how we could help her. She took some crumpled papers out of her purse, and spread them on the table in front of me. She explained that because of her eyesight she couldn t read them very well. She offered 38 AHLA Connections November 2013
her general understanding that they were from the Board of Health, and that they were condemning her home. I looked at the papers, and they indeed said her home was going to be condemned. I asked her how this had come to be. She explained that a nice woman from the Board of Health came to visit her, and had asked to look around. This inspector noted conditions around her house that needed fixing, and this paper arrived sometime later. I got excited. As a food and drug lawyer, in nearly every case for the clinic, I don t know a darn thing that is useful. However, I do know something about the power of government agencies on health matters. Immediately, my mind starts going through Supreme Court case law on the requirements for lawful inspection. So I start brainstorming out loud with this woman, and she just looks at me confused. Then she states that she wants to make sure that I understand that all of the things that the inspector found broken are indeed broken. I explained that as an attorney, I will decide whether the conditions do in fact meet the requirements. She continues to just look at me puzzled and perhaps with a bit of pity. I go back into my thinking mode about how I m going to challenge this inspection, and then there s the small voice from my right side. The paralegal who has been sitting there says she has an idea. She has a friend at her church who is willing to help the elderly with basic home maintenance for free. He spends a couple hours each weekend fixing broken stuff to help out the elderly if they re all alone. My paralegal is looking at the individual items on the list and explaining how relatively simple it would be to fix them. Well, I say, that s another way to go, so I asked the client which she would prefer. She opts for the handyman route. That experience highlights how expertise is not always the most important thing. In that instance I had expertise in that specific area of the law but the legal route was not necessarily in the client s best interest. Rather through working with my teammate and drawing on community resources we were able to help this client and improve her quality of life. 5If young professionals don t have a pro bono program in place where they work, what would you suggest that they do first to set up a pro bono program or to provide pro bono service on their own? I would suggest young professionals never work alone in doing pro bono work. We are stronger when we work together and it makes us more effective in providing assistance to populations in need when we have others with varying expertise and skills to draw upon. That is what I find so helpful about the Gospel Justice Initiative; it helps connect attorneys interested in pro bono work with other like-minded individuals in their area. The Gospel Justice Initiative gives classes on how to organize Christian legal clinics and advice on best practices for free legal programs. This allows an individual attorney to spearhead an effort but not without guidance, assistance and a network of individuals that they can call upon should they need help. 6Do you have any other advice for young professionals about pro bono work? We are all busy and it is difficult to fit pro bono work into our busy practices. However, you should never lessen quality to get the job done. You should always do the best job you can do and the best job that can be done under the circumstances. You will get a great amount of personal satisfaction from doing pro bono work and doing it well. Bradley Merrill Thompson (bthompson@ebglaw.com) is a shareholder in the law firm of Epstein Becker & Green PC. There he counsels medical device, drug, and combination product companies on a wide range of FDA regulatory and reimbursement issues. At the firm, Mr. Thompson leads the Medical Device Regulatory Practice, the Clinical Trials Practice and the Connected Health Practice, and serves on the firm s Health & Life Sciences Steering Committee. Mr. Thompson has taught food & drug law at Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis and Columbia Law School and serves on several editorial boards. In 2013, Mr. Thompson is serving on a congressionallyauthorized federal advisory committee called the Food and Drug Administration Safety Innovation Act (FDASIA) Workgroup. That workgroup is charged with providing expert input to FDA, ONC, and the FCC on a regulatory framework for health information technology, including mobile medical applications. On that workgroup, Mr. Thompson serves as co-chair of the Regulations sub-workgroup. Mr. Thompson has written extensively on the topics of medical device regulation. He was included in 100 Notable People in the Medical Device Industry, has earned an AV rating in Martindale Hubble (its highest rating), has been named a SuperLawyer in Indiana and Washington DC, has been elected as a Fellow in the American Bar Foundation and is listed in Chambers USA: A Guide to America s Leading Business Lawyers. Mr. Thompson received his BA cum laude, and an MBA from the University of Illinois and his JD cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School. Lauren A. DeWitt (ldewitt@wglaw.com) is an Associate at Weber Gallagher in Warren, NJ. She represents health care providers in regulatory and transactional matters. Lauren also represents health care providers in medical professional liability cases. Her clients include acute care facilities, long-term care facilities, physicians, nurses and technicians. She is a graduate of Seton Hall University School of Law and Rutgers University. healthlawyers.org 39
Kathy Cerminara Nova Southeastern University, Davie, FL Interviewed by Amy Sanders Associate, Bass Berry & Sims PLC, Nashville, TN How and why did you choose to become 1 involved with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) awareness and research? The child of a marine, my respect for military personnel and veterans runs deep. My father returned from Korea physically and mentally intact, his good fortune growing increasingly apparent to me as I noticed that certain symptoms were prevalent in other soldiers and veterans. I met veterans living on a spectrum with an inexplicable tipping point one was institutionalized due to mental health issues, another lived in his car because he was unable to ease back into life at home. I saw how easily Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) could rob soldiers and veterans of the respect they deserve. The National Institute of Mental Health recognizes PTSD as an invisible brain injury that changes or damages the body s natural fightor-flight response. The Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Education recently committed to integrating and sharing research in order to accelerate progress on the issue at a national level. As a law professor at Nova Southeastern University (NSU) Shepard Broad Law Center, I m trying to tackle the issue from a community angle. The Wounds of War symposium, which I organized with my colleague Olympia Duhart, also a law professor, grew out of a collective effort at NSU to focus on veterans issues. Another project is still in the works: we are launching a veterans clinic at the NSU Law Center in the early months of 2014, which I hope will develop into a medical/legal partnership to address legal and mental health issues simultaneously. Mental health issues can trigger legal issues you can t fix the whole problem if you only fix the legal problem. 2What suggestions do you have for young attorneys who may be hesitant to get involved with veterans issues or other pro bono activities because they feel they lack expertise? All lawyers start somewhere. There s a first time for everything. Ask questions of others who know the field, and do your research. I recall feeling overwhelmed and terrified about a pro bono paternity case I took on while working as an associate in the litigation department of a law firm. The firm s pro bono efforts centered on paternity cases, so, moving past my fear that I lacked useful skills, I asked others for advice. Higher level associates and a few partners passed along information that quieted the overwhelming feeling. I learned you have to jump in and represent the client (after sufficient preparation) to move past the feeling of being terrified. 3Please tell us about the teamwork behind your pro bono efforts. The year before I became involved with this project, our school decided to launch a law review symposium series. The faculty member who organized the first symposium, Michael Dale, suggested PTSD as a focus of the second symposium. I was immediately attracted to the idea because of the great need for increased awareness and appreciation of the special issues faced by veterans and active-duty military personnel with PTSD. The area was a nice fit for me because of my health law expertise, and it was a nice fit for Professor Duhart, because of her focus on social justice in her work and writing. It was also a great way to spark the interest of students and teach them about veterans issues before we launched the clinic. Some of them might eventually work in the clinic. Also, fortuitous timing allowed the day to be capped off by the hiring announcement of a staff attorney for the clinic. The team behind the PTSD symposium stretched beyond the walls of the school, though, and helped to form lasting 40 AHLA Connections November 2013
relationships. The event so impressed the judge of our county mental health court and the judge of our veterans court that they have both returned to assist with other projects in which I ve been involved. 4Without disclosing any confidential information, can you tell us about someone whom you have helped through your efforts? A student came to me after the symposium to share his own PTSD stories, and explained he was inspired to help others who are struggling. Just talking about the issue is a step forward. The staff attorney NSU hired for the clinic noted that veterans returning from recent missions to places like Iraq represented a new era of veteran. They have served in multiple combat tours, yet they come back and are still so young they are in graduate education programs or begin serving at the professional level so soon after combat. 5What is your favorite memory from this experience and/or what are you most proud of? My favorite memory is the audience s reaction to a slide show featuring Pulitzer-Prize-winning photographs. It silenced everyone with its images of an Iraq veteran s small victories over PTSD contrasted with moments of startling despair. You could hear a pin drop in the large auditorium. I m most proud of the combination of speakers at the symposium. We had a member of active-duty military, a veteran who shared his PTSD struggles for the first time, the most noted expert on PTSD-related suicide in the country, a high-level expert in the Department of Defense, and many non-lawyer participants. Several veterans were seated in the audience and added further insight, thanks to the publicity of the event through a local veteran s hospital. I think this gave the audience a well-rounded look at PTSD and the issues it raises. 6What benefit are you hoping the veteran s clinic brings to the community? It s informative to look to an existing program in our area: one symposium panelist was the judge of the Broward County Veterans Court, a pretrial diversion program designed for veterans struggling with PTSD. Instead of doling out punishment for breaking the law, veterans courts recognize that a veteran s unlawful actions may be caused by PTSD and try to help veterans find therapeutic alternatives. I believe in the principle of cooperative representation the law can and should work hand in hand with other professions to assist in improving mental health. The law school is just one part of a university campus that has many services that could potentially benefit veterans. 7How is your pro bono work different from your day-to-day work? How do you transition between the two? It is both different from and similar to my day-to-day work. The time spent conceptualizing, planning, and putting on this symposium was different from my classroom teaching in that it took place very much in private or in one-on-one conversations and email exchanges with others. In that way, it s a bit like the part of my job that involves writing scholarly articles another relatively solitary activity. To be a teacher, you have to be on during class, almost like an actor going onstage or a trial lawyer going into trial. This planning was much more about research and about being detail-oriented, which is what I have to do with my scholarship. 8Did the school provide any additional training that helped you? No training, but it did provide the most amazing resource in the form of our director of communications and special events, Jennifer Jarema. Once Professor Duhart and I had conceptualized our program and identified the participants, all we had to do was to secure their agreement to participate. Jennifer produced the brochure, handled travel arrangements, booked rooms she did all the groundwork. 9How has your pro bono service made you a better professor? It s reawakened an interest in me in therapeutic jurisprudence, the legal theory that asserts that the law should work toward good psychological functioning of its citizens. Becoming more familiar with PTSD and its effects and learning more about the veterans court and other ways the law could be more therapeutic toward those with PTSD has inspired me to raise such issues with my students. Aside from time constraints, what is the 10biggest challenge that you face in your pro bono work? Honestly, the biggest challenge can be getting help from others which I understand, as sometimes it s difficult to volunteer my own time and effort. That said, there s a lot of good will to be had when people learn that you support veterans in their efforts to get on with their lives after returning from duty. We owe so much to those who help protect us and our freedoms; many people are happy to support those who help them. healthlawyers.org 41
Professor Kathy Cerminara (cerminarak@nsu.law.nova.edu) bridges the medical and legal professions with her work on patients rights in the end-of-life decision-making arena. She co-authors the nationally known treatise, The Right to Die: The Law of End-of-Life Decisionmaking, and is a reviewer for several medical and medical-legal journals. Her scholarship most recently has focused on the intersection between end-of-life care, palliative care, and health care coverage policy. At the Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad Law Center, she is a full professor and serves as Director of Faculty Development. Professor Cerminara teaches Torts, Health Policy, Bioethics & Quality of Care, Administrative Law, Civil Procedure, and other health-law-related courses. She also created and was the initial director of the online Master of Science in Health Law program for non-lawyers. Prior to joining the Law Center faculty, Professor Cerminara taught at St. Thomas University School of Law and the University of Miami School of Law, clerked in the Western District of Pennsylvania and the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and practiced law with Reed Smith Shaw & McClay in Pittsburgh, PA. Professor Cerminara received her JD, magna cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh and her LLM and JSD from Columbia University. She is an affiliate member of the Health Law and Tort Trial and Insurance sections of The Florida Bar, a retired member of the Pennsylvania Bar, and a member of the American Bar Association, the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics and the American Health Lawyers Association. Amy Sanders (asanders@bassberry.com) is an associate at Bass Berry & Sims PLC in Nashville, TN. She focuses on operational, regulatory and transactional work for health care providers ranging from hospitals and urgent care centers to home health providers and hospice. Before joining the firm s health care group, Amy gained experience at the Tennessee Department of Health and Vanderbilt University s Center for Patient and Professional Advocacy. Ms. Sanders earned her law degree from Vanderbilt University. She attended Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario and received an Ontario College Graduate Certificate in Journalism: New Media and attended The University of Western Ontario where she received a BA in Media, Information and Technoculture. Callling Emerging Professionals and Student Members FREE Brown Bag Webinars for AHLA Members co-sponsored by AHLA s Young Professionals Council, Advisory Council on Diversity, Mentoring Committee, and the Women s Network What I Know Now that I Wish I Knew Then: Career Choices in a Firm, Government and In-House Setting held October 16, 2013 If you missed this Brown Bag, you can listen to the MP3 recording by going to www.healthlawyers.org/ YP. Look for the article about this informative and revealing conversation from our panel of esteemed faculty in the December issue of AHLA Connections. Upcoming Brown Bag webinars include the following: Job Search Strategies for the Law Student to be held on Wednesday, January 15, 2014 Handling Job Transitions for the Young Professional: When and Why Is it Best to Make Your Move to be held on Wednesday, January 29, 2014 Managing Expectations and Workplace Culture: Frank Conversations for Young Professionals to be held on Wednesday, March 12, 2014 BROWN BAGS Registration information will be available soon. Check back to this magazine next month or go to www.healthlawyers.org/yp. 42 AHLA Connections November 2013