Expert Analysis

• Opinion

  This Election, We Need To Talk About Court Process

  

  In recent decades, the U.S. Supreme Court has markedly transformed judicial processes — from summary judgment standards to notice pleadings — which has, in turn, affected individuals’ substantive rights, and we need to consider how the upcoming presidential election may continue this pattern, says Reuben Guttman at Guttman Buschner.

• Navigating HHS' New Reproductive Healthcare Privacy Rule

  

  The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' new final rule regarding protections for the privacy of reproductive health information will require regulated entities to grapple with difficult questions about whether to comply with state law requirements or federal privacy prohibitions, says Christine Chasse at Spencer Fane.

• Mental Health Parity Rules: Tips For Plans And Issuers

  

  Following federal agencies' release of final mental health parity rules, plan sponsors and health insurance issuers should develop protocols for preparing compliant nonquantitative treatment limitation comparative analyses, say attorneys at Ropes & Gray.

• Series

  Playing Diplomacy Makes Us Better Lawyers

  

  Similar to the practice of law, the rules of Diplomacy — a strategic board game set in pre-World War I Europe — are neither concise nor without ambiguity, and weekly gameplay with our colleagues has revealed the game's practical applications to our work as attorneys, say Jason Osborn and Ben Bevilacqua at Winston & Strawn.

• Mental Health First Aid: A Brief Primer For Attorneys

  

  Amid a growing body of research finding that attorneys face higher rates of mental illness than the general population, firms should consider setting up mental health first aid training programs to help lawyers assess mental health challenges in their colleagues and intervene with compassion, say psychologists Shawn Healy and Tracey Meyers.

• Opinion

  FTC's Report Criticizing Drug Middlemen Is Flawed

  

  The Federal Trade Commission's July report, which claims that pharmacy benefit managers are inflating drug costs, does not offer a credible analysis of PBMs, and its methodology lacks rigor, says Jay Ezrielev at Elevecon.

• Series

  Collecting Art Makes Me A Better Lawyer

  

  The therapeutic aspects of appreciating and collecting art improve my legal practice by enhancing my observation skills, empathy, creativity and cultural awareness, says attorney Michael McCready.

• Plan Sponsors Must Prep For New Mental Health, Drug Rules

  

  To comply with newly published health insurance rules requiring parity between access to mental health and substance use services compared to medical and surgical services, employers with self-insured plans will need to update third-party administrator agreements and collect data, among other compliance steps, say attorneys at Kilpatrick.

• Navigating The Complexities Of Cyber Incident Reporting

  

  When it comes to cybersecurity incident response plans, the uptick in the number and targets of legal and regulatory actions emphasizes the necessity for businesses to document the facts underlying the assumptions, complexities and obstacles of their decisions during the incident response, say attorneys at Troutman Pepper.

• Takeaways From Novo Nordisk's Fight For Market Exclusivity

  

  Generic competitors’ challenge to Novo Nordisk’s patents in hopes of capturing a portion of the rapidly expanding Type 2 diabetes and obesity treatment market highlights the role of abbreviated new drug application litigation, inter partes review and multidistrict litigation in patent defense, says Pedram Sameni at Patexia.

• Secret Service Failures Offer Lessons For Private Sector GCs

  

  The Secret Service’s problematic response to two assassination attempts against former President Donald Trump this summer provides a crash course for general counsel on how not to handle crisis communications, says Keith Nahigian at Nahigian Strategies.

• A Primer On Navigating The Conrad 30 Immigration Program

  

  As the Conrad 30 program opens its annual window to help place immigrant physicians in medically underserved areas, employers and physicians engaged in the process must carefully understand the program's nuanced requirements, say Andrew Desposito and Greg Berk at Sheppard Mullin.

• Defending AI, Machine Learning Patents In Life Sciences

  

  Ten years after the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Alice v. CLS Bank, artificial intelligence and machine learning technology remain at risk for Alice challenges, but reviewing recent cases can help life sciences companies avoid common pitfalls and successfully defend their patents, say attorneys at Mintz.

• Litigation Inspiration: Honoring Your Learned Profession

  

  About 30,000 people who took the bar exam in July will learn they passed this fall, marking a fitting time for all attorneys to remember that they are members in a specialty club of learned professionals — and the more they can keep this in mind, the more benefits they will see, says Bennett Rawicki at Hilgers Graben.

• FTC Focus: How Scrutiny Of PBMs And Insulin May Play Out

  

  Should Express Scripts' recent judicial challenge to the Federal Trade Commission succeed, any new targets could add litigation and choice of forum to their playbooks, and potential FTC court action on insulin could be forced to parallel venues as the issues between the commission and PBMs evolve, say attorneys at Proskauer.