Policy & Compliance

Expert Analysis

• Bar Score Is Best Hiring Metric Post-Affirmative Action

  

  After the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling striking down affirmative action admissions policies, law firms looking to foster diversity in hiring should view an applicant's Multistate Bar Examination score as the best metric of legal ability — over law school name or GPA, says attorney Alice Griffin.

• Preparing For The Future Of Virtual Direct Supervision

  

  The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services are expected to make an announcement soon about the future of virtual direct supervision, which has the potential to either add permanent flexibility to Medicare payment policy or cause some satellite centers to become unviable virtually overnight, say attorneys at Bass Berry.

• Ghosting In BigLaw: How To Come Back From Lack Of Feedback

  

  Junior associates can feel powerless when senior colleagues cut off contact instead of providing useful feedback, but young attorneys can get back on track by focusing on practical professional development and reexamining their career priorities, says Rachel Patterson at Orrick.

• How Spending Clause Ruling May Affect Medicaid Litigation

  

  The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Health and Hospital Corp. v. Talevski preserves an important avenue for health providers and beneficiaries to use the Civil Rights Act to sue state Medicaid agencies in a landscape that has steadily narrowed potential paths for challenging state violations of spending clause legislation, say attorneys at Hooper Lundy.

• Steps To Success For Senior Associates

  Excerpt from Practical Guidance

  

  Adriana Paris at Rissman Barrett discusses the increased responsibilities and opportunities that becoming a senior associate brings and what attorneys in this role should prioritize to flourish in this stressful but rewarding next level in their careers.

• Legal Profession Must Do More For Lawyers With Disabilities

  

  At the start of Disability Pride month, Rosalyn Richter at Arnold & Porter looks at why lawyers with disabilities are significantly underrepresented in private practice, asserting that law firms and other employers must do more to conquer the implicit bias that deters attorneys from seeking accommodations.

• Scope Of FTC's Health Info Enforcement May Expand

  

  The Federal Trade Commission's proposed amendments to the Health Breach Notification Rule signal the agency's mounting efforts to regulate consumer health information beyond the reaches of the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act, which does not cover many recent health apps and technologies, say Jodi Daniel and Brandon Ge at Crowell & Moring.

• Appellate Funding Disclosure: No Mandate Is Right Choice

  

  The Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules' recent decision, forgoing a mandatory disclosure rule for litigation funding in federal appeals, is prudent, as third-party funding is only involved in a minuscule number of federal cases, and courts have ample authority to obtain funding information if necessary, says Stewart Ackerly at Statera Capital.

• How NY Law Affects Scrutiny Of Health Care PE Transactions

  

  A recently passed New York law will strengthen pretransanction notification requirements for health care entities — particularly those backed by private equity — but contains several ambiguities that will hopefully be clarified before the law takes effect in August, say attorneys at Norton Rose.

• Health Care Info Blocking Rule Changes To Watch For

  

  As the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology proposes certain revisions to the federal information blocking rules, health IT developers should be aware of the potentially beneficial changes to come, but frustrated stakeholders continue to endure the current environment while awaiting the final enforcement rules, say attorneys at Sheppard Mullin.

• Drug Pricing Law Could Have Unintended Consequences

  

  Though the Inflation Reduction Act was intended to lower prescription drug prices, it may have a number of unintended economic effects on drug pricing and access, particularly for biologics and biosimilars, and could even lead to certain price increases, say Alice Chen at the University of Southern California and Andrew Elzinga and Penka Kovacheva at Cornerstone Research.

• How Attys Can Avoid Exposing Their Firms To Cyberattacks

  

  Attorneys are the weakest link in their firms' cyberdefenses because hackers often exploit the gap between individuals’ work and personal cybersecurity habits, but there are some steps lawyers can take to reduce the risks they create for their employers, say Mark Hurley and Carmine Cicalese at Digital Privacy & Protection.

• CMS Stark Law Waiver Fixes Gap In COVID Era Protections

  

  Recently, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services retroactively included independent freestanding emergency departments in Section 1135 waivers applicable to the Stark Law during the pandemic, a welcome correction to a regulatory shortcoming inconsistent with CMS' initial assurances of protection, say attorneys at McDermott.