Health Law Concentration

Program Overview

In the Health Law Concentration, students learn the law and skills needed to represent individual and institutional clients, such as hospitals, in a wide variety of litigation and non-litigation settings related to health care access, health care quality, and the practice of medicine. Students learn relevant practical skills in the Concentration classroom component through role-playing exercises and simulations, as well as in their externship placements and during weekly rounds discussions.

Highlights of Health Law Concentration

• Interviewing and counseling a client about advance health care directives and drafting a health care proxy and living will for that client
  
  
• Representing a client in an administrative hearing to recover wrongfully denied Medicaid benefits
  
  
• Drafting comments on a set of legislative proposals to reduce Medicaid spending without reducing the quality of care
  
  
• Drafting a complaint in a lawsuit against a managed care plan for denying coverage for a client's life saving surgery
  
  
• Drafting an interoffice memo analyzing whether a hospital violated the Americans With Disabilities Act by denying a sign language interpreter to a deaf client in need of mental health treatment
  
  
• Interning at a legal organization, law firm, or government agency that focuses on an area of health law, such as mental health law, HIV, medical malpractice, or Medicaid and Medicare rights, or focuses on particular lawyering skills, such as trial practice, legal writing, legislative advocacy, or advising an institutional client (such as a hospital) of particular interest to the student