‘Ripe for Disruption’: 4 Female Attorneys Co-Found Health Law Strategists
Everett Catts
"We want to eliminate the model of where I succeed at the expense of someone else and [instead] create more of a teamwork model and work collaborative and have one another’s back to meet client demands but also to meet life demands," said founding partner Laurice Rutledge Lambert.
Four female attorneys have co-founded a new boutique firm in Atlanta devoted to practicing health care law in an innovative way.
Health Law Strategists (HLS) had its soft opening on Feb. 1 and officially opened on Monday. The firm is led by founding partners Laurice Rutledge Lambert and Kathlynn “Kathy” Butler Polvino, partner Jennifer P. Whitton and special counsel Roxanna D. Tatman. Tatman will work out of Albany, and the rest will be in Atlanta. The quartet has more than 75 years of combined experience as licensed attorneys.
Prior to founding HLS, Polvino and Tatman both worked at its predecessor firm, KBP Law, which Polvino founded in 2016; Lambert was the top in-house counsel at Trellis Rx LLC; and Whitton was at Krevolin Horst. Lambert said the firm was started for two reasons.
“Number one is we really feel the legal industry is ripe for disruption,” she said. “There is a lot of legal technology, but that’s not the full solution to the problem. It’s not that there’s not a place for big law firms or boutique firms or contract help, but we want to eliminate the model of where I succeed at the expense of someone else and [instead] create more of a teamwork model and work collaborative and have one another’s back to meet client demands but also to meet life demands.”
Polvino noted that the firm was founded “because we see a gap in the healthcare delivery market,” adding larger firms’ rates have gotten so high that many healthcare clients, including nonprofit health systems, sole community providers, physician groups and startups, can no longer afford them.
“There will always be a need for what we call the national healthcare law firms … but the middle-market firms, we are hearing from our clients, are pricing themselves out of the market,” she said. “So there is this gap as healthcare focuses more on collaborations, partnerships and value, [and] the industry is looking for the same from their attorneys. That’s where we fit in.”
While Lambert and Polvino said they’re already recruiting other attorneys to join HLS and there’s no cap on how many lawyers the firm could have on staff, they plan to keep it manageable. Polvino said HLS’ expansion could be modeled after the growth she, Lambert and Whitton experienced when all three worked at McKenna Long & Aldridge in Atlanta, where a five-person health-care law team grew to 25 before the entire group departed for BakerHostetler in 2015 just before McKenna merged with Dentons.
Unlike other firms, Polvino added, HLS plans to hire special counsel earlier in their careers than most firms do. As a women-owned firm with an eye on diversity, equity and inclusion, it’s already applied for certification with both the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council and the National Association of Minority- and Women-Owned Law Firms.
Lambert said HLS will give its attorneys, especially working mothers, the flexibility to work as many or few hours per week they want.
“It’s important, because the other law firm models out there often disadvantage individuals that are balancing competing professional and personal demands on their time,” she said. “We want to ensure people that want to practice law for sophisticated clients but are balancing or juggling competing priorities have the opportunities to do so in a way that works for them. …
“There’s a way to partner with larger institutional clients, such as hospitals and health systems, and provide excellent legal services through a team-based approach that meets clients demands and also leverages talent that might otherwise be underutilized.”