Editor’s Note: A recent article in Bloomberg Law, summarized below, spotlights Manatt Health’s unique professional services model, blending legal and strategic business support—and examines why this innovative approach has been successful in helping clients respond effectively in an environment of constant change. Click here to download the full article free.
Manatt Health was created about 15 years ago. The idea for our integrated model sprang from listening carefully to our clients and realizing that their legal challenges often could not be fully resolved without a deeper understanding of their underlying business needs, missions and strategic priorities. This imperative is even more pronounced today, as we face a time of unparalleled change in what it means to provide healthcare, unprecedented market volatility, and ever-evolving legal and regulatory requirements that are reshaping the way our country pays for and delivers healthcare services.
Today, Manatt Health consists of about 160 lawyers and consultants with expertise in strategy, business, policy, communications and IT. We serve a diverse set of stakeholders across the healthcare ecosystem in more than 30 states.
Rejecting the Status Quo
Helping our clients anticipate, respond to and, in some cases, catalyze change defines our work. For many clients, maintaining the status quo is a prescription for failure. Survival requires reinventing their business models; forming new partnerships; defending their innovations from competitive encroachment; and redefining relationships with their customers, employees, regulators and communities.
Our own reinvention is a direct reflection of our clients’ rejection of the status quo—and their need for something more than traditional law firms offer, from more market intelligence to greater business savvy to stronger connections to state and federal policymaking. Our interdisciplinary team solves problems and manages change more effectively for our clients. Our professionals possess diverse skills, a strong sense of mission and a common passion for improving the healthcare system. To attract and retain this top talent, we have transformed our culture, successfully melding the skill sets of our legal and consulting professionals to produce more value for our customers than the sum of their parts.
Legal, Consulting Services Knitted Together
Manatt Health’s legal and consulting services are knitted together in a way that makes each indispensable to the other in serving our clients. Significantly, our governance, staffing models, compensation and client services have evolved to support our commitment to a multidisciplinary professional services model. But reinventing our healthcare practice was not an easy task. We had to overcome major obstacles, including lawyers’ fears of diluting their value, customer confusion and market resistance to a dramatically new approach.
While these obstacles haven’t completely disappeared, we are confident that our vision is working for our clients and for our team. Our work is more meaningful—and our clients are more engaged, as we partner with them to shape, rather than simply react to, the rapid changes in healthcare.
In fact, the enthusiastic client response to our new interdisciplinary model has inspired Manatt to expand our integrated approach to other highly regulated industries, such as finance, digital technology and real estate. While each industry is unique, we believe an integrated professional services model holds great promise for the future, as long as we continue to listen carefully to our clients and give them what they need.