Southeast Michigan Firms Log Thousands of Non Billable Hours Over Health Care Reform

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According to the April 4 Crain’s Detroit Business article, many Southeast Michigan law firms are putting together teams of lawyers to thoroughly study the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Enacted last month, the health care reform legislation is approximately 2,600 pages long.

None of the thousands of hours the firms have put, and will put, into research, developing internal business strategies and briefings for trade groups of affected businesses, preparing for seminars and the like to educate themselves and others, are billable to clients.

Examples of firms preparing to tackle the legislation include Detroit based Butzel Long, P.C. and Grand Rapids based Warner Norcross & Judd L.L.P. Both recently assigned teams to study various provisions of the bill.

  

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Mark Wilson, health care section leader at Detroit-based Miller, Canfield, Paddock and Stone P.L.C., also estimates health care reform accounts for 1,000 hours or so of attorney research and client calls at the firm, which has assembled a task force of 10 attorneys to research the new law.

“For right now a lot of what we’d call our R&D work on the bill just becomes part of the overhead cost of running a law firm,” said Wilson.