Law Office Management
May 2, 2008
Doctor of Law-and Medicine
To reach my childhood dream of becoming a doctor, I had been following a pretty regimented path. But after three years of being a "slave" resident, I decided to go to law school.
I cannot believe you are going to the dark side!" said my good friend and colleague. "You better promise never to sue doctors."
I had just finished explaining why I was going to become a lawyer instead of pursuing a medical fellowship or a position as a physician like the rest of my coresidents.
Eighteen months earlier, the idea of doing something else, especially law, was not even in the equation. Although I didn't realize it at the time, my radical decision was really an exercise of power and autonomy. To reach my childhood dream of becoming a doctor, I had been following a pretty regimented path. But after three years of being a "slave" resident-not to mention the seven years of college and medical school-I began to loathe the idea that my life was following a rigid script.
My very first day as a resident was in the Allen Pavilion emergency room at Columbia University Medical Center, now New YorkPresbyterian Hospital. The year was 2000-a hot time for biotech companies and the peak of managed health care. All of this change was intriguing, yet all of it was happening either to me or around me.
I was a 25-year-old resident trying to establish authority in an emergency room where many of the nurses and staff had been practicing since before I was born. Despite being the least-experienced, lowest-paid, and youngest person in the ER, I was responsible for managing the ER staff and for the health and well-being of numerous patients.
The challenge of adapting my medical "book knowledge" into clinical skills was daunting but ultimately fulfilling. What I didn't enjoy were certain nonclinical aspects of my residency. When Insurance Company X said that an MRI our team ordered was "not indicated," I felt terrible telling the patient's family they would to have to pay for the test out of pocket. The prospect of feeling that powerless every day for the next 30 or so years finally drove me to do something. I thought about pursuing a masters degree in public health, but after talking with my adviser and others, I became convinced that a law degree would be far more empowering. So, after being accepted to Stanford Law School, I packed my bags and headed west. I had no idea what it meant to be a lawyer, other than the fact that I had blamed the legal profession for our country's broken heath care system. I thought one of the reasons we had managed care and limited access to health care was that lawyers were always suing doctors.
By the end of my first semester of law school, I realized that my earlier assessments had been dreadfully inadequate. In addition, my already shaky do-something plan was rapidly crumbling (along with my naiveté). When summer employment time came around, I also realized I had no idea how to combine my legal education with my medical background. But as fate would have it, Weil, Gotshal & Manges was interviewing 1Ls on campus. I hadn't really been considering working at a law firm, so I didn't sign up for an interview. But, luckily, a classmate dropped her slot at the last moment and I quickly snagged it.
I hired on as a summer associate and soon stumbled across my next revelation about the law-I was now where the "players" were: Mergers and acquisitions, private equity, and complex commercial litigation were all at my fingertips. But not until I spent time in the patent-litigation group did my plan start to look somewhat coherent. Here was a field where someone with a science background could flourish.
As the summer came to a close and my student loans mounted, I realized I needed to get a job to stay enrolled in law school. So I took a part-time position in the emergency room at Veterans Hospital in Palo Alto. After my one-year hiatus from practicing medicine, I brought with me a new perspective on health care. The problems were still there, but I had come to realize the issues were more complex and that the solution was not simply "tort reform." And this time, because I had chosen to go back, I was practicing medicine on my own terms.
After graduation, I began working full time as a patent-litigation associate at Weil. However, to maintain clinical proficiency, I continue to work in the emergency room one overnight shift per week and to serve one weekend a month as an Air Force Reserve surgeon.
People sometimes ask me if I had this dual-career vision all along. I tell them no, because I still don't really know where I'm heading. For now, though, I'm just enjoying the ride.
L. Okey Onyejekwe Jr., MD, is a litigation associate at Weil, Gotshal & Manges.
Alexandra Brown
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