Attorneys, Attorneys Everywhere

This blog post is dedicated to recognizing our attorneys.  Why, you may ask, would that be a topic of interest?  We believe that it should be, because they clearly hold the key to our future.  Looking back, I remember a time immediately after Jimmy Carter lost his bid for re-election to his second term as U.S. President when I read in some prestigious magazine — maybe it was Forbes, Fortune or the Reader's Digest — that Japan had ten engineers for every attorney and that the United States was working toward a reverse ratio. Nearly thirty years later, we now have about one million attorneys  and about 1,250,000 physicians in the United States, and I think that Windber may somehow be directly involved with many of them.

Let's start with our Board of Directors.  We have George, Jeanne and Dave. Well, technically, Dave is now a judge, and that means that he administers rather than practices the law. Our primary law firm on the research institute side of the street is Steptoe and Johnson in Washington D.C. lead by one of their finest minds, Attorney Tom Barletta.  They have about three hundred attorneys to whom we have access, and we use them for corporate, government policy, government contracts, intellectual property, international regulation and compliance, international trade, tax, telecommunications and Internet II matters.

Our Pittsburgh law firms are Thorp, Reed and Armstrong, and their special health law genius, Beth Anne Jackson, who, along with her colleagues are helping us work our way through our current local negotiations situation and Kirkpatrick and Lockhart, Preston, Gates and Ellis with their 1,400 attorneys and lead Attorney, Health Law specialist, Ed Weisgerber.  We also work with Cohn and Grigsby on immigration law, and Joe Otto at Dickie McCamey and Chilcote with malpractice insurance.  Attorney Mark Scott helps us on the research side of the street with our Human Resources challenges and Dennis Kulish is our HR partner on the WMC side.

We work with Leech Tishman Fuscaldo & Lampl (and more specifically, attorney Manning James O'Connor, a former student), on specific cases as needed related to business ventures in the biotech world. 

Attorney Pinky Verma has helped us structure executive packages while her husband, Rich has become chief legal counsel to one of America's most powerful Senators.  He, obviously, is a good person to know.

We have used attorney Tim Leventry on real estate deals, and we work with Barbera, Clapper, Beener, Rullo and Melvin on some malpractice issues.  I know I'm forgetting our property casualty and employee workman's comp attorneys for which I apologize, but they are provided through our insurance companies and I don't personally work closely with them.

The attorney who helps me get through every day — day by day — is someone who joined us a few years ago, and has never had even a second to look back, Chris Sheridan.  Chris is a masterful guy who has helped us maintain professionalism and guided us through numerous challenging situations.

To our attorneys, I say thanks: Beth Anne, Tom, Harold, Catherine, Savery, Chris, Jim, Rich, Tim, Dennis, Mark, Pinky, Nat, George, Jeanne, Dave, et al.  We couldn't make it without you, and, if we ever face a tough situation, I'd love to have all of you in the same room at the same time because I know that the combined IQ's in that room will be high enough to get us anywhere we need to be.

In closing, I'd like to say that attorneys are like umbrellas, good to have with you if the weather turns nasty.  In the last ten years we have had a near perfect record in all legal areas due to their incredible advice, and if you're worried that we're spending too much on the law, overall, it pays for itself every day in every way.