Laura J. Ginett
Marilee Clausing
Jennifer Ries-Buntain
Hall, Prangle and Schoonveld LLC has added 10 medical-malpractice defense lawyers and launched a birth-trauma defense team.
The attorneys, the last of whom joined HPS today, all left Anderson, Rasor & Partners LLP.
The first wave of partners and an associate joined HPS two weeks ago. They included Marilee Clausing, Laura J. Ginett, Amy H. Kane and Michele C. Anderson.
Clausing and her colleagues brought along about 220 cases sent by at least a dozen clients.
Both HPS and Anderson, Rasor were spin-offs from the firm now known as Locke, Lord LLP.
Clausing and her three colleagues worked with attorneys who are now senior lawyers at HPS when they were all at Lord, Bissell & Brook.
In January, Clausing met and reconnected with David C. Hall, a name partner at HPS. Later, they discussed their respective professional goals, which eventually lead to Clausing and her three colleagues joining HPS.
“These conversations among friends turned into excitement about what we could create together,” said Jennifer Ries-Buntain, HPS’s managing partner.
Clausing said, “My decision to come here is really a matter of longstanding friendship and mutual respect. That friendship and mutual respect is the foundation that will foster meaningful collaboration for our health-care clients into the future.”
HPS, which opened in 2002, now has 57 lawyers working in eight U.S. offices, including 40 in Chicago.
Lawyers at the firm defend clients across the nation in catastrophic-injury cases; handle product-liability, general commercial liability and health-care cases; and work in transportation and appellate matters.
The firm’s clients include CHE Trinity Health, Hospital Corporation of America, LifePoint Hospitals Inc. and Presence Health.
Clients who sent cases with the team of lawyers to HPS include Rush University Medical Center, Adventist Health System, Sinai Health System, Ingalls Memorial Hospital in Harvey and Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights.
Clausing, who worked for five years as an obstetrical nurse before attending law school, started a birth-trauma defense team about seven years ago at Anderson, Rasor.
She is heading that team as it launches at HPS. It will include between eight and 10 of the newly joined lawyers and a similar number of attorneys already handling such cases at HPS. The team also includes two paralegals.
That group is intended to help defend health-care clients when neonatal, obstetrical and pediatric complications occur. If a birth injury occurred at a hospital over a weekend, HPS team members could initiate an investigation the following Monday.
“An early-response team could help the client to manage the risk long before a suit is filed,” Clausing said.
In addition to defending hospitals against medical-malpractice claims, Ginett also represents long-term care facilities in negligence cases.
With HPS having multiple offices, that benefits Ginett’s clients such as CNA. That insurer will now write policies where HPS has offices.
“This is just a better fit for my practice,” Ginett said of the move. “We’re putting together the right team for our clients.”
The other lawyers who joined HPS since mid-March are partners Charles C. Bletsas and Aaron P. Ryan along with associates Katherine L. Dzik, Sabina Babel, Sapna G. Lalmalani and Molly E. Pankauskas.
William C. Anderson III, a name partner at Anderson, Rasor, said of the 10 departed lawyers, “We’re sorry to see them go. We wish them the best.”
The main challenge related to the move involved the volume of paper case files — 240 large moving crates worth.
“All of our files arrived,” Clausing said. “It’s business as usual.”
Ries-Buntain said HPS plans to hire two to five more lawyers this year.
The health-care system continues to evolve, Ries-Buntain said. For example, Provena Health and Resurrection Health Care merged to become Presence Health. That’s the largest Catholic health-care system in Illinois.
“That is a good example that we are following” by adding the 10 lawyers to the firm, Ries-Buntain said.