Health Law
Health care is one of the largest industries in the United States; in 2020, spending in this area increased 10 percent to more than $4 trillion, or nearly 20 percent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Perhaps unsurprisingly, the industry is also heavily regulated, with laws and rules governing insurance coverage, the quality of care, the cost of care, patient privacy, malpractice, and antitrust concerns, among other general topics. In other words, aspiring health law attorneys have a variety of paths to choose from.
Located in one of the world’s life sciences epicenters, BU Law’s health law program is consistently among the top of US News & World Report rankings. The program offers a robust curriculum covering all the core areas of the practice, including finance and regulation, bioethics, public health law, the US Food and Drug Administration, and more. Students also have the opportunity to learn from leading scholars in the field; choose from dozens of relevant courses; work on the country’s leading health law journal, the American Journal of Law & Medicine; and obtain practical experience in a variety of clinical settings, including a new Health Justice Practicum, which will pair students with front-line health care providers in an effort to address legal problems stemming from social determinants of health such as age, race, housing, and education.
BU Law also offers a dual JD/MPH in Public Health or a dual JD/MD in medicine, and LLM students in the LLM in Intellectual Property Law program learn from practitioners who work at leading biotechnology companies.
Boston University School of Law offers a unique program addressing the critical legal issues in health today, a health law program that ranks among the very best in the nation within a city that ranks among the most important health policy centers in the world. Our Health Law Program has been ranked in the U.S. News & World Report’s top five every year since they began ranking the category. We cover the full spectrum in health law, from finance to bioethics to human rights to biotech to health economics. Our faculty are nationally and internationally recognized for scholarship, teaching, and service to the field, and we bring our passion to the classroom and our community.
Course Selection Guide
Clinics and Practicums
Compliance Policy Clinic—One-Semester Clinic The Clinic is a central component of BU Law’s Risk Management & Compliance concentration, in which JD students explore the impact of legal and regulatory compliance on business operations, legal norms underlying compliance, and the role of ethics in regulatory and compliance practice.
Civil Litigation and Justice Program
Clients include claimants in Social Security disability hearings, which often involve health law issues. Claims against employers sometimes involve Family Medical Leave Act violations.
Criminal Law Clinical Program—Two-semester Clinic (prosecutor and defender options both available) Health law issues, particularly with respect to mental illness and substance abuse, arise in a large proportion of cases.
Startup Law Clinic—Full-Year Clinic Past engagements have included medical device startups, new ventures in the mental health space, startups promoting AI-based detection of health issues and scheduling platforms for doctors and dentists. Clients also seek legal advice on how to comply with regulations on the use of medical data for research purposes.
Technology Law Clinic—Full-Year Clinic Students often work with clients on data privacy regulation including health information privacy. They also counsel clients on state medical privacy rules, data sharing agreements, practice of medicine issues, and other related areas.
International Human Rights Clinic—Full-Year Clinic Health law issues include reproductive rights, humanitarian law and food policy. Former IHRL clinic students have found positions at the Center for Reproductive Rights and the World Food Program.
Legislative Policy and Drafting Clinic—One-Semester Clinic The clinic works to pair students interested in health care law issues with policy makers working to advance health care related bills or projects.
Health Justice Practicum—One-Semester Practicum Students work on projects where frontline healthcare providers and/or patients have identified a systemic problem affecting patients’ health and wellbeing. Starting in Spring 2022, the clinic is collaborating with Project RESPECT, an integrated obstetrics, addiction medicine, and behavioral health clinic at Boston Medical Center that serves marginalized populations.
Compassionate Release Practicum—One-Semester Practicum Students represent terminally ill and permanently disabled inmates. This Practicum is particularly useful for students seeking to develop an understanding of systemic barriers to health care, and how to engage in legislative, administrative, and legal advocacy to address these barriers.
Environmental Law Practicum—One-Semester Practicum Every Practicum project intersects with issues relating to human health. Past projects have focused on childhood blood lead testing mandates, litigation on drinking water contamination, and enforcement of urban diesel emissions ordinances.
Conferences and Lectures
American Journal of Law & Medicine Symposium
Shine Lecture
The Spring 2021 lecture will feature NY Times reporter Sarah Kliff
$629 Band-Aids and $20,243 Bike Crashes: The High Prices of America’s Emergency Rooms
February 10, 2021 from 1:00-2:30
Neal Pike Annual Lecture
This annual lecture is held in honor of BU Law alumnus Neal Pike (’37), a distinguished lawyer and lifelong advocate for individuals with disabilities.
Past Speakers
2021
Michael Ashley Stein
Harvard Law
The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
2020
Elyn Saks
USC Law
The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness
2019 (fall)
Dr. Scott A. Allen
Professor of Clinical Medicine, University of California (Riverside).
Family Detention and the Duty of the Medical Profession
2019 (spring)
Glenn Cohen
Harvard Law School
Big Data, AI, and Machine Learning in Medicine: Legal and Ethical Issues
2018
Sharona Hoffman
Case Western Reserve University School of Law
Big Data and the Americans with Disabilities Act
2017
Jeffrey Sanchez
MA State Representative
Massachusetts and Health Reform: What Comes Next
2014 (spring)
Jonathan Woodson
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs
Meeting the Needs of America’s Heroes: A Lifetime and Community Obligation
2014 (fall)
Michael Rezendes
The Boston Globe
Abuse of Mentally Ill Patients at Bridgewater State Hospital: How the Media Can Help Medicine and the Law Protect Patients
2012
Marcia Angell
Harvard Medical School
The Least Bad Death: Who Decides?
2011
Pike Conference
The Holocaust and Its Legacy: Resiliency, Fragility, and Restitution of Survivors
2010
Pike Conference
Coming Home Injured: Care and Advocacy for America’s Veterans
2009 (spring)
Pike Conference
Autism: Science, Law and Public Policy
2009 (fall)
Pike Conference
Naked on the Net? The Future of Health Privacy in the Information Technology Age
2008
Pike Conference
The Future of Health Law
2007
Pike Conference
The Nuremberg Doctor’s Trials: 60 Years Later
Annual Empirical Health Law Conference
Externship
Health Law Externship (Offered fall and spring, 1 cr.) – The
one-hour weekly seminar examines various health law issues as well as the challenges of working in a health care environment. The seminar requires students to write a paper and make a class presentation. In addition, each student submits reflective memoranda chronicling their educational experience and reactions to the practice of law observed at the
field placements.
Faculty
BU Law’s award-winning faculty includes numerous scholars and teachers with expertise in health law. From food and drug law, bioethics and family law to public health law, our faculty offers students a wide breadth of specialized skills in this dynamic field.
Related Statistics:
- In 2022, BU Law’s health law program ranked in the top five, according to U.S. News and World Report
- $4 trillion: spending on health care in the U.S. in 2020
- 25: The number of Massachusetts-based biopharmaceutical companies that went public in 2021. That’s nearly 30 percent of all U.S. based biopharma IPOs in 2021.
- 1958: the year BU Law established the Law-Medicine Research Institute, one of the first medical-legal institutional collaborations in the United States
