During her first year at Hofstra law, Jacque Condon, ’20, wasn’t sure what area of the law she might be interested in, but she knew she wanted to help people and make a difference. While walking through the school hallways, she happened to see a promotion for a health law alumni panel series sponsored by the Office of Career Services and the Gitenstein Institute. She attended the series and liked what she heard, so she began to attend more health law meetings and events. “Those events introduced me to the Gitenstein Institute and a smaller network of people within Hofstra Law, including other students, alumni who stayed on as fellows, and to professors I never would have met otherwise.” she says. She enrolled in the health law concentration, and Professor Janet Dolgin encouraged her to apply for a fellowship with the Gitenstein Institute.
“The Veterans Clinic really prepared me for my current position. I had the same face to face client interaction and practice that I got through the MLP but with the added advantage that I was working with Veterans.”
Unique Health Law Experiences
During her fellowship, Jacque worked on several health law-related projects. One was the legal map project, where she mapped different healthcare outcomes around the country and how different laws would affect them. She also worked on the CHAT project doing outreach to go through the basics of advanced planning, healthcare proxies and living wills with an older population. Those projects led to becoming part of bioethics certificate program in her third year, which was spent focusing on the ethical issues where the law and medicine intersect and learning how to make decisions that are best for the patient.
As part of her Gitenstein experience, Jacque also had the opportunity to participate in the Law School’s medical-legal partnership (MLP) with Northwell Health. “We would go on site to an outpatient Northwell facility and meet with clients to see if we could help them address legal issues that were having a negative impact on their ability to get healthcare they needed,” she says. “I was exposed to many different kinds of legal problems, including immigration, housing and public benefits, and even special education issues for children since our program was attached to Cohen’s Children’s Hospital.”
Working with Veterans
Professor Dolgin also recommended that Jacque apply for the Veterans Clinic, because it was the clinic she felt would have the most application for someone interested in practicing in the health law field.
“The Veterans Clinic really prepared me for my current position. I had the same face to face client interaction and practice that I got through the MLP but with the added advantage that I was working with Veterans. I learned biggest issues veterans face and how to talk to them about those issues. I learned the specific laws governing the VA and how to deal with the VA when advocating for these clients. I learned how to obtain and read their medical and military records, including military-specific language.”
It was Professor Blair Thompson at the Veterans Clinic who helped Jacque find her current position. “She saw the position on a list-serve, and even though they were asking for someone with 2-3 years’ experience, she encouraged me to apply because of the combination of my experience with the Veterans Clinic and the Gitenstein Institute,” Jacque says.
The Start of a Rewarding Career
“It’s really ironic that I chose health law,” Jacque says, “since just walking into a doctor’s office makes my blood pressure shoot up. But it seemed like a good field to be a lawyer in, and a good way to assist patients who needed help with legal issues and medical care. You get to deal with clients face to face and help with their problems.”
Now, Jacque is a staff attorney with the New York Legal Assistance Group (NYLAG), at the Legal Health Clinic at the Northport VA hospital. NYLAG is a medical-legal partnership aimed at assisting low-income patients at a number of New York hospitals, including the Northport VA.
“My current position is a medical-legal partnership, and I had a taste of what that meant from working with Hofstra Law’s MLP and I had already worked with veterans and their issues,” she says. “I got very lucky that first thing I found an interest in ended up being something I really liked and was able to find a job in. So far the experience has been really rewarding.”
“Getting onboarded virtually and running a clinic on my own was a big step up in my responsibility. At school I was just an intern observing and working under someone else. Now I’m handling cases and clients on my own,” Jacque says. She enjoys the face-to-face contact she gets with clients every day, working with them to resolve their cases. “That could be as little as providing general advice and counsel lasting only one week or we could be representing someone in court or in front of the VA board of appeals for service connection claims. Every day is different,” she says. “I see how profoundly I can affect the life of client just by taking the time to understand the issues they’re facing and taking the time to listen to them.”
“Health law encompasses so many areas. There are so many things that can affect your health. I get to touch a wide variety of different topics and areas of the law. I’m learning so much about advanced planning, drafting of wills, living wills, powers of attorney, and healthcare proxies; housing issues, specifically the housing subsidy for veterans; family law issue; public benefits, food assistance, and social security disability. There are so many areas I knew existed but never learned about. It’s a great experience.”
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