_____________________________________________ Lou
Patalano | Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana
Slava Sotnikov, Penny Martin, Lou Patalano, Korey Harvey, Rachel Ghebreyesus
We are strategic business partners who happen to be lawyers, not the other way around
gave him exposure to different communities and perspectives long before he entered a courtroom or boardroom.
Drawn to a field that changes with society, Lou found the pace energizing rather than exhausting.“ I like the ability to stay on my toes, keep learning, to have to keep adapting. We are applying today’ s facts to ever-changing areas of law.”
After law school, he clerked for the North Carolina Court of Appeals before joining the North Carolina Attorney General’ s Office as a healthcare fraud prosecutor. That early experience fighting fraud from the government side gave Lou something few in-house lawyers carry: an instinct for recognizing when legal claims are legitimate grievances and when they’ re instruments of leverage.“ You learn pretty quickly that not every allegation is what it appears to be on the surface,” he outlines.“ The facts matter. The law matters. And the context matters.” The role also challenged assumptions he held about his future.
“ If you’ d asked me right out of law school what I never wanted to do, I’ d have told you I didn’ t want to practice criminal law or litigate cases. And yet, the first thing I did was practice criminal law and litigate my own cases in court.”
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