Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hi, I'm John Groats and I'm the General Council of Delta Dental of Michigan Ohio and Indiana
which is here in Okemos. I came to practice in Insurance Law through sort of a roundabout
way. I started my legal career with a large law firm and that was in a satellite office
of a large law firm, as is often the case with that kind of environment. You do work
that finds you. You end up working with people with whom you like first of all, ideally,
and you also work, you do work that's there in your work, in your firm. The firm that
I was at, I was very lucky there was a great insurance practice and I had wonderful, uh,
mentor who was also the head of the firm's insurance practice and so I did a great deal
of insurance work. I also, in addition to a lot of commercial
litigation and general regulatory work and over time, the work I did sort of morphed
out in all different kinds of commercial work. Uh, but I ended up being recruited to come
in and run a legal department of a dental insurance company and I took the opportunity
and I've been there for three years now and it's just been wonderful.
So, the key thing is I knew enough about insurance law to be able to essentially bluff my way
through the interview and convince them that I knew enough to run their show, now I’m
in charge of a legal and compliance department of the insurance entity. I worked with a lot
of different business people in that context and everybody from the sales and agents to
the computer folks to the operational people and everything. It's a wonderful way to practice
in an environment where there is a lot of focus on obviously insurance law, and the
regulatory and compliance work but also you're very much an essential part of the business
in helping to drive the businesses opportunity and strategy too. And really, if I hadn't
had a good grounding in the insurance law before I got there, it would be very difficult
to do that kind of thing. In law school, I never, I don't think we had
any, when I went to law school I don't think we had any, any insurance classes, any sort
of a developed curriculum in insurance and I really wish we had. So I think, here, this
is a wonderful program and I think the opportunity to, to get a ground in, in insurance law which
is tricky, it's regulatory environment, it's all across the 50 states and its very decentralized
and all that, it's a wonderful opportunity for you.
So I certainly encourage you to, uh, focus on it. I had a great time with it so far and
hopefully will continue to do so in the future. Thank you.