“My son is a lawyer.”
“My son is a doctor.”
“Well my son is a lawyer acting like a doctor.”

It seems lawyers and doctors have shared adversity at least on the phantasmagorial space of parent’s ambitions for their children. And more than that, the two professions have long been at each other’s throats so bad that pretty much a doctor can’t do anything, say anything, move an inch, without implicitly referring to some medical laws built to make sure he or she does everything the legally approved way.

So now that a new function for lawyers has come up, some people are uneasy. Medical clinics are taking in lawyers to give free legal help to low-income people, all over the place, such as in eight Ohio Counties, including Summa Women’s clinic in Akron. They are going to study if getting legal advice helps the physical well-being of patients.



“Let’s say you’re under threat of eviction because of something that happened,” said Lawyer Meredith Watts. “That’s going to cause a significant amount of anxiety, potentially, and then you’re suffering from these anxiety problems that wouldn’t have happened if we had been able to intervene and perhaps help with the eviction problem.”

Such lawyers are to help patient’s health in areas outside the doctor’s control.

MacCarral and Akron’s Community Legal Aid lawyers are testing to see if this makes a difference in health – if a dose of law will make a difference.

The idea has its critics.

“I don’t understand how a medical clinic needs an attorney to be part of its team. It doesn’t make sense to me,” said Allen Schulman, a malpractice attorney in Canton.

“I think there has historically been an animosity between lawyers and doctors I think w share some of the blame, and it think the medical profession shares some of the blame.”

Whether there can be a partnership remains to be seen.