Pharmaceutical, Medical Device and Healthcare Industry

Legislative Matters

Butler Snow's governmental relations practice often takes the firm directly into the legislative arena. Although we will register to lobby the legislature only as necessary, we are often engaged to coordinate and manage lobbying efforts on major issues for clients; and we also retain registered contract lobbyists for work "on the ground" in the Capitol.

Lobbyist registration is not required for much of the firm's legislative work, which consists of monitoring for statutory or regulatory changes or problems on behalf of business clients, drafting and reviewing legislation of interest to clients, preparing client arguments on draft legislation, advising clients on the construction and effect of proposed or pending legislation, intelligence gathering, and providing strategic and political guidance and advice for lobbying efforts. This legislative work does require an intimate understanding of the legislative process, the rules under which both houses operate and the personalities who control the flow of legislation. Often a major legislative issue requires such frenetic work inside the Capitol that the project requires a manager for the entire effort, whose scope is broader than the fight of the day and whose perspective is more dispassionate than the emotional setting of the legislative process often will allow. This management skill is the sort of value that Butler Snow offers to clients in the legislative arena.  Our attorneys are well recognized by their peers, and a number of them have been listed in The Best Lawyers in America® in the Government Relations Law section.

Practice highlights

• We are often retained to assist in breaking logjams in the Executive Branch of state government, where, for example, requested regulatory relief has long been pending without resolution, or where two agencies of government are taking opposing positions on an issue of importance to a client causing a delay in the outcome.
  
  
• One of our key assets is knowledge of the chain of command and respective areas of responsibility and influence of the hundreds of state boards and commissions in Mississippi's Executive Branch. Many clients lack knowledge as to the best person or agency to handle an issue rapidly. We supply this critical knowledge.
  
  
• We also provide "corporate troubleshooting" or crisis management. It is not at all uncommon for a major regulatory, compliance or enforcement legal issue to require political, public relations, mass media and "street fight" expertise all at the same time. It is uncommon, however, for a law firm to be able to engage all aspects of such a problem, as we can. Our attorneys include two former gubernatorial chiefs of staff – Democrat and Republican – whose skills have been honed on problems just such as this.
  
  
• We represent public bodies or officials before regulatory or enforcement agencies of the state and federal government. In this arena, Butler Snow represents state, county and local officials and the agencies for which they work in compliance matters, where audit-related complaints have been raised. We also take a pre-emptive education and training role for our clients on compliance issues. This representation provides the firm with a unique statewide perspective that serves to better equip our clients, public or private, to operate anywhere in Mississippi.
  
  
• We represent a number of key elected officials individually. This representation generally covers compliance with a wide spectrum of elections laws, campaign finance regulations and professional ethics considerations.

For additional information on Legislative Matters, please contact Tommie S. Cardin or Donald Clark, Jr.