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Episode 38: Zach Rothenberg Talks Zoning and Marketing
17 Plays13 days ago
In this episode, Zach Rothenberg talks about being an attorney in the behavioral health industry with regards to reimbursement, marketing, zoning, and more. Visit our website at www.nbhap.org.
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Transcript
Introduction to Guests and Their Backgrounds
00:00:12
Speaker
Welcome to Destination Change, a podcast where we talk recovery, treatment, and more. I'm your host, Angie Fiedler-Sutton, with the National Behavioral Health Association providers and a use, she, her pronouns. My guest today is Zach Rothenberg.
00:00:24
Speaker
He, him, serves as, quote, outside general counsel and legal advisor to behavioral health businesses, including residential and outpatient treatment centers, sober living environments, and ancillary businesses such as billing companies, laboratories, psychology, and psychiatric practices, and the like.
00:00:39
Speaker
ZAC regularly represents but behavioral health clinic ah clients in litigation matters in state and federal courts and in arbitration, and matters are relating to contract disputes, reimbursement matters against commercial and government payers, employment matters, zoning and land use, and zoning and land use disputes.
00:00:55
Speaker
Zach also provides regulatory compliance advice on matters relating to marketing and business development, payer audits, clawbacks, overpayment demands, and ECRA issues, among others. Zach is regular presenter at regional and national conferences within the Behavioral Health Community several and has done several webinars within
Zach's Path to Law and Daily Work
00:01:12
Speaker
BEHA.
00:01:12
Speaker
Welcome to Destination Change, Zach. Thanks. It's great to be here. I really appreciate you having me on. yeah Now, regular listeners know what my first my first question is always the same. i always like to hear what I call origin stories.
00:01:25
Speaker
You know, there are a lot of job possibilities out here. What made you decide to do this versus, you know, accounting or something else? Well, it's sort of an evolution over many years. Yeah.
00:01:37
Speaker
I always really liked school, so I worked really hard in school, got good grades, and for some reason, the next steps seemed to be becoming a lawyer, and I really had no idea what kind of a lawyer I'd be.
00:01:49
Speaker
I guess I imagined myself in a courtroom, but mostly just because I didn't know what other kinds of lawyers existed. So i went to law school. I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed sort of the intellectual pursuit of it and even thought about continuing on with school after law school and going back to grad school and getting a PhD.
00:02:07
Speaker
Decided not to do that as the debt mounted and became a practicing lawyer. Spent probably 10 years as like a courtroom lawyer, a litigator, doing all sorts of different cases, tended towards entertainment-related things just by virtue of being in Los Angeles.
00:02:27
Speaker
And just, it it never quite felt like I found my spot or my people. And really just by happenstance started to take on some work in healthcare care generally. And just thought ah a white bulb went off of of, I really like,
00:02:46
Speaker
the kind of left brain kind of nerdiness of healthcare care and healthcare lawyers. and And so I jumped in with both feet as a healthcare lawyer.
00:02:56
Speaker
And then quickly after that, found behavioral health and SUD treatment industry and just started to explore that. And what really struck me was the community I had never really experienced this in any other industry before of there just being a really organized, coherent community of people of, you know, actual clinicians, business owners and clients.
00:03:25
Speaker
ancillary, you know, dealers and people like me and accountants and whoever that are really focused on this really specific industry. And I just, I just really felt welcome. And like, it was something I wanted to be a part of.
00:03:40
Speaker
um and that was probably 10 years ago. And so really ever since the, the, I would say more than three quarters of my practice is in industry. And I just, I, I, it gives me meaning.
00:03:53
Speaker
Great. Now, you were not my first lawyer I interviewed. I also interviewed Harry Nelson, who you obviously know, having worked for him in the past. But I always i know that there is no such thing as a typical day, but kind of walk me through what you do, what you actually do on a day-to-day basis.
00:04:09
Speaker
Sure. So it's it's really all over the place. I am by training a litigator. So I'm almost always working on a handful of lawsuits in the background. And unlike what you see on TV, lawsuits take forever. They take years. and So there's always work to be done.
00:04:31
Speaker
on these kind of long, big, slow-moving cases. So that's kind of always going on. I've got things on my many screens on my computer with, you know, legal papers and drafting briefs and those sorts of things.
00:04:46
Speaker
But then also peppered throughout the day, I just, I'm answering the phone. People call me with you know clients call me with HR questions. i mean okay you know Do we have to you know accommodate this person who says they have a disability? we want to terminate this person. how do we How can we pay this person? Can they be an independent contractor? Do they have to be an employee?
00:05:09
Speaker
I answer questions about billing issues or you know potential disputes that are bubbling up and how to avoid litigation, which is usually my primary focus because litigation is expensive and time consuming and miserable.
00:05:23
Speaker
Dealing with the city, you know, all sorts of just day to day problem solving. People tend to turn to me to just try to try to fix things. And so I spend, you know, I walk in each day with kind of ah a plan of how my day is going to go and, you know, a to do list.
00:05:39
Speaker
And it always gets interrupted by 930 in the morning. I'm off doing something else that I wasn't anticipating because the phone rang and somebody's got a crisis. Is there typically one type of of question you tend to get more than off than the others, or is it kind of, it varies depending on the day, on the week, on
Legal Challenges in Behavioral Health
00:05:56
Speaker
the month, that kind of stuff?
00:05:57
Speaker
it's It's all over the place, and I can put it into a handful of categories probably. So I get a lot of compliance questions about, ECRA is always always a hot topic, you know, kind of kickback issues, people asking about how they can pay their marketers and business development and admissions folks.
00:06:19
Speaker
I get a lot of employment related questions all day long. A lot of what we'll call it reimbursement or payer dispute issues, audits and clawbacks and overpayment demands and those sorts of things.
00:06:34
Speaker
increasingly zoning and land use related issues or, you know, cities are trying to zone out sober livings a lot of the time, but also now licensed facilities as well.
00:06:47
Speaker
Really all sorts of things. That actually leads great perfectly into my next question. I was going to bring up NIMBY, not in my backyard, for those who are unfamiliar with the acronym, and zoning laws. and You said that that's kind of become more and more popular, not popular, but more and more an issue, I should say. Kind of talk a little bit to that and what you think might be the trend going forward and that kind of stuff.
00:07:09
Speaker
Yeah. So I know these issues have been around for a long time. It's a constant sort of battle line between the provider community and communities.
00:07:21
Speaker
I think particularly in highly concentrated areas like Orange County or Malibu, i write they call the a rehab Riviera, probably similar things in South Florida, although I know a little bit less about that just because I'm located here in Southern California, where communities I don't know. I guess i'm I'm cynical about it, but probably say, you know, in theory, we love the idea that, you know, there's treatment out there. We think people should get treatment. We just wish it happened somewhere else because we're afraid of the house next door with,
00:07:55
Speaker
you know people in recovery smoking cigarettes in the backyard and a lot of single young men. and So there's a ah fear factor at play. And cities and counties are always getting more and more sophisticated and aggressive in how they draft their zoning laws with a goal of minimizing the number of treatment centers and the number of sober living homes in their community.
00:08:27
Speaker
So I'll give you some examples. Right now, I'm dealing with a couple of so a couple of cities in Orange County who have passed relatively new ordinances directed at sober livings to essentially to require all sober livings to get a special use permit meaning needing kind of government approval before you can operate.
00:08:54
Speaker
Whereas in the past, there it had been a by right use, meaning that you could open up a sober living and not need anyone's permission, and it would have to be treated like a single family. So yeah that's a big ah big battle line at the moment.
00:09:08
Speaker
And we are... You know, with certain clients, it's a tough thing because it is not always a great use of clients' money, particularly when it comes to sober living, to fight these fights because they're very, very expensive. And cities have, you know a big war chest for fighting these kind of battles. And sometimes it's much easier just to say, hey, I'll move my sober living to another city and take my chances over there.
00:09:31
Speaker
And so that's frequently what happens. But every now and again, it it is worth it to to to fight the fight. And so we take those battles on under ah federal law, under the Fair Housing Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act, and and California law as well, FIHA and some other state statutes.
00:09:53
Speaker
And so that's a big one. Another big issue that we're seeing, this is really recent since probably October, is in the city of Los Angeles. And it's a really concerning one that I know I've i've had some communication with with your team as well, with Pete Nielsen and some others.
00:10:10
Speaker
For many years, ah well, let me back up. So there's a statute under the Health and Safety Code that protects licensed treatment centers, so residential treatment centers with six beds or fewer.
00:10:23
Speaker
And this statute says that and they have to be treated like a single family home for purposes of zoning. So wherever the Rothenberg family could live, so too could there be a licensed treatment center treating six people or fewer.
00:10:40
Speaker
And that has that's been a state law for many, many years. Okay, so that's part one. One issue that many, many providers have, and i'm i'm not ah I'm not a clinician, I'm not an operator, but what I hear is that owning and operating a single six bed is is very difficult. The margins are so thin that it's just it can be prohibitive to to be that small. And so one way around that, or one way to deal with that, is by getting what's called an integral license.
00:11:08
Speaker
which says you can have, call it two, six bed residential treatment centers or three. And instead of having them kind of standalone and operate as their own thing with their own license, you can have them all under the same license, under an integral license.
00:11:23
Speaker
So it might be three buildings right in a row on a street, um all under the same license. For many years, the city of Los Angeles would look at each of those buildings and say, are they six or fewer? And if they're six or fewer, they get this protection that says they have to be treated like a family.
00:11:41
Speaker
You can imagine in the alternative way of looking at this, which would be to say, let's look at all three buildings together under this same integral license and say, oh no, these are 18 beds.
00:11:53
Speaker
And now they don't get the protection of that statute. So for many years, Los Angeles interpreted that by looking at each building and said, there's three buildings in a row. They might be under a single license, but there's still three separate buildings.
00:12:06
Speaker
They can operate in a single family neighborhood. And it seems like something has happened where that is changing. And now people who are applying for an integral license for that exactly that scenario, say three beds yeah three houses in a row or three addresses on one big lot,
00:12:23
Speaker
there're no law The fire department, LAFD, is no longer taking the steps required in order to get allow the provider to get the integral license. So people are have bought these houses thinking they're going to have 18 beds to operate under this integral license, and now they're not able to get the license.
00:12:41
Speaker
So this has been a big problem that has happened all of a sudden that has affected, i think, dozens probably of operators around town. um And we're fighting really hard. We've filed a number of lawsuits.
00:12:52
Speaker
to force the city to issue the fire clearance so that the license can be secured so that these can these guys can go back to operating under their integral licenses. That was a lot of information, a long story.
00:13:04
Speaker
um If you have any more questions about that, please follow up with me. I know it's affecting a ah lot of people all over Los Angeles.
The National Influence of Pulsinelli
00:13:12
Speaker
ah Yeah, and for listeners, you'll know that at the end, we'll we'll get his contact info. So if you want to follow up with that.
00:13:18
Speaker
Now, you've mentioned L.A. and California, and you're obviously based in L.A., but you are at the time of this recording with Pulsinelli. They are national? Yep. Yep. Okay. Go ahead.
00:13:29
Speaker
Oh, I was just going to say we are roughly 1,200 lawyers across the country. in all you know major cities.
00:13:40
Speaker
And you know we have sort of full service practice, all sorts of industries and areas, but we have a particularly large healthcare care practice, which is what attracted me to the firm a couple of years ago.
00:13:51
Speaker
And in particularly in California, a really thriving behavioral health practice. We are probably one of the largest, if not the largest in California. Now, I will be upfront and say my knowledge of how attorneys and lawyers work is very, very vague, so correct me if I'm wrong, but you are also, like behavioral health people, licensed, and and you can only practice in a certain state, correct?
00:14:17
Speaker
Yes and no. It's a it's a little bit of complicated. There are there are certain kind of... So most of my practices in California is in Southern California, but but but we are able to give sort of broad advice in other jurisdictions. And of course, I have colleagues in all other jurisdictions. So effectively, you know, I represent, my firm represents plenty of ah treatment centers and other behavioral health providers all across the country.
00:14:46
Speaker
Now, I'm sure it varies from place to place in terms of what the current issues are ah for behavioral health industries, the behavioral health industry. But do you feel do you see some common trends that are going on right now in terms of of where we're going to be going in
Industry Challenges and Solutions
00:15:01
Speaker
the next few years?
00:15:02
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I do. It sure feels, and i kind of feel like this all the time. you had asked me three years ago, I might give you the same answer. it just It feels like the industry is just getting squeezed from all directions. And it's maddening because the it's not like the demand is going away.
00:15:20
Speaker
So it's a really, to me, it's kind of a frustrating scenario where there's so much demand and so many people who want to help but then there's just forces from every direction that just make it more and more difficult all the time.
00:15:34
Speaker
So one of those, and I'm sorry to be so pessimistic about it, one of those is sort of the zoning issues I mentioned, that communities are getting more and more aggressive in trying to attack the the industry from from that direction.
00:15:49
Speaker
i am finding more and more clients getting barraged with employment-related issues. For whatever reason, I think there employment, like sort of plaintiff's lawyers out there who are targeting the industry.
00:16:07
Speaker
And I'm not really sure why, but I just have seen a real uptick in the number of clients that have these issues and number of just of issues. So getting demand letters from ah former employees and threats of class actions and these sorts of things.
00:16:24
Speaker
So I think it's... it's i would if If I were a provider, I would really be sure I'm i'm sort of tightening my ship on HR related issues and making sure I have a really good HR team.
00:16:37
Speaker
I've got my handbooks in place and then I really know what I'm doing on on that front. Another trend is sort of an an enforcement, fraud and abuse enforcement. I think ECRA, which we all know about um for many years, was really just targeting or folks who were using ECRA for enforcement, and federal enforcement.
00:17:01
Speaker
but yeah federal regulators, we're hitting just the lowest of low-hanging fruit of just really egregious ah kickback schemes and things that everybody throughout the industry would agree is just is terrible and harmful and and despicable.
00:17:19
Speaker
I think didn i think at this point, ECRA is now being used to target sort of the less low hanging, more of the gray area. And so I think it is really important for providers to understand ECRA.
00:17:34
Speaker
It is not always intuitive. It certainly criminalizes harmful conduct, but it criminalizes some other conduct that isn't so obviously harmful.
00:17:45
Speaker
So you really need to be aware of what it says, what it allows and what it doesn't to sort of know how to manage and mitigate your risk. The other related piece of that is the Federal Trade Commission, the FTC, has been much more active in the space and going after the ways that treatment centers are marketing, and particularly and in when it comes to digital marketing. And they are looking at what they would call consumer confusion. So they're looking, for example, at, and I'm not a highly tech-focused person, but the ways that people's digital marketing will kind of fake out a consumer and they think they're clicking on one
00:18:29
Speaker
treatment center but really getting sent somewhere else or they think that they are clicking on a directory, right, that just lists all of the treatment centers in their area, but really it's a directory being operated by a treatment center that filters everyone that clicks on it to their own facility.
00:18:47
Speaker
So there's a bunch of ways that folks have tried to manipulate digital marketing in particular to confuse consumers. And the FDC really hot in going after going after them.
00:19:00
Speaker
So I would I would advise folks to really have a sense of what their digital marketing team is doing. Because a lot of what I've what i'd learned is that a lot of digital marketers come from other areas, other industries, where things are not regulated nearly so heavily. And what may be okay if you're selling widgets is is not okay in in the treatment world.
00:19:26
Speaker
And it is not just the responsibility of the digital marketer to know what's legal and what's not. It's also the responsibility of the operator to know what their digital marketing team is doing. So that's what makes me nervous and that I spend a lot of time working with clients on to make sure that they they know what their team is doing and making sure it stays on the the safer side.
00:19:46
Speaker
And if I may add what one more, the other trend I've noticed recently is a lot of personal injury cases stemming fights at a treatment center at the Silver Living, overdoses, things like that. Whereas in the past, first it it seems to me, and this purely anecdotal, it seems to me that those, it was an understanding these things sometimes happen. It's just the nature of the industry.
00:20:16
Speaker
Now I know that there are law firms out there who are promoting themselves as treatment center injury lawyers who really are tracking down people who get into fights at the sober living relapse and overdose ah you know in the sober living or even after the shortly after they've been discharged.
00:20:39
Speaker
And that that is that is new to me, but can be a really... kind of large burden to take on if you get hit with a case like this. So it's another one to be aware of, making sure you have the right insurance in place to cover those kinds of claims.
00:20:54
Speaker
Yeah, that's another trend as well. ah Long answer to your short question. No, that's fine. You are actually perfect guest because I actually wanted to use the next bit to talk about our CATM, the Certificate in Addiction Treatment Marketing, and this the CAMS, a Certified Admissions and Marketing Specialist, which is basically teaching people how to market it ethically and and legally. And just kind of, ah you kind of already touched on it, but just the difficulties of marketing in the industry as well as why it's important to make sure you stay within the like reds let ah regulations. That's the word I'm looking for. Yeah.
00:21:30
Speaker
i I love that. I think that's so important. i've I've started with a number of clients doing like quarterly training sessions where I go to their their treatment center or their their office and meet with their admissions team or their marketing team and do a ah quarterly training where usually I come in with some kind of agenda.
00:21:54
Speaker
you know trends or a recent case or recent investigation that i'm aware of or or something. And then it's just opened up to sort of a a question and answer and a discussion.
00:22:06
Speaker
where we can walk through, you know, maybe a call that went a little bit strange or that was sort of suspicious. And I want, you know you want to talk through how it went and if you if what you said was right. Because there's sometimes these these are tricky and you're you're sort of on the spot. And I can appreciate the people who are answering these calls or are making these calls.
00:22:26
Speaker
are sort of left to kind of make really important decisions, you know, on the fly. um So it's great I think, I think, I hope it is helpful to them to be able to talk these things through with their lawyer.
00:22:37
Speaker
so that's something I've been doing recently that that people have really appreciated, I think. ah Yeah, and well, and it also covers things like consumer privacy and data security, which of course nowadays is even more important than ever, as well as ethical compensation, you know, the idea of of pay for play kind of thing.
00:22:57
Speaker
Would you, ai is a big topic, especially lately, and we are actually currently working as we speak on an AI policy for behavioral
Impact of AI and Marketing Ethics
00:23:05
Speaker
health. Would you say that that kind of has affected the marketing industry as well?
00:23:10
Speaker
i mean i I think so. I'm not the best person to ask on this. I i wouldn't say. end up seeing more of the end result rather than digging into how those problems come up.
00:23:23
Speaker
um I know there's it sort of an a a desire to use AI wherever possible, whether it's in marketing or documentation or or or assessments.
00:23:35
Speaker
And I wouldn't be surprised that people's desire to use ai leads to sort of letting go of the reins on using your own good judgment and your own ethics in how you how you operate.
00:23:53
Speaker
That's been my impression ah well, ai you know the the AI output said, this is how I should do it. And you're not imposing your own judgment and saying, is that right? Does that feel right? Does that seem like the right thing to do?
00:24:06
Speaker
So it worries me a bit. I don't know how pervasive in marketing in particular it is quite yet.
Engaging Presentations and Personal Well-being
00:24:14
Speaker
Let's get a little bit. Part of your my introduction to you talked about how you present regularly at conferences. And of course, you've done and ah plenty of webinars for us.
00:24:21
Speaker
I will be 100% honest. You're one of my favorite presenters. You're very engaging. Kind of, you know, do you, have you taken like speaking courses? it, is it come naturally to you? Is it something that you've just learned over time?
00:24:36
Speaker
Oh, I've, I've not taken a course. No. ah To me, I just try to keep things as simple and casual as possible. i I have i recollections of like my earliest presentations when I was just getting started in this industry. And looking back, they must have been so boring.
00:24:58
Speaker
but you know They were really detailed and earnest. and the number of cases a lawyer needs to quote to an audience of non-lawyers is is very, very, very low.
00:25:09
Speaker
If you're giving case citations during a presentation, I feel like you've made a terrible decision. And it's taken me a while to to learn that, that the the sort of the more practical you can make it, the more useful it's going to be to the listener.
00:25:25
Speaker
I learned a lot of that for actually from working with Harry Nelson, who's who is a great presenter. Now, what is your least favorite or hardest part of what you do? boom but Well, OK, the hardest part for me is that i am always juggling.
00:25:43
Speaker
And I wake up in the middle of the night with you know rapid fire thoughts of, did I do this? What about that? On Sunday, Sunday night, I had this like, what I call the Sunday scary dreams of working through a case that was just impossible. i had this issue and I just couldn't figure it out. And I almost had it and couldn't. It it was all night long going through my head.
00:26:06
Speaker
And I got up at probably four in the morning and I reached over to my phone and i was going to take notes about this like thought I had about the case. And as I was typing, I realized that was not a real case. Like I had made it up in my dream.
00:26:19
Speaker
So just ji trying there I think it's just the stress. I think it's probably the short answer of of I really feel committed to taking taking people's problems and kind of making them my own.
00:26:32
Speaker
And you do that enough for enough clients and enough things and it eventually it becomes just a lot to a lot to swallow. So that's the toughest part for me. Sounds like a variation of the you have a term paper due tomorrow. Yeah.
00:26:48
Speaker
It's funny, i was talking to my wife about and She was like, well, it must have felt really good to wake up and realize it didn't exist. I guess. Mostly I just thought like I ruined an entire night of sleep worrying about case that it isn't real.
00:27:01
Speaker
Exactly. now Now the opposite question, what is your ah favorite part or the the easiest part of your job? One or the other, or both? but I have a lot of clients who are much younger than me.
00:27:16
Speaker
And my sense is that kind of are are doing this, you ah operating a behavioral health business kind of as a labor of love to kind of get back.
00:27:29
Speaker
and may not have a deep background in in business. And i have found and what I enjoy is that people call me not just for deep in the weeds, legal advice, how does this statute work with that statute, but also just for like sound sound judgment.
00:27:48
Speaker
And I really i love to play that role. It's one of the things that sort of drove me to becoming a lawyer. i think back, I remember back to to college, the role I always played among my group of friends is like, if you know if we were having a big party and they the the you know the RA knocked on the door, they would always always run and get me because I would be the one who would have like the even the even keel who could, you know, get everyone out of trouble and calm things down.
00:28:19
Speaker
And I like playing that role of just sort of helping shepherd people through crises. And ah that's a big part of why i became a lawyer. And that's what I particularly like about working with my my clients in this industry.
00:28:32
Speaker
Then keeping in mind that this is not law advice, it's not legal,
Building Relationships and Staying Informed
00:28:37
Speaker
whatever. If you could travel back in time and talk to yourself when you were first starting out, what kind of advice would you give yourself in terms of, you know, what what lessons have you learned kind of thing?
00:28:48
Speaker
this is cliche, but it's all about who you're working with. And probably that's your colleagues, like your the other lawyers in your office or whatever. And I've i've i've had the good fortune of working with you know great lawyers. and yeah I've spent time at three or four law firms and and they've all been wonderful people. and I've been really lucky in that sense.
00:29:06
Speaker
But also the clients you're working with and the opposing lawyers that you're working with, that defines, the I think, defines the quality of your day.
00:29:17
Speaker
And so I would tell young lawyers to think about who they want to be working with and try to craft a practice that meets those desires and those needs.
00:29:28
Speaker
Would you if someone came up to you and said, i want to, you know, I'm interested in becoming a lawyer. Would you give that same kind of advice? Would you give different advice? I think it really depends on the person. It is not just a dream job. It's it's not playing point guard for the Lakers that everyone would love.
00:29:47
Speaker
It takes ah ah takes a particular kind of person who likes getting into the details, who likes kind of working through complicated intellectual issues,
00:29:59
Speaker
So it's not for everyone. But if if you have a feeling like you like those things, if you like, I don't know, you're a detailed kind of intellectual person, I think it can be great.
00:30:10
Speaker
Now, you said you've been, you know, doing this for at least 10 years. What would you say is the biggest change you've seen in the industry? The biggest change in the industry? I find that it is harder and harder for really small providers to survive.
00:30:25
Speaker
And I think that's changing things. There's a lot of consolidation. and it feels like that is changing the industry and the culture of the industry.
00:30:36
Speaker
And it's not there yet. There's there's still plenty of all that mom and pop, you know, smaller providers that maybe have one. you know, one one facility. And I think it's becoming harder and harder for those folks to survive just because of the, you know, the the finances of it all, of the consolidation of the payers.
00:30:58
Speaker
And the competition is getting stiffer when you've got, you know private equity backed, you know, huge, huge businesses with deeper pockets that sort do more marketing. It's just getting harder and harder for the little guy to survive. That's probably true in every industry, but I'm i'm seeing that a lot here.
00:31:14
Speaker
union Now, again, the industry is changing on a regular basis, both ah you know lawyer, attorney, as well as the behavioral health industry. Do you have like newsletters or web websites or books that you like keep keep in mind to kind of keep abreast of what's going on in the industry?
00:31:30
Speaker
That's a good question. I spend a lot of time looking at government websites. You know, there are federal government websites that that talk a lot about ECRA.
00:31:41
Speaker
The FTC is is pretty good about kind of publicizing what it's doing and you can extrapolate from that. So I think it's less newsletters for me than it is sort of scouring the internet on a regular basis so you can see, you know, for example,
00:32:02
Speaker
there you know These new zoning laws I was mentioning earlier on in Orange County, I came across those just by doing kind of a regular and i you know Google search through some of the zoing zoning changes in California that I do on a regular you know quarterly basis or so.
00:32:23
Speaker
And these things just kind of pop up. Yeah, so I don't know that it's like ah a real specific resource for you, but it's it's spending a lot of time searching on the internet to find out how what the feds are doing, what cities are doing, um you those sorts of things.
00:32:41
Speaker
Okay. Now we're getting close to the end. Was there something that you wanted to talk about that we haven't or that you thought I was going to ask, but I didn't? I don't think so. i was I was an open book when I came into this with no expectations.
00:32:55
Speaker
Well, I always ask because every once in while there is, they're like, oh, I was hoping you'd ask me about and Z. Okay, now this is kind of a reiteration of the first question, but I want kind of off the top of your head, just gut reaction.
00:33:11
Speaker
Why do you do what you do? It gives me meaning. it's it's the the hardest One of the hardest parts about being a lawyer at a law firm is that you are not personally like building anything. You're helping other people build things, which is rewarding.
00:33:28
Speaker
But i don't know, sometimes I look back and it's like, I just think about these like ships that have passed in the night and I'm glad I was able to help them and have gone on and done their thing. But it can, for me, it can leave me a little bit community less.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:33:43
Speaker
So I really, it is valuable to me just on an emotional level, on a personal level, to feel like I am part of this treatment community. You know, on the periphery, i I would never profess that I'm like really doing the the hardest work.
00:33:58
Speaker
But peripherally, member of this community and it it adds a lot of meaning to my practice. Great. Now, if people want to get a hold of you or learn more about you, where where can they find you?
00:34:11
Speaker
Yep. So my my law firm is called Polsinelli.
00:34:21
Speaker
have to picture it every time I say it. And if you Google my name, Zachary Rothenberg, you'll find me. ah You'll certainly find me on the Polsinelli website, polsinelli.com.
00:34:33
Speaker
On LinkedIn, Zachary Rothenberg. I'm not hard to find. And for those who are do not check out the show notes, it's Rothenberg, R-O-T-H-E-N-B-E-R-G, just ah in case ah so I've learned through my years, you can always spell every name at least two different ways. yeah but You also, as I mentioned, have done several ah webinars from us. The most recent as of this recording was one on anti-harassment and discrimination training.
00:35:01
Speaker
though We will link to those in the show notes as well. So they are free to attend if you are an and are free to take if you're an NBHAP member. And they're only like, I think, $50 if you're not an NBHAP member. It's just a little incentive to become NBHAP member.
00:35:15
Speaker
So awesome. You've been listening to Destination Change. Our guest today was Zach Rothenberg. Thank you for being here. Our theme song was Sudden Nation by Kitsa and used via Creative Commons license by the Free Music Archive.
00:35:27
Speaker
Please consider rating and reviewing the podcast on Apple Podcasts so we can get more listeners. In the meantime, you can only see more about the podcast, including show notes and where else to listen, on our website, www.mbhap.org.
00:35:40
Speaker
If you have questions for the podcast, please email us at info at nbhap.org. Thanks for listening.