© 2013 The Texas Lawbook.
By Mark Curriden, JD
Senior Writer for The Texas Lawbook
(April 11) – Two nationally prominent lawyers-turned-corporate executives said Wednesday that uncertain government regulation is causing small and mid-sized business owners to hold off expanding their staffs and hiring more workers.
State Farm Insurance CEO Ed Rust and former WellPoint CEO Angela Braly told more than 150 people attending the SMU Dedman School of Law’s Carrington Endowed Lecture Series that the U.S. economy is growing but remains fragile. Rust, who also serves as chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Braly, who serves of the board of directors at Procter & Gamble, are graduates of the law school.
Rust and Braly said the Affordable Care Act, Dodd Frank and regulations requiring employers to display posters warning about improper workplace conduct may have been implemented with good intentions but the impact they have were not necessarily thought through.
Rust remembered an old newspaper cartoon that featured Moses coming down from the mountain with two tablets featuring the Ten Commandments. The cartoon then had Moses pointing behind him to hundreds of other tablets. “And those are the regulations interpreting the Ten Commandments.”
Rust and Braly said that their legal education helped them significantly as business leaders.
“My legal training helped me looked as an from 360 degrees,” Rust said. “The law also taught me to be a better communicator.”
Braly told the law students attending the event that they should not forget that “the practice of law is a service business.”
In an interview, Rust said that law firms are like every other business in that they must look at changing their business model. “Law firms large and small are struggling to stay in business,” he said. “There are law firms that are charging $1,100 or $1,200 an hour, but we’ve learned that’s not the price companies are paying. It’s a negotiation. Large companies are considering having more of their legal work done in-house.”
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