by Richard Prior
Staff Writer
Ann Bittinger chose her legal specialty with an eye fixed on the practitioners she felt had the healthiest respect for the law and other people.
She soon found what she was looking for, joined up and hasn’t looked back.
After graduating from the University of Kansas School of Law, “The most important thing for me was I go to work with good lawyers; good, ethical, honest lawyers,” said Bittinger. “The firm in Kansas City with exemplary human beings was Seigfreid Bingham. The firm represented Health Midwest, the biggest health care organization in Kansas City.
“They also represented the Kansas City Chiefs and Lamar Hunt. It was kind of a baptism by fire in health care.”
This is actually the second time Bittinger has lived in Jacksonville. The native of Central City, Neb., first moved here in 1993 after graduating from American University in Washington, D.C., with a double major in journalism and sociology.
“I decided I really wanted to work at a major metropolitan daily,” she said. “I applied all over the country and got a job in Jacksonville.”
Having started out as a political science major, Bittinger had to contend with the insistent voice in her head that said she should give law school a try.
“I always toyed with the idea,” she said. “Then I thought I ought to do it while I was young, or I was never going to do it.”
She and Steve Printy, who became her husband, moved to Lawrence, Kan., for about four years. While she went to law school and became editor-in-chief of the Kansas Law Review, he worked on his master’s degree in secondary education with a history emphasis. He now teaches sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade history at Palmer Catholic Academy in Ponte Vedra Beach. He also coaches golf and basketball.
The couple moved back to Jacksonville in the summer of 2000, knowing there weren’t many attorneys practicing Bittinger’s specialty.
“Kansas City has many health care attorneys,” she said. “Just about every medium to large firm has a health care department. But there weren’t that many health care jobs here in Jacksonville.”
The position she landed was as the first in-house health care attorney with the Nemours Foundation. The foundation, a $400 million a year operation, is one of the country’s largest employers of pediatric subspecialties, such as pediatric orthopedics, pediatric surgery and pediatric radiology.
“I was really lucky to get a job with the Nemours Foundation at such a young age,” said Bittinger. “It’s been a great experience.
“You don’t have the same perspective working at the law firms that you have when you’re actually working in the industry.”
Bittinger is still working “in-house,” with the foundation as her major client. But the house is hers. The Bittinger Law Firm opened March 8 at her home on the 17th fairway at Windsor Parke Golf Course.
“It’s the best office I ever had,” she said. “It’s a very nice, relaxing environment.
“I have everything I need. I don’t have a law library, but I have Lexus and other health care data bases. I’ve got a phone and a fax. What else do you need?”
Working out of her home doesn’t just keep Bittinger’s overhead down. It keeps her close to the couple’s two daughters — Olivia, 6, and Grace, 2.
“I also read that 75 percent of all small businesses start out in people’s homes,” she said. “I was surprised — and comforted — to find that out.”
Making the move to strike out on her own did cause some anxious moments.
“But what I keep going back to is I’m the only attorney in private practice in Jacksonville who has been in-house with a multi-state health care organization, who has big law firm experience and who has boutique law firm experience.
“I’ve basically only done health care law, and the general corporate and contractual work that goes along with that.”
To fill up her spare time, Bittinger is on the board of directors of Healthy Mothers/Healthy Babies, which works with pregnant women and new mothers; vice chair of the American Health Lawyers Association; vice chair of the AHLA Physicians Committee; chair of the Jacksonville Bar Association’s Health Law Section; a member of the board of governors for the JBA’s Young Lawyers Section; and a board member of the Jacksonville Women Lawyers Association.
“I think it’s very important to give back,” she said. “I feel like I’m really lucky.
“Part of being involved in the bar is my marketing strategy, too. A lot of attorneys are going to run into some of these complex health care laws. And they’ll get nervous and not know what to do.
“With me being on my own, they can come to me and not worry about one of my partners taking away any of their business and what not. So I’ve really been trying to make myself known to other attorneys who run across health care issues and serve as a resource for them.”