What happens when a lawyer who has always had a heart for the little guy and no love for corporations comes out of law school, works first at a plaintiff's personal injury firm, then at a firm representing transit police officers and Metro North railroad police when they got into disciplinary trouble

In this episode of the Trustcast Show, Zane Myers speaks with Jay, a New York City personal injury attorney with over three and a half decades of experience handling automobile negligence, pedestrian knockdowns

Jay explains the triangle he uses to evaluate every case before he takes it: level one is liability, because without clear fault you have nothing to build on; level two is damages, whether injuries, lost wages, or both; and level three is coverage, because you can win completely and still recover nothing if the at-fault party has no insurance worth going after. He also explains the thirty-day deadline for filing a no-fault application in New York

They also discuss the May 2006 change to New York personal injury law that eliminated the ninety-of-one-eighty provision — the rule that used to let people with a disability lasting at least ninety out of one hundred eighty days recover damages in automobile cases — and replaced the entire liability framework with a requirement that you be over fifty-one percent not at fault just to recover anything, a change Jay attributes directly to Uber spending ten million dollars in lobbying to get the governor to force through the modification. He explains why you should never give a recorded statement to any insurance company, including your own

Jay is a New York City personal injury attorney in private practice since 1999, with an office at 260 Madison Avenue in Midtown Manhattan near Grand Central Terminal. He is a former counsel to the Hispanic Society of the New York City Transit Police and the New York Shields, and has been featured in Newsday and the New York Law Journal. He handles automobile negligence, pedestrian knockdowns, motorcycle accidents, and slip, trip, and fall cases throughout New York.

Connect with Jay:

Phone (office): 212-972-0000

Phone (cell / direct): 917-620-4802

Email: [email protected]

260 Madison Avenue, Midtown Manhattan, New York City

(Between 38th and 39th Street, a few blocks from Grand Central Terminal)

Chapters

00:00 Introduction — Thirty-five years settling New York personal injury cases from three thousand dollars to four point six million

00:12 The New York Law Journal and Newsday case — transit police officers denied promotion after the NYPD merger, a class action that was not the norm

01:51 What first pulled him toward representing injured people instead of corporations — always a heart for the little guy

02:29 Straight out of law school? Not quite — plaintiff's firm, transit police firm, a partner from 1992 to 1999, and solo ever since

03:33 The legal assistant who is a former NYPD police officer — and why the combination of investigative instinct and medical interest made her a perfect fit

04:27 Office at 260 Madison Avenue, Midtown Manhattan — and why pedestrian knockdowns are something you associate specifically with New York City

05:07 The most interesting pedestrian knockdown case — a delivery company on a motorized bike, street cameras, and a sizable settlement

05:42 The four point six million dollar case — a drunk driver, a catering hall in Great Neck, a woman in a coma for thirty days, and a structured settlement she still receives today

07:06 What injuries did she have — collapsed lung, removed spleen, TBI, laminectomy, multiple fractures, and the long road back

08:06 What to do in the first hour after being hit by a car in New York

09:17 Do not decline the ambulance, go to the hospital, and complain about everything that hurts from head to toe

09:33 Do not give any statement to either insurance company — let your attorney handle all of that

09:55 The thirty-day no-fault application — fifty thousand dollars in medical coverage and the certified mail plus email system to prove you sent it

12:00 Why social media — not just posts about your case but posts about your life — can be discovered and used against you

12:27 Does the other driver say everything is fine and suggest you skip the police — should you call anyway

13:40 Uninsured motorist claims, underinsured motorist claims, and why a police or ambulance report within twenty-four to forty-eight hours is required to use them in New York

15:16 Why you should never talk to your own insurance company's adjuster without a lawyer

15:35 The friend's client who told his insurance company he actually lived in New Jersey — and lost coverage entirely

#TrustcastShow #NewYorkPersonalInjury #PedestrianKnockdown #NewYorkAccidentLawyer #NoFaultApplication #NYPersonalInjuryLaw #InsuranceAdjusterTips #NewYork2006LiabilityLaw #ManhattanAccidentAttorney #DavidVsGoliath

What happens when a young woman goes to law school intending to work on the plaintiff's side, clerks and works for plaintiff's firms all the way through her training, graduates, and then ends up taking a job as a railroad defense lawyer fighting off injury claims from the exact people she always meant to help

In this episode of the Trustcast Show, Zane Myers speaks with Feliz Rael of The Law Office of Feliz A. Rael in Albuquerque, New Mexico — a Super Lawyers selectee, AV Preeminent rated by Martindale-Hubbell, a member of the American Association for Justice's Nursing Home Litigation Group, a podcast host

Feliz walks through the case that launched the rest of her career: Gene Marie Gann, an 86-year-old woman at a senior living facility in Albuquerque who walked up four stairs every week to get her hair done, reached the top of the staircase one day, and grabbed for a railing that simply was not there — because the twelve inches of ADA-required railing at the top of the stairs had never been installed because a closet door was nearby

She explains what a bed sore actually means and why it is almost always a sign of inadequate staffing rather than individual negligence, why complaining about a family member's care does not have to trigger retaliation if handled with documentation and a non-hostile tone that reaches the right people rather than the frontline workers who did not make the staffing decision, how to check nursing home staffing ratios at Medicare.gov while recognizing that assisted living facility numbers are not publicly available

They also discuss the financial exploitation case Feliz has been working for over five years: a doctor with a traumatic brain injury who hired a housekeeper at fifteen dollars an hour, within three months watched her become power of attorney over himself and his wife, become CEO of his company, drain his bank accounts, sell his house, buy luxury cars, purchase a two million dollar home in Albuquerque, and then drop him at the hospital and tell the staff he had dementia and could not be believed

Feliz Rael is the founder of The Law Office of Feliz A. Rael in Albuquerque, a Super Lawyers selectee, AV Preeminent rated, a member of the AAJ Nursing Home Litigation Group, and an attorney who has devoted two decades to protecting nursing home residents, group home residents, assisted living facility residents, and victims of financial exploitation across New Mexico.

Connect with Feliz Rael:

raelfirm.com

Contact via the website contact form — email response is preferred

Albuquerque, New Mexico — practicing only in New Mexico

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Feliz Rael

00:13 Railroad defense lawyer who always meant to be on the other side — and why it just weighed on her

00:32 Her heart was not in it, she got married, had a baby, and found her way back through a colleague's call

01:54 A woman who started her own nursing home firm needed an associate and the role fit immediately

03:00 The case that launched the rest of her career

03:11 Gene Marie Gann — four stairs, a missing railing, a fractured skull, and a $1.86 million verdict

05:30 The CEO who could not name a single safety repair his sixty-five-building company had ever made

06:10 A contractor who said installing the missing railing would have cost twenty-six dollars

07:23 The message the jury sent: elderly lives get more valuable, not less

07:57 My mom has a bed sore that was not there last month — is that neglect or does that just happen

08:48 I am scared to complain because I think they will treat my dad worse — how do you handle that

09:15 Documentation, a non-hostile tone, date-stamped photos, and who is actually making the staffing decision

10:39 Are nicer more expensive nursing homes actually safer — not necessarily, and here is why

11:20 The state-run New Mexico nursing home with the highest staffing ratio and the best outcomes in the state

12:10 Genesis, private equity, a third of New Mexico's nursing facilities, and what the bankruptcy left behind

13:29 Visits are critical — even video visits, even when it is hard to get there

14:07 How to check nursing home staffing ratios at Medicare.gov — and why assisted living statistics are not public

14:35 Ask about nights, weekends, and holidays — when the most harmful things happen and the fewest staff are on site

15:30 What are the cooking and laundry staff counted in the care ratio — and the question to ask

16:11 Warning signs to watch for on every visit: smell, urine stains, unexplained bruises and scratches

#FelizRael #RaelFirm #TrustcastShow #NewMexicoNursingHomeLawyer #NursingHomeAbuse #ElderLaw #FinancialExploitationElders #NursingHomeNeglect #AlbuquerqueAttorney #VulnerableAdults

What happens when a Penn State Law graduate who sees himself as a trial attorney starts prosecuting drug and racketeering cases for the State of Arizona because that is where the courtroom work is,

which is precisely what UIM coverage exists for, helps his friend gather medical records and draft the demand on a pro bono basis, and recovers in the UIM claim alone more than what the previous attorney had recovered in the entire liability proceeding — and then looks at what he just saw and decides to open his own shop?

In this episode of the Trustcast Show, Zane Myers speaks with Ed Parra of The Scottsdale Personal Injury Law Firm — a former Arizona criminal prosecutor, former state civil defense attorney on matters over a hundred million dollars, Super Lawyers selectee, and plaintiff's personal injury attorney who opened his own firm in April — about what the personal injury system in Arizona actually does for injured people, where it fails them when the numbers do not line up, and why the people who feel the most guilty about calling a personal injury attorney are often the ones who need one the most.

Ed explains what to do in the first minutes after being hit in Scottsdale — exchange information, photograph the license plate, get police to the scene for documentation — and the two things most people do that cost them the case: saying sorry when they did absolutely nothing wrong, and giving a recorded statement to the insurance adjuster when they do not yet know what their injuries are, what treatment they will need, or what their case is actually worth. He also explains why Arizona's constitution prohibits damage caps in standard negligence cases

They also discuss the hardest conversation in personal injury law — looking a catastrophically injured client in the eye after a full investigation and explaining that twenty-five thousand dollars is all there is, the at-fault driver has nothing to go after, and there is no more coverage to find — the $450,000 medical malpractice settlement from his prior firm at Berg Simpson that resolved only months after filing the complaint

Ed Parra is the founder of The Scottsdale Personal Injury Law Firm, a Super Lawyers selectee, a former drug and racketeering prosecutor for the State of Arizona, a former state civil defense attorney, a Penn State Law graduate, and a plaintiff's personal injury attorney representing injury victims across Scottsdale, Phoenix, Mesa, Chandler, Gilbert, and Tempe.

Connect with Ed Parra:

scottsdaleinjured.com / thescottsdalepersonalinjurylawfirm.com

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 480-378-3178

7525 E. Camelback Rd., Suite 208, Scottsdale, AZ 85251

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Ed Parra

00:21 Drug and racketeering prosecution for Arizona, then defending the state against eight-figure civil lawsuits

00:40 Something was missing — the path from criminal prosecution to civil defense to criminal defense to plaintiff's work

01:45 The moment he switched to the plaintiff's side and never looked back

03:05 A friend's attorney told him his UIM claim was not worth pursuing — Ed had never heard that

03:20 Two cars fled the scene, a clear underinsured motorist case, and the pro bono demand that changed the outcome

05:01 Recovering more in the UIM claim than the previous attorney had recovered in the entire liability proceeding

05:53 Opening his own firm in April and starting from zero

06:00 How he built his client pipeline: SEO, Google pay-per-click, referrals, networking, and reputation on prior pleadings

07:20 Google's Gemini AI recommending him as the number one attorney to a new client

08:05 What to do in the first minutes after being hit by a driver in Scottsdale

10:37 Document everything: insurance, ID, license plate photos, and get police on scene

11:10 Do not apologize, do not give a recorded statement, and do not accept the early low-ball settlement offer

12:40 Even if you decide to handle your own claim — consult first

13:34 Consultations are free, clients never pay upfront, the attorney fronts all expenses and takes a percentage on the back end

16:03 How long does a personal injury case take in Arizona — from five months to three-plus years depending on severity

18:31 Arizona's constitution prohibits damage caps in standard negligence cases — what that means for a jury

18:51 How to evaluate case value: medical specials, life care planners, pain and suffering, and anchoring at trial

21:12 What happened to the friend — and the pro bono UIM recovery that planted the seed for the firm

22:14 The $450,000 medical malpractice settlement that closed months after filing — and why that almost never happens

23:33 The toughest cases since opening the firm: catastrophic injuries against $25,000 minimum liability limits

#EdParra #ScottsdaleInjured #TrustcastShow #ScottsdalePersonalInjuryLawyer #ArizonaPersonalInjury #FormerProsecutorPlaintiffLawyer #UIMClaim #ArizonaNoDamageCaps #PersonalInjuryMyths #ScottsdaleAttorney

What happens when a Toronto personal injury lawyer whose South Asian parents emigrated from Nairobi to Canada in 1974 and sent her to private schools on high expectations grows up getting into trouble as a teenager so the expectations shift to her brother, watches law shows on television and decides she can see herself in a courtroom,

And then a second nightclub. And then a third.

In this episode of the Trustcast Show, Zane Myers speaks with Jasmine Daya — founding principal of Jasmine Daya & Company in Toronto, co-founder and COO of Geraci LLP in Irvine, California, author of Law Girl's Bump in the Road and the JD in the Kitchen cookbook series, serial entrepreneur, real estate investor,

Jasmine explains how buying Pravda Vodka Bar — an iconic Toronto establishment known for its walk-in vodka freezer with over eighty varieties from around the world, aerialists flying from the ceiling, and drummers standing on bars — led to nightclub number two, then a conversation where her agent said there is a third one coming up for sale, and then a text to her mother with the monkey-covering-eyes emoji. She walks through how she got Smart Serve certified over a weekend and hopped behind the bar on a Friday night because she had only two bartenders when the venue needed three and could not stand watching people with money and no one to pour drinks, why her son started calling it the Adam Sandler look every Sunday in sweats and Uggs when she had been in heels at the bar all night and heels at the firm all day, and why flipping the second and third was always the plan even if the exhaustion was not. She also explains how meeting Anthony Geraci — the founder of Geraci LLP and the American Association of Private Lenders — brought her to Orange County, what stunned her most about American real estate closings (no lawyer, just escrow)

They also discuss the Mitigate platform that builds insurance review directly into private loan documents so that a lender is not left foreclosing on a pile of ash after a property burns, the Regulate platform designed to untangle the patchwork of state-by-state licensing requirements that means a California private lending license does nothing for you in the next state, why she still takes children's personal injury files even though the contingency math does not reward it because it makes her feel good and she does not have to answer to a partnership anymore, the cross-border private lenders association bringing Canadian and American lenders together

Jasmine Daya is the founding principal of Jasmine Daya & Company in Toronto, the co-founder and COO of Geraci LLP in Irvine, California, a graduate of Queen's University Faculty of Law and Osgoode Hall Law School at York University, a holder of a negotiation certificate from Harvard Law School, a digital marketing and analytics certificate from MIT Sloan, and the author of Law Girl's Bump in the Road, the JD in the Kitchen cookbook series, and the forthcoming Private Lender's Legal Handbook.

Connect with Jasmine Daya:

Toronto / Personal Injury / Private Lending Canada: jdlawyers.ca

Geraci LLP — California / US Private Lending: geracillp.com

Email (Toronto): [email protected] / [email protected]

Email (Geraci): [email protected]

Phone (Toronto): 416-967-9100

Jasmine Daya & Company — 2 St. Clair Ave. W., Toronto, Ontario M4V 1L5

00:00 Introduction to Jasmine Daya

00:14 Building one of Toronto's top personal injury firms and running three downtown nightclubs simultaneously

00:26 What lawyer buys a nightclub during a pandemic? This one. And here is exactly why.

01:03 Six months of court closures, clean closets, caught-up taxes, and then the real estate market did not crash

01:40 Pravda Vodka Bar — a walk-in freezer, 80-plus vodkas, aerialists from the ceiling, and drummers on the bars

03:03 Nightclub two, and then the agent lists the better one second on purpose so she buys both

04:12 What happened to the clubs — and the Adam Sandler Sunday morning sweatpants problem

06:28 Three clubs, a 60-person firm, three kids, and a full real estate portfolio — simultaneously

07:01 Switching from days to nights and back, and why Sunday was the one sacred day

08:05 Moving to California was not about the fires — she met Anthony Geraci

08:34 Learning private lending law in the US and immediately finding a gap nobody was covering

09:30 Wait — real estate closings in California do not require a lawyer? What?

10:22 Who is reviewing the insurance policy when a wildfire burns the collateral down?

11:00 Standing in front of 500 private lenders in Las Vegas asking why nobody is talking about this

#JasmineDaya #GeraciLLP #JasmineDayaAndCompany #TrustcastShow #PrivateLendingLaw #TorontoPersonalInjuryLawyer #PravdaVodkaBar #PrivateLenderCanada #CrossBorderPrivateLending #LawGirlsGuide

What happens when a boy who spent his first ten years in Soviet Moscow — learning from a very early age which thoughts he could not say out loud, watching his parents stand in winter lines without knowing what was being sold because if there was a long line something worth having must be there, absorbing survival as the organizing principle of daily life — watches his parents risk everything to emigrate, arrives in the United States, discovers speed, becomes a competitive race car driver, goes to Amherst College magna cum laude, then to the University of Virginia School of Law, practices in California

In this episode of the Trustcast Show, Zane Myers speaks with Roman Lifson, a partner at Christian & Barton in Richmond, Virginia, a thirty-four-year trial lawyer, championship race car driver, and co-founder of Mythic Adventure Travel, about why lawyers have the highest rate of depression and suicidal ideation of any profession,

Roman explains the two causes he believes are driving lawyer depression: excessive adversariness that makes litigation more combative than clients need it to be, and a loneliness epidemic where lawyers are surrounded by people they cannot actually confide in — the difference between sharing the Facebook and Instagram version of your life where everything is brilliant and your dogs are beautiful and sharing what actually troubles you, what you are ashamed of, what you are afraid of.

They also discuss the day-long program Roman and his wife Hallie developed for lawyers and their romantic partners — the morning ritual that takes five to ten minutes and asks what are the three things that matter to you today and how can I support you in them, the gratitude ritual where you speak what you want to accomplish as if it has already happened, and the ten guiding principles of couple relating built on the premise that there is me, there is you, and there is a third entity which is the relationship itself and it deserves its own consideration in every decision. Roman also tells the story of the man in his mid-forties who came to him having internalized a full year of childhood sexual abuse by a middle school teacher, used alcohol to numb himself for decades, finally disclosed to a criminal defense attorney after a third DUI, and arrived in Roman's office extremely fragile with a history of recent suicide attempts — and what happened when the judge who dismissed the case on statute of limitations grounds was humble enough to reverse himself on the only motion for reconsideration Roman has had granted in thirty-four years.

Roman Lifson is a partner at Christian & Barton, LLP in Richmond, Virginia, a firm celebrating its hundredth anniversary, practicing products liability, commercial litigation, First Amendment and defamation, medical malpractice, motorsports law, and international law. He is a graduate of Amherst College and the University of Virginia School of Law, a Super Lawyer selected continuously since 2013, AV Preeminent rated by Martindale-Hubbell, a former Chair of the Virginia Bar Association Civil Litigation Section, a championship race car driver, outside general counsel to Virginia International Raceway, and the co-founder of Mythic Adventure Travel with his wife Hallie.

Connect with Roman Lifson:

cblaw.com/roman-lifson

Mythic Adventure Travel: mythicadventuretravel.com

Phone: 843-377-4747

Christian & Barton, LLP — 901 E. Cary St., Suite 1800, Richmond, VA 23219

Chapters

00:00 Growing up in Soviet Moscow — knowing from early childhood which thoughts could not be said out loud

00:39 Long lines in the winter, the focus on survival, and parents who risked everything to leave

01:40 Arriving in America, a decade at the racing track, and the arc of a thirty-four-year trial career

00:01 (Part 1) What the guest calls his linear first career — wife Hallie as the catalyst for everything that changed

00:12 Sixteen years married, eighteen together — and why she became his entry into personal development

01:52 Mythic Adventure Travel — layering couples work onto trips to Santorini, Croatia, Italy, France

03:22 Thirty-four years of trial work — product liability, commercial litigation, First Amendment, medical malpractice, both sides

04:45 The advantage of variety — why doing both plaintiff and defense work makes him better at both

05:17 Being at a mid-sized firm for a century — how Christian & Barton approaches the generalist trial practice

06:29 My spouse says I bring cases home every night — how do I actually stop doing that

07:00 Rather than avoiding it, find balance — the cases that kept him up at night and what that actually looks like

07:40 Lawyers as problem solvers who too often become problem escalators — and what clients actually need

08:30 The loneliness epidemic and what the Surgeon General said about the lack of authentic human connection

#RomanLifson #ChristianBarton #TrustcastShow #LawyerWellness #TrialLawyer #RichmondVirginia #MythicAdventureTravel #MotorsportsLaw

What happens when a kid from Miami earns his accounting degrees at the University of Florida, goes to the University of Miami for law school and his LL.M. in tax, joins the IRS Office of Chief Counsel, spends twelve years as a government attorney litigating the agency's most complex controversies — the last four as a Special Trial Attorney standing up in United States Tax Court on behalf of the United States, building litigation teams, managing expert witnesses, briefing executives, learning exactly how the IRS classifies a return for examination, what revenue agents are looking for in an initial interview, what makes a case go to Appeals and what makes it go all the way to trial

In this episode of the Trustcast Show, Zane Myers speaks with Michael Kramarz, a tax principal and the head of Federal Tax Resolution at Kaufman Rossin in Boca Raton, Florida — the largest independent CPA and advisory firm in Florida and one of the top 100 firms in the United States — about what the IRS is actually doing when your return gets flagged, what your CPA is getting wrong in the first forty-eight hours, and why the Employee Retention Credit is now one of the most scrutinized items on the books of any business that claimed it.

Michael explains the difference between a CP2000 matching notice and a formal examination — why one is mostly a correspondence exercise and the other involves a human revenue agent with a list of issues, an initial interview, a tour of your business, and the ability to find things that were not on that list if you give them the opening. He walks through what actually happens inside the IRS the moment your return is selected — the DIF score algorithm that flags fluctuations in income and expenses, the classifier who identifies which issues go to the field, the revenue agent who will Google you and your business before the first phone call, and the Large Business and International Division campaigns that target specific transactions and are publicly posted on the IRS website for anyone to check before entering a deal.

They also discuss the two biggest mistakes CPAs make in the first forty-eight hours — not responding on time and giving the IRS far more than they asked for — why answering only the exact question being asked is as true in a tax examination as it is in witness prep, why the first ninety days of an examination are the most dangerous and the most likely to produce statements or document productions that open entirely new issues,

Michael Kramarz is a tax principal and head of Federal Tax Resolution at Kaufman Rossin in Boca Raton, Florida, a former IRS Special Trial Attorney with twelve years at the Office of Chief Counsel and over two hundred engagements in and out of United States Tax Court, a graduate of the University of Florida and the University of Miami School of Law with a B.S. and M.Acc. in Accounting and a J.D. and LL.M. in Tax, and the Michael Scott of federal tax controversy — which is his actual middle name and he has heard every joke.

Connect with Michael Kramarz:

kaufmanrossin.com/professionals/michael-kramarz/

kaufmanrossin.com

Boca Raton, Florida — federal practice, nationwide, also state tax matters

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Michael Kramarz

00:10 Twelve years inside the IRS as a Special Trial Attorney — and the moment he had to stop saying "we"

00:33 The billing adjustment: from all the time in the world to billing efficiently for clients

01:11 Why he left the IRS after twelve years and headed to greener pastures

02:22 Getting referrals from CPAs and attorneys when a client's IRS problem is more than they can handle

02:35 A client just forwarded an IRS letter and is panicking — what to tell them first

02:47 Take a deep breath: most of these are misunderstandings, it is a process, and here is what happens

03:39 How to know if you can handle it yourself or if it is time to bring in a specialist

05:25 The free thirty-minute consultation — why he offers it and what it actually covers

06:24 CP2000 matching notice versus a formal IRS examination — why which one arrived matters

06:32 What a CP2000 is, why it happens, and how it is usually handled

08:09 An honest omission — can you really get in serious trouble for something your accountant missed

08:47 The twenty percent accuracy-related penalty, what triggers it, and who actually goes to jail

09:36 Notice of deficiency — ninety days to file a Tax Court petition and what happens if you miss it

10:29 The jurisdictional issue, the circuit split on equitable tolling, and why you do not want to rely on it

11:07 The two biggest CPA mistakes in the first forty-eight hours after a return gets flagged

#MichaelKramarz #KaufmanRossin #TrustcastShow #IRSAttorney #TaxControversy #IRSExamination #EmployeeRetentionCredit #FormerIRSAttorney #TaxCourtLawyer #FederalTaxResolution

What happens when a young man whose hardworking grandparents helped finance his education and left a trust fund that set the family up right goes to law school, becomes an Assistant Attorney General for Massachusetts, spends ten years in the courtroom on personal injury and property and insurance cases, hangs his own shingle in 2009,

In this episode of the Trustcast Show, Zane Myers speaks with Jonathan White of Jordan & White, LLC — a firm whose lineage traces to 1938, when Sumner Lowe Raymond, a direct descendant of John Proctor who was hanged during the Salem witch trials, opened his practice in Danvers,

Jonathan walks through the single biggest misconception he battles every day: the belief that having a will means your family avoids the probate court. The opposite is true. A will guarantees your family goes to probate. A trust avoids it — because the trust is a separate legal entity from you, and the assets inside it are not yours when you die, so there is nothing to probate. He also explains the critical step that most people miss entirely after signing a trust: actually funding it, which means recording a new deed at the registry of deeds so the house is inside the trust, retitling bank accounts and investment accounts, updating beneficiary designations, and signing what he calls the magic wand — an assignment that moves all personal property without paper title into the trust in a single stroke. Skip this step and the trust you paid for will not do what you built it to do.

They also discuss the two ways families lose their home to long-term care costs — the voluntary choice the owner always has, and the Medicaid estate recovery lien that nobody explains until after the person dies and the government sends the family a bill for every dollar it spent on their care — how an irrevocable Medicaid Asset Protection Trust with a five-year look-back period keeps the house out of the probate estate and out of reach of that lien, why a revocable trust does nothing to protect the house for Medicaid purposes regardless of how many years have passed, what happens to your trust when you do not fully trust your children with the trustee role and what limited special powers let you fix that problem without losing your protection, and the creative ways people actually pay for estate planning when their wealth is in the house and not in the checking account.

Jonathan White is the founding partner of Jordan & White, LLC, with offices in Salem and Medford, Massachusetts. The firm's lineage traces to 1938 when Sumner Lowe Raymond — a direct descendant of John Proctor, hanged during the Salem witch trials — opened his practice in Danvers. Jonathan is a graduate of the College of the Holy Cross and Suffolk University Law School, a former Massachusetts Assistant Attorney General, and a trusted estate planning, probate, and real estate attorney serving the North Shore of Massachusetts.

Connect with Jonathan White:

jordanwhitellc.com

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 978-744-2811

70 Washington St, Suite 312, Salem, MA 01970

Also serving clients from offices in Danvers and Medford

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Jonathan White

00:13 Sitting where your clients sit — experiencing estate planning from the other side even when you are already the attorney

01:38 From fixing broken estates to getting in front of them — how the family planning moment expanded the practice

03:29 Inheriting a firm rooted in 1938 in a town famous for the witch trials — and who Sumner Lowe Raymond actually was

03:51 The fire, the burnt files in the drawers, and Dana Jordan's mother running down Washington Street looking for a lease

05:53 How to open the uncomfortable conversation about aging parents and a will that has never been written

06:09 The belief statement, the curated agenda, and why the client should be doing most of the talking by the end

09:00 The three-meeting system — what happens at each meeting and why they are structured that way

10:04 Will versus trust — and the biggest misconception Jonathan has to dispel every single day

10:16 A will guarantees your family goes to probate — here is exactly what a will actually does and does not do

12:25 How a revocable living trust works as a separate legal entity and why that makes all the difference

13:10 The work that is not done when you sign your trust — funding it is the step most people miss entirely

14:05 The house — recording a new deed at the registry of deeds and why you cannot just write it into an exhibit

15:20 Bank accounts, beneficiary designations, 401ks, and the magic wand for everything else

15:57 Tax implications of revocable living trust planning in Massachusetts — and why most people are surprised by the answer

#JonathanWhite #JordanWhiteLLC #TrustcastShow #MassachusettsEstatePlanning #SalemMassachusetts #WillVsTrust #ProbateAvoidance #MedicaidAssetProtection #NorthShoreMassachusetts #EstatePlanningMyths

What happens when a partner at an Ohio law firm who has been a highly specialized workers' compensation attorney for most of her career — her name on the side of the building, corner office, everything she thought she was supposed to want — follows her teenage kids onto TikTok during COVID just to see what is happening, starts making lifestyle videos about juicing and running and fabulous meals,

And then her husband crashes his small airplane — the Ford Fiesta of the Sky, they called it — and in the ICU, as he starts coming out of everything, they have the kind of conversation people usually put off until something terrible forces it,

In this episode of the Trustcast Show, Zane Myers speaks with Adrienne Hines — The Ladylike Lawyer — a thirty-year Ohio bankruptcy attorney, author, viral content creator with 230,000 plus followers across platforms, winner of the 2023 Best Bankruptcy Advice Award at the FinTalk Awards by Debtcom,

Adrienne explains why the followers who find her through social media arrive at her door more qualified and more ready to move forward than referrals she has gotten across a thirty-year career — because they have watched hours of her content, they understand the landscape, they have already pushed through the shame before they ever dial the phone — and why her videos, shot completely off the cuff in her car and in TJ Maxx and walking through the grocery store and sitting in the doctor's office waiting room, have grown to over 4,000 without a single dollar spent on advertising. She also explains why debt settlement companies are winning clients that should be going to bankruptcy attorneys not because their services are better but because they have figured out the sales pitch of kindness and vulnerability that lawyers are specifically trained to avoid, why lawyers are currently less trusted than credit card companies and bank managers and what that actually costs the people who need help, and why growing up in the era when law firms literally turned each other in for advertising actually gave her a perspective that makes the authenticity on camera real instead of performed.

They also discuss the referral network she built with a business partner sourcing attorneys exclusively from the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys so that followers in states she cannot practice in get connected to someone good rather than just someone who signed up for a database, why she monitors those relationships personally so that a bad experience gets flagged and addressed,

Adrienne Hines is The Ladylike Lawyer, a bankruptcy attorney in northern Ohio admitted to practice in the U.S. District Court and U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Ohio, a thirty-year attorney, a graduate of The University of Toledo College of Law and Ohio University, a Super Lawyer, a National Association of Distinguished Counsel honoree, a member of the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys,

Connect with Adrienne Hines:

theladylikelawyer.com

TikTok / Instagram / Facebook / YouTube: @theladylikelawyer

Phone: 419-871-8085

Northern Ohio — U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Northern District of Ohio

(Indiana border to Pennsylvania border, north of the middle of the state)

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Adrienne Hines, The Ladylike Lawyer

00:41 The TikTok video that changed everything — mentioning bankruptcy in the middle of a lifestyle post and watching it explode

03:25 What happened to the practice before and after going all in on video

03:54 Twenty-seven years as a workers' compensation specialist, burning out, and starting to see bankruptcy differently

05:30 The Ford Fiesta of the Sky — her husband's near-fatal plane crash and the ICU conversations that changed everything

06:29 Why the plane crash gave her the permission to pivot she had been waiting for without knowing it

07:55 Making videos off the cuff in her car, in TJ Maxx, walking through the grocery store — the actual secret to authenticity on camera

08:27 ADHD, dramatic, outgoing, and completely comfortable talking to a phone — why this medium fits her

11:08 No scripts, no tripods, no prep — and how over time she learned to get to the meat faster

11:40 Advice for lawyers who are nervous about video and afraid of cheapening their brand

12:26 The deep fear people have about talking to lawyers — and why most attorneys have no idea how afraid people actually are

14:22 Growing up when advertising was a disgrace and law firms turned each other in for it — what that taught her about being real

14:23 Debt settlement companies are beating bankruptcy attorneys on one thing: kindness — what lawyers need to understand

15:57 Not making a pitch but giving away everything she knows for free — and what that actually produces in revenue

#AdrienneHines #TheLadylikeLawyer #TrustcastShow #BankruptcyAttorneyOhio #BankruptcyIsATool #LawyerTikTok #DebtRelief #FinancialLiteracy #NorthernOhioBankruptcy #OrganicLeadGeneration

What happens when a native Iowan who graduates from Simpson College with honors in business management, gets a mentor before he even enters law school who tells him exactly what to practice and which company to go to first, skips private practice entirely and goes directly in-house to a Fortune 500 financial giant where he spends a decade as a senior compliance officer answering to the SEC and FINRA — and then hears that same mentor, now retired, say she thinks he would actually be a better fit in private practice

In this episode of the Trustcast Show, Zane Myers speaks with Caleb Brus of BrownWinick in Des Moines, Iowa, about a corner of the law that almost nobody is talking about in veterinary medicine but that every veterinarian who owns a clinic will eventually have to navigate — what to do with the thing they built when it is finally time to stop building it.

Caleb explains what an ESOP actually is — an Employee Stock Ownership Plan funded entirely by employer contributions and not a single dollar from the employees themselves, structured as a sale transaction where the company sells its stock to a trust that holds shares on behalf of those employees — and why it is simultaneously an exit vehicle for the departing owner, a retirement plan for everyone who shows up to work there, and the most effective tool available for keeping a clinic privately owned when the phone rings with an unsolicited offer from a corporate buyer who has been quietly rolling up practices before the owners even knew they had a value worth rolling up.

They also discuss why a private equity offer almost always looks higher than an ESOP offer in the side-by-side comparison and why that comparison is almost always the wrong lens for a clinic owner who cares about anything beyond that number — what you can identify within fifteen minutes of walking into a private equity-owned vet clinic because the revenue conversation consistently arrives before the medical one, what happens to the founding veterinarians who stay on after the rollup and become employees of the entity that bought their equity, why an 80-year-old Iowa veterinarian who cannot find a buyer and has to wind down is a preventable outcome if the right conversation starts fifteen years earlier, the Management Service Organization structure that private equity actually invented to work around state ownership restrictions for licensed veterinarians — and that ESOP transactions can also use — why ERISA fiduciary duty is the highest standard in American law and why a clinic with a documented cybersecurity process but a breach will almost always come out better than a clinic with no breach and no process, and why Sally who just received shares in the company ESOP is convinced she should now have a say in where everyone parks their car.

Caleb Brus is an attorney at BrownWinick in Des Moines, Iowa, practicing in employee benefits, ESOP transactions, corporate finance, and veterinary business law, a graduate of Simpson College and Drake University Law School, admitted to the Iowa Bar, and a member of the Board of Directors for Bravo of Greater Des Moines.

Connect with Caleb Brus:

brownwinick.com/attorneys/caleb-j-brus

BrownWinick Law Firm, Des Moines, Iowa

brownwinick.com

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Caleb Brus

00:10 Trading a Fortune 500 compliance office for private practice — and the mentor who guided every step

00:47 Going directly in-house after law school — why he never took the traditional private practice path

01:39 A decade answering to the SEC and FINRA at a Fortune 500 financial giant

02:20 Coffee on Thursday, interview Monday, offer Tuesday — what drew him to BrownWinick

03:34 What is an ESOP — and how is it fundamentally different from a 401k

04:06 ESOP as a retirement plan, an exit vehicle, and a defense against private equity

05:50 You love your employees, you want the most money, you are close to retirement — where do you start

07:00 Private equity almost always pays more upfront — but that is only one variable in the calculation

08:17 Tax implications of an ESOP versus an outright sale — the 1042 election, the trust exemption, and the company that stops paying corporate income tax

09:47 Will you actually net more money through an ESOP once you run the full long-term calculation

11:01 Fifteen years from retirement — seller notes, plan participation, and what the long-term play looks like

14:28 How a company stops paying income tax through an ESOP — and why it feels like a loophole but is not

15:08 Non-discrimination testing — how Congress built in checks to prevent this from being a pure tax play for owners

15:54 Retained earnings in an ESOP company — S distributions, dividends, and the emerging ESOP-to-ESOP investment model

#CalebBrus #BrownWinick #TrustcastShow #ESOPLawyer #VeterinaryClinicESOP #VetClinicPrivateEquity #EmployeeStockOwnershipPlan #DesMoinesLawyer #VeterinaryBusinessLaw #ERISAFiduciary

What happens when a vocal music education major who spent four years teaching school in Pryor, Oklahoma moves back to her parents' house in Del City to attend the University of Oklahoma College of Law, falls in love with the courtroom and with arguing things about the law, spends the next seventeen years doing insurance bad faith

And then that call with her father — who says no big deal, when are you gonna pay me back — forces her to stop beating herself up and start looking at the firm as its own separate entity, not herself and not her team but a baby that needs to be nurtured across five specific pillars, and over the next eleven years the firm's revenue grows more than thirteen times, the firm recovers more than one billion dollars for injury victims, she writes a book called The Setup that law firm owners across the country say was written specifically for them, and she spends more time coaching than lawyering because she finally outmaneuvered herself out of the job she had been doing since 1996?

In this episode of the Trustcast Show, Zane Myers speaks with Simone Fulmer Gaus, co-founder of Fulmer Sill in Oklahoma City and author of The Setup, about what it actually takes to build a law firm that works — not just to be a great lawyer inside one — and why those two things have almost nothing to do with each other.

Simone explains the feast-or-famine reality that almost nobody in complex personal injury work talks about honestly — that big cases require fronting money for case expenses across two, three, or four years while the fee that looks enormous on paper may be nowhere near the bank, that some years she took nothing home, that leaders eat last and if they do not they will not be in business long, and why the arrival of a seven-figure check is almost beside the point if you have not mapped the pipeline in a way that shows you exactly how long it needs to last until the next one arrives. She walks through all five pillars of the Setup framework — people, pipeline, process, product, and profitability — why the pipeline pillar relieves chaos the fastest because it immediately eliminates the constant reaction mode that the traditional law firm hierarchy creates for everyone below the top of the org chart, why chaos in a firm is almost never a people problem and almost always a process or pipeline problem, and why the second thing to look at after the process is always yourself.

They also discuss the cross-country teenage cycling tour that came through a dangerous construction zone highway south of the University of Oklahoma in Norman, the young man who died in over-100-degree heat when his bicycle wheel caught the ungraded road surface and he veered into the path of a car

Simone Fulmer Gaus is the co-founder of Fulmer Sill in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, a firm that has recovered more than one billion dollars for injury victims, a graduate of the University of Oklahoma College of Law, a five-time LawDragon 500 Leading Plaintiff Consumer Lawyers honoree, a former president of the Oklahoma Association for Justice,

Connect with Simone Fulmer Gaus:

fulmersill.com

Phone: 405-510-0077

The Setup: available on Amazon — search "The Setup Fulmer Gaus"

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Simone Fulmer Gaus

00:12 Built one of Oklahoma's most recognized plaintiff firms — and nearly lost it

00:44 The call to dad at 48 to borrow money to make payroll — and what that conversation actually looked like

01:44 Seventeen years at another firm, leaving to start something different, and underestimating what rebuilding really required

03:32 Why a personal injury firm can be doing great on paper and still not make payroll

04:10 Complex cases versus high volume — and why big-case firms live in feast or famine

05:10 Anticipating the pipeline — knowing when each case will resolve and what it will bring in

06:21 Leaders eat last — and the years she took nothing home

06:36 If there is a bottleneck in your firm, start by looking in the mirror

07:09 The five pillars: people, pipeline, process, product, and profitability

08:51 The pipeline pillar — flattening the hierarchy and mapping the full client journey

10:37 Profit First, tweaked for a contingency fee firm, and knowing where money is going before it arrives

11:37 What to do when a client with a strong case cannot financially survive the wait

12:20 Building psychological safety and trust from day one — and why clients will wait when you do

14:31 More than a billion dollars recovered — and why the willingness to go to trial elevates every case

14:56 Ninety-seven percent resolve before the verdict — but a large portion of those resolve on the courthouse steps

16:23 High-volume firms almost never go to trial — and why that matters for case value

#SimoneFulmerGaus #FulmerSill #TrustcastShow #OklahomaPersonalInjuryLawyer #TheSetupBook #LawFirmOperations #LawFirmGrowth #ContingencyFeeReality #PlaintiffTrialLawyer #LawFirmLeadership