Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Your weekly radio broadcast here on WGY every Saturday morning
at eleven am, and we try to bring you information, ideas,
special guests that help you to plan and in some
cases respond to the things that life brings us. We
talk about a state planning, wills and trusts, medicaid, long
term care, health care, and a whole host of other
(00:23):
issues business planning, but the healthcare part of things kind
of permeates our practice and my guest's practice, because when
we lose our health, when we have that sudden impact,
and what we had one day is gone the next,
and the inability to do the things that we do
on a day to day basis, and the people that
(00:44):
rely on us to do those things. We need to
find someone who can stand up for us and fight.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
For our rights.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
And today we have someone special in studio, none other
than Paul Harding.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Good morning, Paul, good morning. Oh wow, that's introduction.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
I like that.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
I want to get a copy of that. I'm going
to hear that morning plenty more.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
That keeps coming.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
So Paul and I go back a long way. We'll
talk a little bit about that. But most of you
know him because you've seen his face a thousand times
if not have the jingle in your head, and I could,
I could do the jingle right now, you have law
ten ten.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
You have a good voice.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
I could, I could do the jingle for you. But
beyond that advertising is a law firm that has grown
from two people yes, to how many now we.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Have an one hundred and eighty five team members, So
we have forty eight lawyers and the rest are folks
that support everything else. So yeah, it kind of mind
boggles me when I take a look at the number
of people that we have, not only in the Albany office,
which is where most of us are, but we also
have staffed offices throughout the state as well as Massachusetts
(01:55):
and Vermont.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
There it is folks I knew him when.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Yeah, but we'll talk about that when I to sleep
at night. It's a lot easier.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yeah, but forty eight lawyers, one hundred and eighty five people,
that has just grown unbelievably. And I'm guessing as a
result of your entry into the legal marketplace when laws changed.
And I remember the year that the laws changed and
you were one of the first in with Bruce Martin
yes to say okay, lawyers can now advertise.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Yeah, we were pretty early and on that lawyers who
tried it ahead of us kind of got in trouble.
They weren't doing it right. And I did smell an opportunity.
I guess when I look back at my career now,
I've always been entrepreneurial. I've always looked for opportunities. And
when I got out of law school, and just by
way of a quick introduction, my dad was a mailman
and there were no lawyers in the family. And so
(02:48):
when I thought I wanted to be a lawyer, I'm like,
that's great, But I've never met a lawyer. I don't
know what lawyers do. I don't know how I would interact.
I thought it was kind of a closed group, and
I did find out that well. Going back further, I
took a job at Mohawk Country Club and the men's
locker house as a second job to my construction career
(03:09):
in college. But to meet a lawyer, it literally was
to meet a lawyer. And I said, and I met
one lawyer and his name's Bruce Martin, and literally he
gave me his card, told him I was going to
law school in a year. He said, call me after
the first year, So I worked real hard at not
losing that card. I kept it and after that first
year of law school, Yeah, that also was a trick
(03:30):
for sure.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
And then reached out to Bruce and we started the
start of the relationship. But truly, it was one of
those things where you know, I would never have been
visioned you know where it was going.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
But I also think you started your career in the
locker room, the men's locker room at Mohawk.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Yeah, not the Jersey Shore, which I was hoping to
bartend apt but I didn't have any real bartending skills.
Well yeah, but that's where it happened, and I wanted
to meet someone, and I literally met Bruce and the
relationship went on and on and on.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
And you were a young weaper snapper back then. How
old were you when, yeah, you joined up with.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Sure, I was twenty six. So I got out of
law school in one year. I worked at a law firm,
which is where I met a guy named Lou Piro
And we worked at this big law firm downtown Albany,
Romer and Featherston Hall.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
I remember that firm, Well, it was the largest firm
in Albany. It was at the time, yep, And you
were a new associate and I was an associate there
doing trust in the state's work, that's right. And there
was another guy there who is now part of the
Harding Miszati firm.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Yeah, I worked for Vic Mazzati.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
So Vic ran the something A lot of people don't know.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
No, right, he was a young he's a great litigator,
he's a great person. But he ran the litigation department
with a guy named Tom Conway, and I worked for
him and I worked there for about one year and
we got along great, but it was clear probably to
everyone that it really I was kind of a round
peg in a square hole. It wasn't exactly where I
(04:48):
was meant to be. I wouldn't say I was super associate.
I'm not sure I really even fit in, other than
I fit in with everybody, but not the system. And
so within a year it was fourteen months. UH had
a great experience there, but Bruce Martin was asking me
to come back as we worked to work with him
in law school and we started the firm, and it
(05:09):
was Martin and Harding back then.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
I remember, well, yeah, I was actually on the original letterhead.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
He Council.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
We needed the trust of the state's attorney, needed warm bodies. Yeah,
we wanted to look as big as we could, Absolutely so.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
And we kind of left that firm at the same time.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
And we had great experiences, and I still have great
relationships with people that worked there, and great work with
several of them. But Roman Featherstone Hall is no longer
one firm. It's several firms. Yes, it kind of split
into different pieces. You went to Schenectady, I did, and
and I went nowhere. I went to Lark Street to
an apartment which I shared with you.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Yeah, so we had an apartment together, and that's sort
of legendary. May we may have even you know, people
think I'm adding to the story when I tell the story,
but actually not adding the story. We had, fair to say,
no living room furniture we had.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
We hadn't We didn't have two Nichols to rub together.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
Yeah, no furniture.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
I had a Plymouth Fury, And I think you might
have had a Dodge.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Dodd's Daytona that had a I bought it for three thousand.
It had a three thousand dollars loan on it. I
think that I refinanced once. But yeah, we were there.
I know, we had a kitchen table, we had some pillows.
I was my grandmother's by the way, it was hey,
I remember you my grandmother table and chairs yep, and
did that and uh, you know, kind of operated out
of there. And and so I would drive disconnectedy when
(06:27):
we were starting the law firm and you leave opened
the firm.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Right down two forty four Lark Street and was my
office and your grandmother's on the table with a typewriter. Yeah,
And that was that's how my first the origin and
then found an office and became more legitimate. And here
we are today, Pierre O'Connor and Strauss, being a law
firm with sixteen lawyers.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah, and we've grown.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
We have offices in New York City and around New
York State, and we practiced in other states as well.
But we do things very different from you. So talk
about what Martin Harding and Mazzotti once, which is now
Harding Mazatti. And you have another partner in the commercials, Rosemary.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Rosemary Bogden, who is a very intelligent woman who I
would say is one of the brightest, the best litigators
that I know. And so yeah, and she probably steals
the thunder on our commercials and billboards people if I
look at her first, because she's really so dynamic. But yeah,
so our firm is different. We work on contingency. We
(07:28):
represent only people who've been injured through the fault of
someone else and historically motor vehicle accidents. But we do
slip in fall cases, product liability, and now we have
a mass torque department which Rosemarie runs, and we do
a little workers compensation along the way. Also, you've you've
always been entrepreneurial.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
I remember even back in the day you were you
had real estate investments and different things that you were
looking at differently than somebody just going to law school.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Yeah, and this is what I'm gonna do and I'm
gonna just get the salary. Nah, not so much.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
So when you started this business, did you ever envision
that you would be as large as you are now
and as broad as this firm has become.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
No, because I didn't think, number one, that I didn't
really have any business skills. I thought, you know, I
didn't really ever feel that I, you know, all the
lawyers that worked for us, you know, I work, you know,
as part of the team I mean, it's not I'm
not smarter than they are, you know, So I never
felt that, you know, I was in you know, dominating
in that category at all. So no, I never I
(08:29):
kind of was to look back. And it was about
seven eight years ago we weren't quite as big as
this that I turned around. I think we hit one
hundred and twenty mark and it really hit me. And
someone asked me the question, did you ever envision back then?
And I said, you know what, I just kept going forward.
Well did you ever think you were gonna it wasn't
gonna work and you were going to fail? And I said,
I don't know why I never asked the question. I
(08:49):
never thought it wasn't going to work. I didn't have
a self help book. I wasn't going to see Tony Robbins.
I just in my mind's eye, I just kept going forward.
And it wasn't until I turned around and looked, and
that's when I saw the number of people there and
the stuff that was happening there. And again, you know,
nothing works because of me, But I certainly think my
(09:10):
job kind of as a motivator and for some reason
in the early days and maybe to some degree now,
I can get people excited about a process and about
our firm.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
So taking something from nothing and beginning a law firm
and going out and you bought I think a number
phone number we.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Did, Yeah, one eight hundred lawyers maybe or start out
at one eight hundred lawyers and leased that number. Yeah,
that was a guy named Bruce Davis had that out
of New York City and he leased it to us
for eight hundred dollars a month, and we started with
eight hundred. We started with one thousand dollars a month
advertising on TV. That was our budget. That might be
per hour now that we're that we're spending and it
(09:49):
actually might be. But yeah, and we used the one
eight hundred lawyer's number. We just leased it from them.
But at some point I'm like, oh, I don't own
that number. So we looked around for numbers and the
number we have is one eight hundred law ten ten. Now,
if you I was trying to find the numbers, so
I'm dialing numbers, you can imagine I'm sitting home and
I'm dialing numbers, dialing numbers that I wanted law So five, two,
nine and then eight and T was doing a ten
(10:11):
ten thing back then. So I dialed ten ten and
the voice and was very friendly. Friendly voice picked up
and asked me if I was you know, if I
wanted one minute or three minutes of conversation. And I
realized that I had called a phone number where somebody
was giving services of of of of the male or
(10:31):
female I guess, but to kind of encourage an exciting afternoon.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
And so it sounds like a profession very similar to
the law.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
They often put out a parallel. I hung up, and
I hope they didn't. They didn't call back, but I
had someone. I reached out another time and asked them
if they wanted to sell their number, and finally got
someone to call me back weeks later, and they said, well,
which number? We have hundreds of numbers. I said, well,
I didn't say law ten ten. I said, you know, one,
eight hundred and five to nine one zero, one zero.
(11:01):
Why do you want that number?
Speaker 4 (11:02):
Uh?
Speaker 3 (11:02):
And I said something about it. It's my anniversary, a
lucky number, ucky numbers, birthdays. Yeah, so I think for
one thousand dollars they sold us that number, and there
it is.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
There. It was, Yeah, We're gonna take a short break
and I'm gonna open up the phone lines. When we
come back, it's a different number, not the one he
just gave. Yeah, so you're gonna you're gonna give us
a call if you want to talk to Paul Harding
and ask him questions about personal injury, personal injury law,
Do you have a case, all of those fun things.
We are at eight hundred talk WGY. That's eight hundred
(11:33):
eighty two five five nine four nine. I'm Lupiro, your
host for this morning. You're listening the Life Happens Radio.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Stay with us. Lots more good stuff to come.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
We're gonna take you down the rapids like the picture
that we sent out, and talk about all the things
that are.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Important to you and how his firm.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Doing personal injury work relates to our firm doing trusts
and special needs planning, and the things that happen after
that settlement occurs. We'll be right back after this short message.
But today we're talking about how you can find recovery
and how you can get recompensed for the things that
happen to you that are not your fault. When other
(12:12):
people are negligent, when other people are intentional and they
harm you, how do you get redressed? How do you
get the settlement and the answers that you need and
the money that you deserve to put your life back
together again. And we have in studio with us Paul
Harding of Harding Mazzati, someone who is very well known
in the community, known to most of our listeners, I'm sure,
(12:35):
and we're talking about his firm and the growth from
Paul and Bruce Martin to what is now forty eight lawyers,
one hundred and eighty five people and doing this on
a very broad scale, with very deep penetration into the
personal injury market. And if you want to give us
a call again, eight hundred eight two five, five, nine
four nine. That's eight hundred talk Wgy and Paul Personal injury.
(13:01):
A lot of people know it. A lot of people
know it because of advertising. And we talked about the
the ursioning advertising market. But when you started, there was hostility, yeah,
towards anyone who tried to advertise because this wasn't the
way lawyers did.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Right, So, because we were stepping on toes and you
know the lawyers were they didn't want it, they didn't
want the sort of other lawyers to do. It was
a pecking leader, you know. So if you were a lawyer,
you've been there for twenty thirty forty years. You were
getting those cases, and you wanted to keep getting those cases,
and you were going to barbecues and you were just
working your client list. And when we came in, we
sort of short circuited that. You know, the term people
(13:37):
you know used today is kind of upsetting an industry,
and it really did happen, and so it was a
little tough. I remember, you know, getting some real negative
feedback from lawyers. And I'm kind of a get along
kind of guy, so it really didn't go along with
my persona. You know, I like to be liked and
I never want to be the villain, like I was
going down that road. And it took me a while
(13:59):
to get over that. And then I remember they asked
me to speak at the law school and I said,
oh no, you throw tomatoes instead. They were smiling and
and it became almost you know, this this sort of
our expertise in this field. Uh, in large part that
people would give us credibility from the advertising. Went initially,
oh no, because let's face it's a tough industry and
there's a lot of jokes about lawyers and often it's
(14:21):
those lawyers, ambulance chasing lawyers, and no one likes them
until they need one. Because when your life is taken
out from under you and you don't have any money,
you don't have anywhere to go. That's where we find
our clients.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Well being in the trust, in the States field, and
the elder law field. Yeah, there wasn't a lot of
that that it's not there was nobody really advertising it.
We do that now a little bit, right, Absolutely, not
the same budgets that you have, but we do some
saw you was at the gym the other day and
I was watching my commercial. I was doing my cardio
with ABC Fitness, and I looked up and and and
you know, I hate to see it, but I kind.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Of look up. I look away.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
I look up.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
I look away because I don't want to be sitting
there looking at my own commercial. Wow, that guy's ego
is so he's staring at him. But I down, I
look back up and there's you. Ah, there's Loupiro advertising
with a great ad and again I think, pretty novel.
Not many folks in your industry want to get the
word out there as much as you do, because you
see things that should be happening that people don't do
(15:15):
and then if you know, when tragedy hits, they're behind
the eight ball.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Yeah, so many people come to us and say, oh God,
I wish I had known that I could have done
this trust, I could have done this planning. We would
have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars. Right, And it's
sometimes too late, sometimes not. But we've tried to do
education as part of our marketing and it's always been seminars.
I've done seminars since we started natural EDGUD and we
go out and do a lot of talking. This radio
(15:40):
show is kind of our bully pulpit to try to
get people's awareness up to say, okay, I need to
think about this. I need to think when do you
come to our firm or another firm. I need to
have a will, I need to have a power of attorney.
I need to have a healthcare proxy. They can't really
plan for what you do.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Ours happens in live time. Yours happens if somebody is
is thinking about it. And it's not a great topic
to think about a state planning. It's oh, when I'm
not here, this will happen. I'll push that off the
next year. But but that can cost them, as you
just said, with us, it's sort of this tragedy based
the phone rings. They're wiped out, the car's gone, someone's
(16:19):
in the hospital, and the same questions, how do the
bills get paid? Do I have a claim? What can
I do? Can I get lost wages? Because you know,
most people don't have a lot of money. They can
sustain for a long time without getting a paycheck. And
they're also a situation where medical bills are paid in
a car accident through no fault, and it's very confusing,
(16:41):
and the no fault career isn't always forthcoming with all
the rights that you do have. The insurance carriers, you know,
not bad people, but they're for profit corporations and so
they're not there to say how can we They're not
the United way. I always tell people, they're trying to
save money, not give everyone the benefit they deserve.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
They collect premiums.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Oh, they're good at that, and they don't want to
get of those premium dollars back out when there's a claim.
So you got premiums and claims, and there's a big
dichotomy between the two, and the insurance companies like to
hold on to their money, yes, because they make money
on their money.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
So the float they call it.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
And so a lot of times and I did defense
work early in my career, and I saw these cases
and you could tell, Okay, this case is worth fifty
thousand dollars when it walks in the door, you know
it's a fifty thousand dollars case.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Four years later, you've built.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Twenty thousand dollars of time to that file, and then
it settles for fifty thousand dollars.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
And not the insurance adjusters you know, of course, we
have a lot of them, ex insurance adjusters who work.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
And I wanted to mention that, yeah, because I'm going
to use the word brilliant. But the way you structured
your firm early on, it was trouble to go out
to the insurance industry and pull the best and brightest
people from the adjuster side and talk about that a
little bit because that made so much difference in settling cases.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
What happened is is I would be on the phone
with these insurance adjusters and we'd be resolving cases and
we would build rapport and I reckonize I'm like, wow,
they're smart, real smart. In fact, I hang up sometimes,
I'm like, they know as much as lawyers do, maybe more.
And so I named George, Yeah, George Gutchall, Yeah, George
gotchall He was one of the original. He was the
(18:13):
original he had and uh, you know, the names keep going,
the Chuck Ranz and I could keep going, and the
folks we have now. But I found out that that
they're well trained. They are often very very bright, and
they will know more than a lawyer who's out three
or four or five years. Yes, and so we would
(18:34):
invite him to the firm, they would join the firm,
they would work with a lawyer, and uh, it moved
the process along.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
You know.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
It was like they were speaking to their brethren. Those
conversations were legitimate, and that actually is happening around the country.
And and maybe it was happening before we did it.
I didn't know of it happening anywhere. And when I've
spoken any law firms across the country, which I do
quite a bit, you know, it's usually about ten years
after we started it, so we may have been on
the early early side of that. And everyone saw the
(19:02):
wisdom first.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
I saw it because I used to deal with those
adjusters as a defense lawyer talking to them when they
when they shipped the cases out for trial, and they
were the guys that knew everything about them.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
Every there's just so good. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
And for a plaintiff, for a client of yours, to
be able to have somebody on your side that knows
the inside of what the insurance company is thinking and
doing right, can unlock that door to the dollars that
they need two, three, four years sooner and other people
are going to get to them, yep.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
And it turns down the temperature a little bit. Also
because when they're speaking to folks who were used to
be in their chair or sometimes they've worked together, they
know each other. You know, you say something, they believe it.
You know what we say is the truth. But there's
always a little and you know a little tension between
lawyer and insurance company. Uh So when you we had
somebody who had been on both sides, it just added
a lot of legitimacy to the conversation.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
And the advertising ramped up. And now there are competitors
advertising with big budgets. H was they couldn't compete with
you to as single firms. So at one point there
was a band of brothers gathered together and called themselves
the Dream Team.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
Yeah, and great lawyers, great, great guys they were.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
They were the icon lawyers.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Yeah, I mean Steve Coffee, class act, brilliant. I mean
Stu Jones, say what you want, he's he's he sort
of is the you know, by the best of the best.
You know Stu and uh and still is a wonderful guy.
Don byojin out there, and they formed a team called
the Dream Team and uh the Billboard on nine ninety
the Billboard that yeah, and what that did though, And
(20:38):
even when someone like Stu ended up doing some TV ads,
you know, they didn't necessarily know that, but I was
appreciative of it because it added legitimacy to what we
were doing. So if if if Stu Jones, you know,
or any of these guys, you know, we're gonna go
out there and do TV, it's like, oh, that's what
you do. And this new generation has grown up and
they don't know a world without TV advertising, so they
assume that's who you go to. You know, it's not
(21:01):
the early years when we were kind of cutting off
some of the older lawyers. So yeah, yeah, I remember
at first, I said, oh no, but true in life,
right when you when you got a little obstacle, what's
the upside? I mean, you're not gonna change what they're doing.
But it lasted a relatively short time, think maybe a
year or two. Then they sort of decided that, you know,
doing this isn't that easy, because it's not. And so
(21:21):
they went back to their very successful practices and their
wonderful legal careers.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
And a lot of people thought, oh, you know, they
advertise and they settle quick. But you brought in Vic Mazzadi. Yeah,
and it was you and Bruce, Yes, and you brought
in Vic, which gave you a very.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Deep bench for litigation. Yeah, and that is a difference.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
He's a hot So even today Vic tries cases. He's
one of the best trial lawyers I know. He he
tries cases around the around the state, even around the country.
He is highly sought after. And he now has trained
so many of these guys. And again, a lot of
these insurance folks that we have spent ten, well fifteen
years doing insurance defense, doing these or managing firms that
(22:07):
did insurance defense, and so they've come with all that experience,
and then our litigation team I'll put them up against
anyone anywhere. They are a powerful group. All of our
lawyers are highly trained, but that litigation team, they are special.
They're very close knit. And I think we have and
I should know, but the firm gets big and you
(22:27):
lose track of these numbers. But I think, I think
we have sixteen folks who just litigate, sixteen lawyers who
just litigate, and then we have another thirty lawyers who
were doing everything else. But most a lot of the
cases feed there some resolve before litigation, but at the
end of the day. Yeah, bringing Vic Mazadi in added
again further credibility to this idea that I had to
(22:50):
start an advertising law firm.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
I don't use this word just a second time. No
brilliant moves in building the firm. And then you bring
in Rose Marie. Yes, doing an area of law that
is huge.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Now, yes, we're doing mass tours around the country a
drug recall cases. She's brilliant, you know, she's that Cornell
lawyer who what I say about Rose Marie simply she's
about five foot three, but she swam for Cornell and
she was she held a record at one point in
national record and everyone next to her off, the Blox
(23:21):
would have been six foot tall. I mean here she
was half their size. But she is fiery, she's smart,
she's has really just become a nationally known lawyer at
this point.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
And so we're gonna take a break for the news
in just a minute. We're gonna come back talk about
how to look at a case if you do have
an injury, what constitutes an injury? No fault insurance changed
a lot of this, and you know, we just go
to calendar call and there'll be fifty lawyers in the room.
They defender bender accidents, but now you need a real
serious injury in order to file that suit. Yeah, So
(23:52):
we're gonna come back and talk about all of that,
talk about the Martin or the Harding Mazzati Law firm,
Bruce Martin's exit from the firm, yeah, which which happened
a few years ago, and talk about some of the
things that used to happen at two forty four larkstre.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Oh okay, yeah, holding back on those.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Back on the Lark Street days.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
L when that furniture showed up that one day, I
don't know where that came from.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Truck pulled up and all of a sudden, there was living.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Room furniture hitim had like a real apartment.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
And eight hundred eight two five, five, nine, four nine.
Give us a call. We're gonna take a short break
for the news. I'm Lupiro, your host for this Morning
in Studio with Paul Harding. Will be right back back
with the bait Uls. Welcome back to Life Happens Radio.
I hope you're enjoying today's show in Studio with Paul Harding.
We're doing a little reminiscing a little talk about personal injury,
(24:40):
and you may think, well, personal injury, how does that
overlap with what pure o'connoran Strauss does. Well, when someone
has an injury, traumatic brain injury, or any other type
of injury, and a lot of people who have disabilities
get injured and have lawsuits, you need to have the
proceeds from that settlement in a vehicle of trust that
will protect them because things like Medicaid and SSI and
(25:03):
the benefits that those individuals need to live are dependent
upon not having too much money. And fortunately there are
great trust provisions in the federal and state law that
allow people with disabilities to take those settlement proceeds. Paul
and put them in a trust that can benefit them
for the rest of their life, but still keep them
on Medicaid and still keep that SSI.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Yeah, point critical.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
You know.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
For the first thing I will just kind of say
is that you know what what you do, Lou and
what your firm does.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
You know?
Speaker 3 (25:35):
For most of us lawyers, we don't understand it. People think, well,
you know, I'm a lawyer, so I got relatives. They
call me for anything, and I'm often if it's simple enough,
I'll make a I'll make a stab at an answer.
But when it comes down to a state planning that
is specific, if you don't have somebody doing that who
knows what they're doing, you know, the the miss is
too big to miss.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
You know.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
And so I s same with my own assets, my
own stuff. I wouldn't dare do it myself. It's so
complicated in our world.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
The difference between having it protected and the trust and
not is somebody running out of money who's permanently disabled.
And so we've worked together on several cases and that
is one of the things that we know how to do,
and that is get it to somebody who can protect
that money.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
And we certainly don't do any of the personal utry cases.
Although we get calls from clients you know, who should
I go to?
Speaker 2 (26:26):
And you know, you've been the go to firm for.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Us for all the reasons that we're talking about, not
just the commercials, but the fact that you have a
team of people and the service level for people and
I've referred clients to you and You've been on the
phone with them within ten minutes. Yeah, and making them
feel like, Okay, I have somebody who's going to champion
my case.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
That's so important, you.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
Know, because having you know, grew up the way I
grew up, I didn't know a lawyer, My family didn't
know a lawyer, and we've trouble hit, I don't know
what we would do. So the genesis of advertising really
isn't It's really about the looking approachable, accessible, and so
are although very light, we try to make them funny
and we sort of laugh even though it's not a
funny topic. But reaching out to a lawyer is heavy.
(27:06):
And so where my idea early on advertising was make
it approachable. Who would you want to call? Who do
you think is going to care enough? And if you're
just serious and sit behind books and I'm saying, call me,
and I'm smart and I I've done a hundred of
these cases and I and that's not that approachable, you know.
So we try to make it so it's it's easy
to do, and then we recognize that we're catching people
(27:30):
at their worst. You know. It's not a situation where
I want to get a will next year, but maybe
I'll do it this year. I'm feeling pretty good. It's
my life just got taken out from under me, and
what are we going to do? How are we going
to pay the bills? I mean, that's the conversation. Or
you know, having some real serious medical issues and they're
not sure you know what to do with that, and
(27:50):
you know, we just jump in, as you say, immediately
because there is a nine to one one feel to
our business in most cases.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Oh there is. And we do get those calls as well.
We refer them out if it's a health emergency. That's
our job. Yes, you know, we do healthcare. We do
intervening triage. We have a company called ever Home Care
Advisors that has care managers and social workers and nurses
that can help families triage care.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
But from an.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Accident, it's a whole different ballgame, and you're looking at
very very different things from that perspective. And you could
be sitting at a stop light park, minding your own business,
listening to Life Happens radio. All of a sudden, somebody's texting.
They come up behind you, don't realize the lights are
read hit you, rear end you. The car coming across
the intersection side swipes you. And now you're in the
hospital and you're in a coma, or you have a
(28:43):
traumatic brain injury, or you have multiple fractures and life
threatening injuries, and at that moment, you just don't know
where to turn.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
Yeah, and that's where I say, you know, no one
is a running joke that nobody likes lawyers except for
their own. And I get it, you know, because you've
may have been on the wrong side of a law firm,
you may have gone through a divorce, and so there's
a lawyer on the other side who you may not
particularly like. But when the chips are down and you're
just looking kind of for help, and you've got someone
who's going to come in like we do and for us,
(29:12):
we charge nothing right, so we we will come to you.
We service, We begin the process we investigate, we're getting
your life back together, and we still haven't asked you
for anything, and we never do. We get one third
of what we recover. It's called a contingency. With us,
it's a pure contingency. If we're unsuccessful and we and
we don't recover anything, at the end of the case,
(29:32):
we get nothing. So you know, when you're there and
you got somebody who's kind of fighting that that's the
combent I get, you know, is that I'm getting so
much energy. Can I just confirm with you guys that
this is just costing me anything? Right now? Am I
going to get a bill in the mail?
Speaker 1 (29:48):
You know?
Speaker 3 (29:49):
They kind of sheepishly will ask, and I said no,
And we always make sure so I'll say that several
times because they almost can't believe it. Yeah, we get
paid when you get paid. Yep, that's simple.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
In our busines us, it's give me a check because yeah,
there's there's no pot of gold at the end of
the rainbow for us. It's okay, we're gonna do a
trust and will We're gonna do planning for you.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
We're gonna represent you.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
But it's a very different model because we have to
get paid yes by the client.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
Right, So that's that's a little.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Different situation, and sometimes for clients an uncomfortable situation when
they say, oh, I have to pay all that money
for this, and you know it's an issue. But to
get the value that you need, you have to be
able to invest money in your future and do the
things that are right to do today, not take the
simple shortcuts. And you know, we face competition from legal
(30:36):
Zoom and people that do it on the side and.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Can cut all kinds of things. Can I spend a
second on that? I mean, you know, you and I
are friends. We've been very clear about that. But uh,
you know, I'm just gonna say this, whether it was
you in the room, me in the room, or if
you if you guys catch me at Starbucks and ask
me this question, I'll have the same answer. And the
answer is that when you're doing something like a state planning,
you're gonna go to legal Zoom. You're gonna get the
legal Zoom response, you know, and you're not gonna you're
(30:58):
gonna put yourself in an awkward position. And then even
some lawyers who say, well we do some of this, Okay,
it might work out, but but even those lures as
it gets more sophisticated, refer I mean lawyers refer to
you all the time.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Yes, and we refer to other attorneys when it's specialties that, yes,
we don't have. But so we we stick to our knitting,
as we say, and we stay in our lane because
to do what we do correctly, it's so technical, so teching,
and there are so many minds in the minefield that
you have to know how to avoid that. You can't
dabble in state planning, tax medicaid, all the laws that
(31:34):
you deal with.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
Legal zoom has its place, but I don't. And maybe
a simple will. I don't know, I've never done when
we zoom, but but I made a simple will. I mean,
when your assets are you know, you're living in an
apartment and you got married and you're and you want
to where the dog is gonna go?
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Who I can leave my car to? Yeah, that would
have been our will.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Yeah, once the once the note got paid off on
the car, whether there was any equity in it. But
but yeah, so I I do think it has its place,
but it doesn't have its place in my opinion, and
the true estate planning that is penny wise pound foolish,
isn't he saying?
Speaker 1 (32:05):
So we're gonna take phone calls hopefully if you're out
there and you're thinking about calling in, now's the time
before it gets too late. Eight hundred eighty two five
five nine four to nine. Pick up that phone and
dial eight hundred talk w G y one more time.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
It's eight hundred eight two five fifty nine forty nine.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
Uh and Paul, your your firm has grown, your family
has grown. And just to take us back to when
we decided to leave Romer in Featherstone Hall, we were
young men.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
We were young single.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
Men, twenty six years old and single.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Yeah, it was a little older.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
Yeah, but.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
You know, living on Lark Street in Albany, New York
at that time.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Yeah, Downtown Albany was a vibrant jump it sure was,
and the vibrancy has unfortunately dissipated over the years.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
It is a different feel down there in terms of
of the restaurants and the activities that used to be available.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
And so we we have lots of stories from downtown
Almaney that we won't tell in the air.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
I was gonna say, how far are you going to
go with this?
Speaker 2 (33:11):
I'm not going too far and thank god we have
a call.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
Oh good we have Daniel.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Good morning, Daniel, Welcome to life. Happens trouble here there
you are, Hi Daniel, Hi.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
Daniel, Yeah, yeah, hello. I if I could I have
a question for mister Harding.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Go ahead, Daniel, anything.
Speaker 4 (33:36):
Daniel, Oh, good morning, thank you for taking my call.
I have a question as to whether or not I
(33:58):
I I, I might, I might have a case or
simply not OK. For a period of seventeen years, I
was on psychological medications at the maximum limit recognized by
(34:24):
the FDA and the CDC.
Speaker 5 (34:27):
And they were.
Speaker 4 (34:29):
Three meds and they were all at their max limit.
And then one day my provider decided just to tell
me I'm going to write you one last prescription and
don't ever come back. And I have no idea why
(34:51):
he said that to me, But with the sudden will
withdraw from those meads was was very severe. I lost
my job, and psychosocially, I've never really been the same since.
(35:17):
But I I have to admit that if if you
look at me, I don't really have any physical ramlifications.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
Let me let me let me jump in here, because
you know, I think it's it's clear in any medical
analysis that that these drugs you to get off them.
It's a weaning off process that you're going to be
cut and cut and cut, uh and then evaluation each time.
So I think the set of facts here is that
is that I don't know the drugs and I don't
(35:52):
know the specificity of them. But nearly every time that
I've been involved in somebody who has been they've changed
the drugs or they've given them a reduced amount to
try to do that. But it is one of those
specific things where I would say this, why don't you
reach out to me on Monday? And I know that
(36:14):
the number is you can use the one eight hundred
law ten ten number because there's so much here that
I don't think that a meaningful conversation that we would
have right now is going to be very helpful because
there's there's probably a half hour of questions that I
have for you before I could give you any kind
of opinion. So one eight hundred Law ten ten and
just ask for Paul Harding. We don't screen calls. It'll
(36:37):
come right to me. We still do it that way
like the old days. And so I will talk to
you on Monday. Okay, Daniel, thank you for the call. Yeah,
that's awesome, and we hope.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
That Paul can help you out when you do call
them on Monday, because that is a serious issue and
anybody that's cut off from medications knows how serious that
becomes when you don't have the ability to do the
day to day living you did before. We have another caller,
somebody from your hometown of Rotterdam.
Speaker 5 (37:05):
Jim, good morning, Good morning. Before I give a question,
let me give you a profile of who you're talking to.
My wife and I both in our early seventies, retired
with divine benefit pension programs. We have the nursing home
(37:28):
insurance well covered and we're going to be actually seeing
youth to do a trust. But my question is we
have a three million dollar personal excess liability policy. Yes,
and I'm wondering are there any other tools available out
(37:53):
there to shield us from lawsuits be the real nuisance.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Yeah, so the.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Liability protection sure is something we do and Paul can
talk on. But you have an umbrella policy, as we
call it, which.
Speaker 5 (38:09):
Is great umbrella policy talk about because I think.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
It overlays other policies and just make sure it's covering
everything that you're doing.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
You want to just touch on the umbrella. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
So, and just to again home rotterdamn guy, shout out,
shout out. I was a Burdic street guy, Yes, sir. Yeah,
So with respect to what you're trying to to protect against. Uh,
if we are talking about an auto related accident, if
something happened and you know it's negligent, you had a
(38:39):
bad day and you ran into someone, you know you've
got a three million dollar policy. You've got some that's
overlying something else.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
That is is just about as much as you can get.
You can There are some carriers right up to five million.
But in terms of protecting of the assets, you know,
that is a lou. That is a lou conversation. And
is there any business interest or is this kind of
just your personal stuff that you want to make sure
an event doesn't have the opportunity to wipe that out.
Speaker 5 (39:10):
It's it's personal. But I think I've got a unique profile.
I I used to have a garage business and I
like the cars. And a friend of mine actually got
fined by the en con because he was spraying lacquer
(39:30):
of paint outdoors. And I'm sure that doesn't come under
the umbrella policy. And I guess the additional question is
if I have the house and assets and trust, are
they protected from government fines?
Speaker 3 (39:50):
I'm going over a loop.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Yeah, that's that's my bailiwick.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
And New York public policy is that you cannot shield
your own assets from creditors through a trust. So in
New York, any trust that you create under New York law,
those assets are going to be available to general creditors.
We are able to create a specific type of trust
(40:12):
to shield assets for medicaid purposes, but that's unique to Medicaid.
General creditors can reach any trust in New York. If
you want to go to the next level and do
asset protection planning through a trust, we have to leave
New York and opt into the state law of a
state like Nevada, or opt into another country's law like
(40:37):
the island of nevis where these trust companies and trust
laws have been tailored for people who want to generally
absolve themselves from any liabilities and have their assets protected
through those either domestic trusts in Nevada or Alaska or
foreign trusts in nevs or the Cook Islands. So that
(40:58):
is a very heavy lift to do, but we do
it for certain people who are at ultra high risk occupations,
Surgeons who make lots of money, people who have businesses
that have potential liabilities. They do this type of asset
protection planning and we do it with them.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
But for most people.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
That's a little that's a bridge too far to do
that kind of planning for general liability. Certainly, if you
own rental properties, we use limited liability companies to shield
people's personal assets from property liabilities. There's a whole host
of things that can be done, but the umbrella policy
is going to cover you for most things.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Things like environmental liabilities not so much.
Speaker 5 (41:38):
Okay, if I and I've done this, I've helped people
out at church who are down and out financially and
fix their cars for them for free, and everything has
gone great. But let's say I do make some type
(41:58):
of oversighter mistake. Can uh now I for got Paul
coming at me?
Speaker 3 (42:07):
Harting Mazati.
Speaker 5 (42:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
Yeah, you know if if if you are someone in
your show, you know, whether it's free or not, you
know that you didn't you know, didn't tighten the wheel
and the wheel comes off and there's an accident. Yeah,
there's that, but that would be covered under your liability policy.
And I just want to say, I mean rarely uh,
in fact, I can hardly cite the times, but uh
that people you go out when you have an insurance
policy as you're describing, Uh, it would be just a
(42:32):
set of facts. I almost can't imagine where it would
exceed that you would be protected.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
Yeah, certainly.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
One thing that people don't do is look at their
umbrella policy and match it up to the other individual
coverage that they have. Does is it cover your homeowners?
Does it cover your automobile? Does it cover their liability policies,
your business policies. Make sure that it extends over every
other policy that you have, because that invokes once you
exhaust the other policy limits, that's.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
What invokes the it kicks in the umber. And but
I mean, you are super responsible. I can hear just
your questions, the questions that most people don't even ask.
I suspect that you are well positioned to know. You're
gonna meet with lou so he can give you any
other any other pips, But you have to get a
letter from me. I apologize ahead of time. No, I'm kidding, Jim.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
Thanks for your call, my friend, I look forward to
meeting you.
Speaker 5 (43:24):
Okay, my friends tell me I can see the dark
side of the sun. That's why I was questioning.
Speaker 3 (43:29):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
That's right, goodbody, put your binocua, put your blinders on.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
All right.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
We're gonna come back after a short break for the
last segment of the show. If you have questions, we
can still take one or two more. Eight hundred eight
two five, five, nine, four nine. I'm Lupiro, your host
for Life Happens Radio every Saturday morning here on talk
radio w g Y. My good friend Paul Harding is
live in studio with me. Zach is here in the booth,
and we're gonna come right back after this short break.
(43:59):
We have Bob on the line. Good morning, by welcome
to Life Happens. Will we help you this morning?
Speaker 6 (44:05):
Hey, good morning. I'm calling about I have my in
laws who are both eighty four. They live in New Jersey.
They have four homes, all paid off, and I haven't
spoken to my father in law about this, but my
wife has just spoken to him recently and they've advised
(44:28):
her she has two brothers that when they pass away,
everything's going to be divided equally. Now, they haven't discussed
anything about whether these homes are placed in trust. And
I realize you guys are New York attorneys, but I
was just calling generally to see if he had an
idea of New Jersey law. It sounds to me, you know,
(44:50):
I've listened to your guys program that it would be
beneficial for them to place those houses in trust rather
than devise the from the homes to the you know,
the three kids will and we are.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
Any of them rentals or are they all just personal use?
Speaker 6 (45:09):
I'll personally use Okay.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
So it's funny. I was in my New York City
office yesterday. We have an office at two sixty Madison
Avenue in Manhattan, and I'm sitting with a wonderful family
from New Jersey and we do practice in New Jersey
and they had real estate. So I just had this
conversation about New Jersey and they her brother had passed
away owning a couple of properties and they got split
up among the family and it took them two years
(45:31):
to go through proby. And that's something that you just
can avoid easily, and they would want to avoid. So
a revocable living trust keeps them in control. Keeps them
owning those assets, but if they become incapacitated or upon
their death, those assets can then be sold divided very
(45:53):
very easily without court intervention. So that would be one consideration.
It sounds like if they owned four homes fully paid off,
they may or may not think about medicaid planning, and
medicaid planning in New Jersey is not as good as
it is in New York. But that's another consideration that
they should at least be.
Speaker 6 (46:10):
Discussing right now. If they did have a revocable trust
that you know, upon their death would go to the
three remaining children. Does having it in a revocable trust
like that, does that avoid capital gains taxes or not?
Speaker 1 (46:29):
Well, it will if they own the properties at death,
it gets what's called a step up in basis. So
the basis in the property is what determines your capital gain,
and that would get a new basis on dat to death.
So if they bought it for one hundred thousand is
worth a million upon death, the kids get it with
a basis of a million. If they sell it, there's
zero capital gains, so the capital gain step up is
(46:52):
preserved in the revocable trust. It works very very well
from both provate avoidance and a tax perspective, So only
the solution they want to.
Speaker 2 (47:01):
Be talking about.
Speaker 6 (47:04):
Okay, great, thank you so much. And in terms of
seeing you guys for my wife and I, because we
don't have wills or state planning, what I just call
your office during the week to make an appointment.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
Absolutely, it's five one eight. I'll give you the number
four or five nine, twenty one hundred.
Speaker 6 (47:26):
Great, thanks so much.
Speaker 1 (47:27):
Thanks Bob, appreciate the call. Paul, we have about three
minutes left. You're going to give you the last word here.
What do you want to talk about?
Speaker 3 (47:33):
Well, I will say that it's been uh, you've been commute,
but you've done this show for twelve years and I'll
get asked, I'll be on panels or people ask about
business success and how how do you get successful? And
I think one of the things is is that people
struggle staying with the same thing, getting an idea and
(47:54):
making it work. Whether it was law ten ten and
what we did, it was almost like we just kind
of had it in sight. And you've done the same thing.
I mean, not only with this show but with your firm.
So when people are out there kind of figuring out, Okay,
how do I achieve success or how do I pass
that along? It really is the idea doesn't have to
be super complicated, but get an idea, stick with it,
(48:17):
and that I think is an eighty percent move towards success.
Because I don't know how many people have had a
twelve year run on a radio show. I will say
you are in a small percentage. I'll say you're one
percent of the folks who are doing this, So truly
congratulations to You're a natural market, You're a natural presenter.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
As are you. Just no coincidence we ended up at two.
Speaker 3 (48:37):
For me, maybe we became friends.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
Yeah, apartment with no furniture and going back to that
in those early days, and folks, this is not a joke.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
We didn't have any money. Yeah, we couldn't buy furniture.
Speaker 3 (48:49):
Yeah we didn't. We didn't couldn't pick colors out or something.
We just couldn't buy furniture. And there was a TV though, Yes,
so we were standing or I don't know what we did,
lean and lean against, sat on the floor, Yeah, brought
our pillows out from the bedroom. Yeah, bite friends over
Yeah there it was Yeah, I mean watched a Tyson
fight there.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
I think we did.
Speaker 3 (49:08):
We invited people over and they had to stand and lean. Yeah,
that was gutsy, gutsy move.
Speaker 1 (49:12):
So how far you've come? Fault and harding Mazadi and
Drew Martin.
Speaker 7 (49:17):
Who I got to be good friends with, Yes, super guy. Yeah,
still still live and well, still playing golf. He I
don't know as he just he's just turned ninety. Uh
and I know that last year he played. I don't
know if he's playing this year.
Speaker 2 (49:30):
Ninety. Wow.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
Yeah, that's that's amazing. And your kids, you know, none
of us had kids back then. We were both singles still.
Speaker 3 (49:36):
Yeah, late around Lark Street, right, I was a late
late to the kid party.
Speaker 7 (49:41):
I was.
Speaker 3 (49:41):
Yeah, me too, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:42):
Me both. But you have two beautiful daughters now.
Speaker 3 (49:44):
I do, eighteen and twenty. Andy and Peyton are both
in college and ones at College of Charleston, the other
ones at TCU and uh yeah yeah, that that part's
been great.
Speaker 2 (49:53):
And my wife and lovely wife, Gwen.
Speaker 3 (49:55):
Yeah, yeah, that's been a blessing in a story in
and of itself.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
And I want to give a shout out to one
of our mutual friends.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
So we were just up on the Morgan and Lake
George with Kevin Johnson and Karen and Kevin and Karen
just got married, So a shout out.
Speaker 3 (50:08):
To Kevin john Congratulations to Kevin on that one.
Speaker 1 (50:10):
Congratulations Kevin you won the prize, and Karen You're okay.
Speaker 3 (50:16):
Karen did okay, Kevin them the bacon as they said.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Yeah. We want to thank you all for joining us today.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
Paul, thank you so much for coming in, taking us
your Saturday morning and being with us here on Life
Happens Radio.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
We're back next week at eleven am. Hope to see
you here
Your weekly radio broadcast here on WGY every Saturday morning
at eleven am, and we try to bring you information, ideas,
special guests that help you to plan and in some
cases respond to the things that life brings us. We
talk about a state planning, wills and trusts, medicaid, long
term care, health care, and a whole host of other
(00:23):
issues business planning, but the healthcare part of things kind
of permeates our practice and my guest's practice, because when
we lose our health, when we have that sudden impact,
and what we had one day is gone the next,
and the inability to do the things that we do
on a day to day basis, and the people that
(00:44):
rely on us to do those things. We need to
find someone who can stand up for us and fight.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
For our rights.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
And today we have someone special in studio, none other
than Paul Harding.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Good morning, Paul, good morning. Oh wow, that's introduction.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
I like that.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
I want to get a copy of that. I'm going
to hear that morning plenty more.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
That keeps coming.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
So Paul and I go back a long way. We'll
talk a little bit about that. But most of you
know him because you've seen his face a thousand times
if not have the jingle in your head, and I could,
I could do the jingle right now, you have law
ten ten.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
You have a good voice.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
I could, I could do the jingle for you. But
beyond that advertising is a law firm that has grown
from two people yes, to how many now we.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Have an one hundred and eighty five team members, So
we have forty eight lawyers and the rest are folks
that support everything else. So yeah, it kind of mind
boggles me when I take a look at the number
of people that we have, not only in the Albany office,
which is where most of us are, but we also
have staffed offices throughout the state as well as Massachusetts
(01:55):
and Vermont.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
There it is folks I knew him when.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Yeah, but we'll talk about that when I to sleep
at night. It's a lot easier.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yeah, but forty eight lawyers, one hundred and eighty five people,
that has just grown unbelievably. And I'm guessing as a
result of your entry into the legal marketplace when laws changed.
And I remember the year that the laws changed and
you were one of the first in with Bruce Martin
yes to say okay, lawyers can now advertise.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Yeah, we were pretty early and on that lawyers who
tried it ahead of us kind of got in trouble.
They weren't doing it right. And I did smell an opportunity.
I guess when I look back at my career now,
I've always been entrepreneurial. I've always looked for opportunities. And
when I got out of law school, and just by
way of a quick introduction, my dad was a mailman
and there were no lawyers in the family. And so
(02:48):
when I thought I wanted to be a lawyer, I'm like,
that's great, But I've never met a lawyer. I don't
know what lawyers do. I don't know how I would interact.
I thought it was kind of a closed group, and
I did find out that well. Going back further, I
took a job at Mohawk Country Club and the men's
locker house as a second job to my construction career
(03:09):
in college. But to meet a lawyer, it literally was
to meet a lawyer. And I said, and I met
one lawyer and his name's Bruce Martin, and literally he
gave me his card, told him I was going to
law school in a year. He said, call me after
the first year, So I worked real hard at not
losing that card. I kept it and after that first
year of law school, Yeah, that also was a trick
(03:30):
for sure.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
And then reached out to Bruce and we started the
start of the relationship. But truly, it was one of
those things where you know, I would never have been
visioned you know where it was going.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
But I also think you started your career in the
locker room, the men's locker room at Mohawk.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Yeah, not the Jersey Shore, which I was hoping to
bartend apt but I didn't have any real bartending skills.
Well yeah, but that's where it happened, and I wanted
to meet someone, and I literally met Bruce and the
relationship went on and on and on.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
And you were a young weaper snapper back then. How
old were you when, yeah, you joined up with.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Sure, I was twenty six. So I got out of
law school in one year. I worked at a law firm,
which is where I met a guy named Lou Piro
And we worked at this big law firm downtown Albany,
Romer and Featherston Hall.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
I remember that firm, Well, it was the largest firm
in Albany. It was at the time, yep, And you
were a new associate and I was an associate there
doing trust in the state's work, that's right. And there
was another guy there who is now part of the
Harding Miszati firm.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Yeah, I worked for Vic Mazzati.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
So Vic ran the something A lot of people don't know.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
No, right, he was a young he's a great litigator,
he's a great person. But he ran the litigation department
with a guy named Tom Conway, and I worked for
him and I worked there for about one year and
we got along great, but it was clear probably to
everyone that it really I was kind of a round
peg in a square hole. It wasn't exactly where I
(04:48):
was meant to be. I wouldn't say I was super associate.
I'm not sure I really even fit in, other than
I fit in with everybody, but not the system. And
so within a year it was fourteen months. UH had
a great experience there, but Bruce Martin was asking me
to come back as we worked to work with him
in law school and we started the firm, and it
(05:09):
was Martin and Harding back then.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
I remember, well, yeah, I was actually on the original letterhead.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
He Council.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
We needed the trust of the state's attorney, needed warm bodies. Yeah,
we wanted to look as big as we could, Absolutely so.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
And we kind of left that firm at the same time.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
And we had great experiences, and I still have great
relationships with people that worked there, and great work with
several of them. But Roman Featherstone Hall is no longer
one firm. It's several firms. Yes, it kind of split
into different pieces. You went to Schenectady, I did, and
and I went nowhere. I went to Lark Street to
an apartment which I shared with you.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Yeah, so we had an apartment together, and that's sort
of legendary. May we may have even you know, people
think I'm adding to the story when I tell the story,
but actually not adding the story. We had, fair to say,
no living room furniture we had.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
We hadn't We didn't have two Nichols to rub together.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
Yeah, no furniture.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
I had a Plymouth Fury, And I think you might
have had a Dodge.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Dodd's Daytona that had a I bought it for three thousand.
It had a three thousand dollars loan on it. I
think that I refinanced once. But yeah, we were there.
I know, we had a kitchen table, we had some pillows.
I was my grandmother's by the way, it was hey,
I remember you my grandmother table and chairs yep, and
did that and uh, you know, kind of operated out
of there. And and so I would drive disconnectedy when
(06:27):
we were starting the law firm and you leave opened
the firm.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Right down two forty four Lark Street and was my
office and your grandmother's on the table with a typewriter. Yeah,
And that was that's how my first the origin and
then found an office and became more legitimate. And here
we are today, Pierre O'Connor and Strauss, being a law
firm with sixteen lawyers.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah, and we've grown.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
We have offices in New York City and around New
York State, and we practiced in other states as well.
But we do things very different from you. So talk
about what Martin Harding and Mazzotti once, which is now
Harding Mazatti. And you have another partner in the commercials, Rosemary.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Rosemary Bogden, who is a very intelligent woman who I
would say is one of the brightest, the best litigators
that I know. And so yeah, and she probably steals
the thunder on our commercials and billboards people if I
look at her first, because she's really so dynamic. But yeah,
so our firm is different. We work on contingency. We
(07:28):
represent only people who've been injured through the fault of
someone else and historically motor vehicle accidents. But we do
slip in fall cases, product liability, and now we have
a mass torque department which Rosemarie runs, and we do
a little workers compensation along the way. Also, you've you've
always been entrepreneurial.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
I remember even back in the day you were you
had real estate investments and different things that you were
looking at differently than somebody just going to law school.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Yeah, and this is what I'm gonna do and I'm
gonna just get the salary. Nah, not so much.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
So when you started this business, did you ever envision
that you would be as large as you are now
and as broad as this firm has become.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
No, because I didn't think, number one, that I didn't
really have any business skills. I thought, you know, I
didn't really ever feel that I, you know, all the
lawyers that worked for us, you know, I work, you know,
as part of the team I mean, it's not I'm
not smarter than they are, you know, So I never
felt that, you know, I was in you know, dominating
in that category at all. So no, I never I
(08:29):
kind of was to look back. And it was about
seven eight years ago we weren't quite as big as
this that I turned around. I think we hit one
hundred and twenty mark and it really hit me. And
someone asked me the question, did you ever envision back then?
And I said, you know what, I just kept going forward.
Well did you ever think you were gonna it wasn't
gonna work and you were going to fail? And I said,
I don't know why I never asked the question. I
(08:49):
never thought it wasn't going to work. I didn't have
a self help book. I wasn't going to see Tony Robbins.
I just in my mind's eye, I just kept going forward.
And it wasn't until I turned around and looked, and
that's when I saw the number of people there and
the stuff that was happening there. And again, you know,
nothing works because of me, But I certainly think my
(09:10):
job kind of as a motivator and for some reason
in the early days and maybe to some degree now,
I can get people excited about a process and about
our firm.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
So taking something from nothing and beginning a law firm
and going out and you bought I think a number
phone number we.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Did, Yeah, one eight hundred lawyers maybe or start out
at one eight hundred lawyers and leased that number. Yeah,
that was a guy named Bruce Davis had that out
of New York City and he leased it to us
for eight hundred dollars a month, and we started with
eight hundred. We started with one thousand dollars a month
advertising on TV. That was our budget. That might be
per hour now that we're that we're spending and it
(09:49):
actually might be. But yeah, and we used the one
eight hundred lawyer's number. We just leased it from them.
But at some point I'm like, oh, I don't own
that number. So we looked around for numbers and the
number we have is one eight hundred law ten ten. Now,
if you I was trying to find the numbers, so
I'm dialing numbers, you can imagine I'm sitting home and
I'm dialing numbers, dialing numbers that I wanted law So five, two,
nine and then eight and T was doing a ten
(10:11):
ten thing back then. So I dialed ten ten and
the voice and was very friendly. Friendly voice picked up
and asked me if I was you know, if I
wanted one minute or three minutes of conversation. And I
realized that I had called a phone number where somebody
was giving services of of of of the male or
(10:31):
female I guess, but to kind of encourage an exciting afternoon.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
And so it sounds like a profession very similar to
the law.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
They often put out a parallel. I hung up, and
I hope they didn't. They didn't call back, but I
had someone. I reached out another time and asked them
if they wanted to sell their number, and finally got
someone to call me back weeks later, and they said, well,
which number? We have hundreds of numbers. I said, well,
I didn't say law ten ten. I said, you know, one,
eight hundred and five to nine one zero, one zero.
(11:01):
Why do you want that number?
Speaker 4 (11:02):
Uh?
Speaker 3 (11:02):
And I said something about it. It's my anniversary, a
lucky number, ucky numbers, birthdays. Yeah, so I think for
one thousand dollars they sold us that number, and there
it is.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
There. It was, Yeah, We're gonna take a short break
and I'm gonna open up the phone lines. When we
come back, it's a different number, not the one he
just gave. Yeah, so you're gonna you're gonna give us
a call if you want to talk to Paul Harding
and ask him questions about personal injury, personal injury law,
Do you have a case, all of those fun things.
We are at eight hundred talk WGY. That's eight hundred
(11:33):
eighty two five five nine four nine. I'm Lupiro, your
host for this morning. You're listening the Life Happens Radio.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Stay with us. Lots more good stuff to come.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
We're gonna take you down the rapids like the picture
that we sent out, and talk about all the things
that are.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Important to you and how his firm.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Doing personal injury work relates to our firm doing trusts
and special needs planning, and the things that happen after
that settlement occurs. We'll be right back after this short message.
But today we're talking about how you can find recovery
and how you can get recompensed for the things that
happen to you that are not your fault. When other
(12:12):
people are negligent, when other people are intentional and they
harm you, how do you get redressed? How do you
get the settlement and the answers that you need and
the money that you deserve to put your life back
together again. And we have in studio with us Paul
Harding of Harding Mazzati, someone who is very well known
in the community, known to most of our listeners, I'm sure,
(12:35):
and we're talking about his firm and the growth from
Paul and Bruce Martin to what is now forty eight lawyers,
one hundred and eighty five people and doing this on
a very broad scale, with very deep penetration into the
personal injury market. And if you want to give us
a call again, eight hundred eight two five, five, nine
four nine. That's eight hundred talk Wgy and Paul Personal injury.
(13:01):
A lot of people know it. A lot of people
know it because of advertising. And we talked about the
the ursioning advertising market. But when you started, there was hostility, yeah,
towards anyone who tried to advertise because this wasn't the
way lawyers did.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Right, So, because we were stepping on toes and you
know the lawyers were they didn't want it, they didn't
want the sort of other lawyers to do. It was
a pecking leader, you know. So if you were a lawyer,
you've been there for twenty thirty forty years. You were
getting those cases, and you wanted to keep getting those cases,
and you were going to barbecues and you were just
working your client list. And when we came in, we
sort of short circuited that. You know, the term people
(13:37):
you know used today is kind of upsetting an industry,
and it really did happen, and so it was a
little tough. I remember, you know, getting some real negative
feedback from lawyers. And I'm kind of a get along
kind of guy, so it really didn't go along with
my persona. You know, I like to be liked and
I never want to be the villain, like I was
going down that road. And it took me a while
(13:59):
to get over that. And then I remember they asked
me to speak at the law school and I said,
oh no, you throw tomatoes instead. They were smiling and
and it became almost you know, this this sort of
our expertise in this field. Uh, in large part that
people would give us credibility from the advertising. Went initially,
oh no, because let's face it's a tough industry and
there's a lot of jokes about lawyers and often it's
(14:21):
those lawyers, ambulance chasing lawyers, and no one likes them
until they need one. Because when your life is taken
out from under you and you don't have any money,
you don't have anywhere to go. That's where we find
our clients.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Well being in the trust, in the States field, and
the elder law field. Yeah, there wasn't a lot of
that that it's not there was nobody really advertising it.
We do that now a little bit, right, Absolutely, not
the same budgets that you have, but we do some
saw you was at the gym the other day and
I was watching my commercial. I was doing my cardio
with ABC Fitness, and I looked up and and and
you know, I hate to see it, but I kind.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Of look up. I look away.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
I look up.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
I look away because I don't want to be sitting
there looking at my own commercial. Wow, that guy's ego
is so he's staring at him. But I down, I
look back up and there's you. Ah, there's Loupiro advertising
with a great ad and again I think, pretty novel.
Not many folks in your industry want to get the
word out there as much as you do, because you
see things that should be happening that people don't do
(15:15):
and then if you know, when tragedy hits, they're behind
the eight ball.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Yeah, so many people come to us and say, oh God,
I wish I had known that I could have done
this trust, I could have done this planning. We would
have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars. Right, And it's
sometimes too late, sometimes not. But we've tried to do
education as part of our marketing and it's always been seminars.
I've done seminars since we started natural EDGUD and we
go out and do a lot of talking. This radio
(15:40):
show is kind of our bully pulpit to try to
get people's awareness up to say, okay, I need to
think about this. I need to think when do you
come to our firm or another firm. I need to
have a will, I need to have a power of attorney.
I need to have a healthcare proxy. They can't really
plan for what you do.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Ours happens in live time. Yours happens if somebody is
is thinking about it. And it's not a great topic
to think about a state planning. It's oh, when I'm
not here, this will happen. I'll push that off the
next year. But but that can cost them, as you
just said, with us, it's sort of this tragedy based
the phone rings. They're wiped out, the car's gone, someone's
(16:19):
in the hospital, and the same questions, how do the
bills get paid? Do I have a claim? What can
I do? Can I get lost wages? Because you know,
most people don't have a lot of money. They can
sustain for a long time without getting a paycheck. And
they're also a situation where medical bills are paid in
a car accident through no fault, and it's very confusing,
(16:41):
and the no fault career isn't always forthcoming with all
the rights that you do have. The insurance carriers, you know,
not bad people, but they're for profit corporations and so
they're not there to say how can we They're not
the United way. I always tell people, they're trying to
save money, not give everyone the benefit they deserve.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
They collect premiums.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Oh, they're good at that, and they don't want to
get of those premium dollars back out when there's a claim.
So you got premiums and claims, and there's a big
dichotomy between the two, and the insurance companies like to
hold on to their money, yes, because they make money
on their money.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
So the float they call it.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
And so a lot of times and I did defense
work early in my career, and I saw these cases
and you could tell, Okay, this case is worth fifty
thousand dollars when it walks in the door, you know
it's a fifty thousand dollars case.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Four years later, you've built.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Twenty thousand dollars of time to that file, and then
it settles for fifty thousand dollars.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
And not the insurance adjusters you know, of course, we
have a lot of them, ex insurance adjusters who work.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
And I wanted to mention that, yeah, because I'm going
to use the word brilliant. But the way you structured
your firm early on, it was trouble to go out
to the insurance industry and pull the best and brightest
people from the adjuster side and talk about that a
little bit because that made so much difference in settling cases.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
What happened is is I would be on the phone
with these insurance adjusters and we'd be resolving cases and
we would build rapport and I reckonize I'm like, wow,
they're smart, real smart. In fact, I hang up sometimes,
I'm like, they know as much as lawyers do, maybe more.
And so I named George, Yeah, George Gutchall, Yeah, George
gotchall He was one of the original. He was the
(18:13):
original he had and uh, you know, the names keep going,
the Chuck Ranz and I could keep going, and the
folks we have now. But I found out that that
they're well trained. They are often very very bright, and
they will know more than a lawyer who's out three
or four or five years. Yes, and so we would
(18:34):
invite him to the firm, they would join the firm,
they would work with a lawyer, and uh, it moved
the process along.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
You know.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
It was like they were speaking to their brethren. Those
conversations were legitimate, and that actually is happening around the country.
And and maybe it was happening before we did it.
I didn't know of it happening anywhere. And when I've
spoken any law firms across the country, which I do
quite a bit, you know, it's usually about ten years
after we started it, so we may have been on
the early early side of that. And everyone saw the
(19:02):
wisdom first.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
I saw it because I used to deal with those
adjusters as a defense lawyer talking to them when they
when they shipped the cases out for trial, and they
were the guys that knew everything about them.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
Every there's just so good. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
And for a plaintiff, for a client of yours, to
be able to have somebody on your side that knows
the inside of what the insurance company is thinking and
doing right, can unlock that door to the dollars that
they need two, three, four years sooner and other people
are going to get to them, yep.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
And it turns down the temperature a little bit. Also
because when they're speaking to folks who were used to
be in their chair or sometimes they've worked together, they
know each other. You know, you say something, they believe it.
You know what we say is the truth. But there's
always a little and you know a little tension between
lawyer and insurance company. Uh So when you we had
somebody who had been on both sides, it just added
a lot of legitimacy to the conversation.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
And the advertising ramped up. And now there are competitors
advertising with big budgets. H was they couldn't compete with
you to as single firms. So at one point there
was a band of brothers gathered together and called themselves
the Dream Team.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
Yeah, and great lawyers, great, great guys they were.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
They were the icon lawyers.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Yeah, I mean Steve Coffee, class act, brilliant. I mean
Stu Jones, say what you want, he's he's he sort
of is the you know, by the best of the best.
You know Stu and uh and still is a wonderful guy.
Don byojin out there, and they formed a team called
the Dream Team and uh the Billboard on nine ninety
the Billboard that yeah, and what that did though, And
(20:38):
even when someone like Stu ended up doing some TV ads,
you know, they didn't necessarily know that, but I was
appreciative of it because it added legitimacy to what we
were doing. So if if if Stu Jones, you know,
or any of these guys, you know, we're gonna go
out there and do TV, it's like, oh, that's what
you do. And this new generation has grown up and
they don't know a world without TV advertising, so they
assume that's who you go to. You know, it's not
(21:01):
the early years when we were kind of cutting off
some of the older lawyers. So yeah, yeah, I remember
at first, I said, oh no, but true in life,
right when you when you got a little obstacle, what's
the upside? I mean, you're not gonna change what they're doing.
But it lasted a relatively short time, think maybe a
year or two. Then they sort of decided that, you know,
doing this isn't that easy, because it's not. And so
(21:21):
they went back to their very successful practices and their
wonderful legal careers.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
And a lot of people thought, oh, you know, they
advertise and they settle quick. But you brought in Vic Mazzadi. Yeah,
and it was you and Bruce, Yes, and you brought
in Vic, which gave you a very.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Deep bench for litigation. Yeah, and that is a difference.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
He's a hot So even today Vic tries cases. He's
one of the best trial lawyers I know. He he
tries cases around the around the state, even around the country.
He is highly sought after. And he now has trained
so many of these guys. And again, a lot of
these insurance folks that we have spent ten, well fifteen
years doing insurance defense, doing these or managing firms that
(22:07):
did insurance defense, and so they've come with all that experience,
and then our litigation team I'll put them up against
anyone anywhere. They are a powerful group. All of our
lawyers are highly trained, but that litigation team, they are special.
They're very close knit. And I think we have and
I should know, but the firm gets big and you
(22:27):
lose track of these numbers. But I think, I think
we have sixteen folks who just litigate, sixteen lawyers who
just litigate, and then we have another thirty lawyers who
were doing everything else. But most a lot of the
cases feed there some resolve before litigation, but at the
end of the day. Yeah, bringing Vic Mazadi in added
again further credibility to this idea that I had to
(22:50):
start an advertising law firm.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
I don't use this word just a second time. No
brilliant moves in building the firm. And then you bring
in Rose Marie. Yes, doing an area of law that
is huge.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Now, yes, we're doing mass tours around the country a
drug recall cases. She's brilliant, you know, she's that Cornell
lawyer who what I say about Rose Marie simply she's
about five foot three, but she swam for Cornell and
she was she held a record at one point in
national record and everyone next to her off, the Blox
(23:21):
would have been six foot tall. I mean here she
was half their size. But she is fiery, she's smart,
she's has really just become a nationally known lawyer at
this point.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
And so we're gonna take a break for the news
in just a minute. We're gonna come back talk about
how to look at a case if you do have
an injury, what constitutes an injury? No fault insurance changed
a lot of this, and you know, we just go
to calendar call and there'll be fifty lawyers in the room.
They defender bender accidents, but now you need a real
serious injury in order to file that suit. Yeah, So
(23:52):
we're gonna come back and talk about all of that,
talk about the Martin or the Harding Mazzati Law firm,
Bruce Martin's exit from the firm, yeah, which which happened
a few years ago, and talk about some of the
things that used to happen at two forty four larkstre.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Oh okay, yeah, holding back on those.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Back on the Lark Street days.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
L when that furniture showed up that one day, I
don't know where that came from.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Truck pulled up and all of a sudden, there was living.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Room furniture hitim had like a real apartment.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
And eight hundred eight two five, five, nine, four nine.
Give us a call. We're gonna take a short break
for the news. I'm Lupiro, your host for this Morning
in Studio with Paul Harding. Will be right back back
with the bait Uls. Welcome back to Life Happens Radio.
I hope you're enjoying today's show in Studio with Paul Harding.
We're doing a little reminiscing a little talk about personal injury,
(24:40):
and you may think, well, personal injury, how does that
overlap with what pure o'connoran Strauss does. Well, when someone
has an injury, traumatic brain injury, or any other type
of injury, and a lot of people who have disabilities
get injured and have lawsuits, you need to have the
proceeds from that settlement in a vehicle of trust that
will protect them because things like Medicaid and SSI and
(25:03):
the benefits that those individuals need to live are dependent
upon not having too much money. And fortunately there are
great trust provisions in the federal and state law that
allow people with disabilities to take those settlement proceeds. Paul
and put them in a trust that can benefit them
for the rest of their life, but still keep them
on Medicaid and still keep that SSI.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Yeah, point critical.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
You know.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
For the first thing I will just kind of say
is that you know what what you do, Lou and
what your firm does.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
You know?
Speaker 3 (25:35):
For most of us lawyers, we don't understand it. People think, well,
you know, I'm a lawyer, so I got relatives. They
call me for anything, and I'm often if it's simple enough,
I'll make a I'll make a stab at an answer.
But when it comes down to a state planning that
is specific, if you don't have somebody doing that who
knows what they're doing, you know, the the miss is
too big to miss.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
You know.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
And so I s same with my own assets, my
own stuff. I wouldn't dare do it myself. It's so
complicated in our world.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
The difference between having it protected and the trust and
not is somebody running out of money who's permanently disabled.
And so we've worked together on several cases and that
is one of the things that we know how to do,
and that is get it to somebody who can protect
that money.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
And we certainly don't do any of the personal utry cases.
Although we get calls from clients you know, who should
I go to?
Speaker 2 (26:26):
And you know, you've been the go to firm for.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Us for all the reasons that we're talking about, not
just the commercials, but the fact that you have a
team of people and the service level for people and
I've referred clients to you and You've been on the
phone with them within ten minutes. Yeah, and making them
feel like, Okay, I have somebody who's going to champion
my case.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
That's so important, you.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
Know, because having you know, grew up the way I
grew up, I didn't know a lawyer, My family didn't
know a lawyer, and we've trouble hit, I don't know
what we would do. So the genesis of advertising really
isn't It's really about the looking approachable, accessible, and so
are although very light, we try to make them funny
and we sort of laugh even though it's not a
funny topic. But reaching out to a lawyer is heavy.
(27:06):
And so where my idea early on advertising was make
it approachable. Who would you want to call? Who do
you think is going to care enough? And if you're
just serious and sit behind books and I'm saying, call me,
and I'm smart and I I've done a hundred of
these cases and I and that's not that approachable, you know.
So we try to make it so it's it's easy
to do, and then we recognize that we're catching people
(27:30):
at their worst. You know. It's not a situation where
I want to get a will next year, but maybe
I'll do it this year. I'm feeling pretty good. It's
my life just got taken out from under me, and
what are we going to do? How are we going
to pay the bills? I mean, that's the conversation. Or
you know, having some real serious medical issues and they're
not sure you know what to do with that, and
(27:50):
you know, we just jump in, as you say, immediately
because there is a nine to one one feel to
our business in most cases.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Oh there is. And we do get those calls as well.
We refer them out if it's a health emergency. That's
our job. Yes, you know, we do healthcare. We do
intervening triage. We have a company called ever Home Care
Advisors that has care managers and social workers and nurses
that can help families triage care.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
But from an.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Accident, it's a whole different ballgame, and you're looking at
very very different things from that perspective. And you could
be sitting at a stop light park, minding your own business,
listening to Life Happens radio. All of a sudden, somebody's texting.
They come up behind you, don't realize the lights are
read hit you, rear end you. The car coming across
the intersection side swipes you. And now you're in the
hospital and you're in a coma, or you have a
(28:43):
traumatic brain injury, or you have multiple fractures and life
threatening injuries, and at that moment, you just don't know
where to turn.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
Yeah, and that's where I say, you know, no one
is a running joke that nobody likes lawyers except for
their own. And I get it, you know, because you've
may have been on the wrong side of a law firm,
you may have gone through a divorce, and so there's
a lawyer on the other side who you may not
particularly like. But when the chips are down and you're
just looking kind of for help, and you've got someone
who's going to come in like we do and for us,
(29:12):
we charge nothing right, so we we will come to you.
We service, We begin the process we investigate, we're getting
your life back together, and we still haven't asked you
for anything, and we never do. We get one third
of what we recover. It's called a contingency. With us,
it's a pure contingency. If we're unsuccessful and we and
we don't recover anything, at the end of the case,
(29:32):
we get nothing. So you know, when you're there and
you got somebody who's kind of fighting that that's the
combent I get, you know, is that I'm getting so
much energy. Can I just confirm with you guys that
this is just costing me anything? Right now? Am I
going to get a bill in the mail?
Speaker 1 (29:48):
You know?
Speaker 3 (29:49):
They kind of sheepishly will ask, and I said no,
And we always make sure so I'll say that several
times because they almost can't believe it. Yeah, we get
paid when you get paid. Yep, that's simple.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
In our busines us, it's give me a check because yeah,
there's there's no pot of gold at the end of
the rainbow for us. It's okay, we're gonna do a
trust and will We're gonna do planning for you.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
We're gonna represent you.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
But it's a very different model because we have to
get paid yes by the client.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
Right, So that's that's a little.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Different situation, and sometimes for clients an uncomfortable situation when
they say, oh, I have to pay all that money
for this, and you know it's an issue. But to
get the value that you need, you have to be
able to invest money in your future and do the
things that are right to do today, not take the
simple shortcuts. And you know, we face competition from legal
(30:36):
Zoom and people that do it on the side and.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Can cut all kinds of things. Can I spend a
second on that? I mean, you know, you and I
are friends. We've been very clear about that. But uh,
you know, I'm just gonna say this, whether it was
you in the room, me in the room, or if
you if you guys catch me at Starbucks and ask
me this question, I'll have the same answer. And the
answer is that when you're doing something like a state planning,
you're gonna go to legal Zoom. You're gonna get the
legal Zoom response, you know, and you're not gonna you're
(30:58):
gonna put yourself in an awkward position. And then even
some lawyers who say, well we do some of this, Okay,
it might work out, but but even those lures as
it gets more sophisticated, refer I mean lawyers refer to
you all the time.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Yes, and we refer to other attorneys when it's specialties that, yes,
we don't have. But so we we stick to our knitting,
as we say, and we stay in our lane because
to do what we do correctly, it's so technical, so teching,
and there are so many minds in the minefield that
you have to know how to avoid that. You can't
dabble in state planning, tax medicaid, all the laws that
(31:34):
you deal with.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
Legal zoom has its place, but I don't. And maybe
a simple will. I don't know, I've never done when
we zoom, but but I made a simple will. I mean,
when your assets are you know, you're living in an
apartment and you got married and you're and you want
to where the dog is gonna go?
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Who I can leave my car to? Yeah, that would
have been our will.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Yeah, once the once the note got paid off on
the car, whether there was any equity in it. But
but yeah, so I I do think it has its place,
but it doesn't have its place in my opinion, and
the true estate planning that is penny wise pound foolish,
isn't he saying?
Speaker 1 (32:05):
So we're gonna take phone calls hopefully if you're out
there and you're thinking about calling in, now's the time
before it gets too late. Eight hundred eighty two five
five nine four to nine. Pick up that phone and
dial eight hundred talk w G y one more time.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
It's eight hundred eight two five fifty nine forty nine.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
Uh and Paul, your your firm has grown, your family
has grown. And just to take us back to when
we decided to leave Romer in Featherstone Hall, we were
young men.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
We were young single.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
Men, twenty six years old and single.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Yeah, it was a little older.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
Yeah, but.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
You know, living on Lark Street in Albany, New York
at that time.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Yeah, Downtown Albany was a vibrant jump it sure was,
and the vibrancy has unfortunately dissipated over the years.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
It is a different feel down there in terms of
of the restaurants and the activities that used to be available.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
And so we we have lots of stories from downtown
Almaney that we won't tell in the air.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
I was gonna say, how far are you going to
go with this?
Speaker 2 (33:11):
I'm not going too far and thank god we have
a call.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
Oh good we have Daniel.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Good morning, Daniel, Welcome to life. Happens trouble here there
you are, Hi Daniel, Hi.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
Daniel, Yeah, yeah, hello. I if I could I have
a question for mister Harding.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Go ahead, Daniel, anything.
Speaker 4 (33:36):
Daniel, Oh, good morning, thank you for taking my call.
I have a question as to whether or not I
(33:58):
I I, I might, I might have a case or
simply not OK. For a period of seventeen years, I
was on psychological medications at the maximum limit recognized by
(34:24):
the FDA and the CDC.
Speaker 5 (34:27):
And they were.
Speaker 4 (34:29):
Three meds and they were all at their max limit.
And then one day my provider decided just to tell
me I'm going to write you one last prescription and
don't ever come back. And I have no idea why
(34:51):
he said that to me, But with the sudden will
withdraw from those meads was was very severe. I lost
my job, and psychosocially, I've never really been the same since.
(35:17):
But I I have to admit that if if you
look at me, I don't really have any physical ramlifications.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
Let me let me let me jump in here, because
you know, I think it's it's clear in any medical
analysis that that these drugs you to get off them.
It's a weaning off process that you're going to be
cut and cut and cut, uh and then evaluation each time.
So I think the set of facts here is that
is that I don't know the drugs and I don't
(35:52):
know the specificity of them. But nearly every time that
I've been involved in somebody who has been they've changed
the drugs or they've given them a reduced amount to
try to do that. But it is one of those
specific things where I would say this, why don't you
reach out to me on Monday? And I know that
(36:14):
the number is you can use the one eight hundred
law ten ten number because there's so much here that
I don't think that a meaningful conversation that we would
have right now is going to be very helpful because
there's there's probably a half hour of questions that I
have for you before I could give you any kind
of opinion. So one eight hundred Law ten ten and
just ask for Paul Harding. We don't screen calls. It'll
(36:37):
come right to me. We still do it that way
like the old days. And so I will talk to
you on Monday. Okay, Daniel, thank you for the call. Yeah,
that's awesome, and we hope.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
That Paul can help you out when you do call
them on Monday, because that is a serious issue and
anybody that's cut off from medications knows how serious that
becomes when you don't have the ability to do the
day to day living you did before. We have another caller,
somebody from your hometown of Rotterdam.
Speaker 5 (37:05):
Jim, good morning, Good morning. Before I give a question,
let me give you a profile of who you're talking to.
My wife and I both in our early seventies, retired
with divine benefit pension programs. We have the nursing home
(37:28):
insurance well covered and we're going to be actually seeing
youth to do a trust. But my question is we
have a three million dollar personal excess liability policy. Yes,
and I'm wondering are there any other tools available out
(37:53):
there to shield us from lawsuits be the real nuisance.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Yeah, so the.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Liability protection sure is something we do and Paul can
talk on. But you have an umbrella policy, as we
call it, which.
Speaker 5 (38:09):
Is great umbrella policy talk about because I think.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
It overlays other policies and just make sure it's covering
everything that you're doing.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
You want to just touch on the umbrella. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
So, and just to again home rotterdamn guy, shout out,
shout out. I was a Burdic street guy, Yes, sir. Yeah,
So with respect to what you're trying to to protect against. Uh,
if we are talking about an auto related accident, if
something happened and you know it's negligent, you had a
(38:39):
bad day and you ran into someone, you know you've
got a three million dollar policy. You've got some that's
overlying something else.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
That is is just about as much as you can get.
You can There are some carriers right up to five million.
But in terms of protecting of the assets, you know,
that is a lou. That is a lou conversation. And
is there any business interest or is this kind of
just your personal stuff that you want to make sure
an event doesn't have the opportunity to wipe that out.
Speaker 5 (39:10):
It's it's personal. But I think I've got a unique profile.
I I used to have a garage business and I
like the cars. And a friend of mine actually got
fined by the en con because he was spraying lacquer
(39:30):
of paint outdoors. And I'm sure that doesn't come under
the umbrella policy. And I guess the additional question is
if I have the house and assets and trust, are
they protected from government fines?
Speaker 3 (39:50):
I'm going over a loop.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Yeah, that's that's my bailiwick.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
And New York public policy is that you cannot shield
your own assets from creditors through a trust. So in
New York, any trust that you create under New York law,
those assets are going to be available to general creditors.
We are able to create a specific type of trust
(40:12):
to shield assets for medicaid purposes, but that's unique to Medicaid.
General creditors can reach any trust in New York. If
you want to go to the next level and do
asset protection planning through a trust, we have to leave
New York and opt into the state law of a
state like Nevada, or opt into another country's law like
(40:37):
the island of nevis where these trust companies and trust
laws have been tailored for people who want to generally
absolve themselves from any liabilities and have their assets protected
through those either domestic trusts in Nevada or Alaska or
foreign trusts in nevs or the Cook Islands. So that
(40:58):
is a very heavy lift to do, but we do
it for certain people who are at ultra high risk occupations,
Surgeons who make lots of money, people who have businesses
that have potential liabilities. They do this type of asset
protection planning and we do it with them.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
But for most people.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
That's a little that's a bridge too far to do
that kind of planning for general liability. Certainly, if you
own rental properties, we use limited liability companies to shield
people's personal assets from property liabilities. There's a whole host
of things that can be done, but the umbrella policy
is going to cover you for most things.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Things like environmental liabilities not so much.
Speaker 5 (41:38):
Okay, if I and I've done this, I've helped people
out at church who are down and out financially and
fix their cars for them for free, and everything has
gone great. But let's say I do make some type
(41:58):
of oversighter mistake. Can uh now I for got Paul
coming at me?
Speaker 3 (42:07):
Harting Mazati.
Speaker 5 (42:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
Yeah, you know if if if you are someone in
your show, you know, whether it's free or not, you
know that you didn't you know, didn't tighten the wheel
and the wheel comes off and there's an accident. Yeah,
there's that, but that would be covered under your liability policy.
And I just want to say, I mean rarely uh,
in fact, I can hardly cite the times, but uh
that people you go out when you have an insurance
policy as you're describing, Uh, it would be just a
(42:32):
set of facts. I almost can't imagine where it would
exceed that you would be protected.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
Yeah, certainly.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
One thing that people don't do is look at their
umbrella policy and match it up to the other individual
coverage that they have. Does is it cover your homeowners?
Does it cover your automobile? Does it cover their liability policies,
your business policies. Make sure that it extends over every
other policy that you have, because that invokes once you
exhaust the other policy limits, that's.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
What invokes the it kicks in the umber. And but
I mean, you are super responsible. I can hear just
your questions, the questions that most people don't even ask.
I suspect that you are well positioned to know. You're
gonna meet with lou so he can give you any
other any other pips, But you have to get a
letter from me. I apologize ahead of time. No, I'm kidding, Jim.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
Thanks for your call, my friend, I look forward to
meeting you.
Speaker 5 (43:24):
Okay, my friends tell me I can see the dark
side of the sun. That's why I was questioning.
Speaker 3 (43:29):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
That's right, goodbody, put your binocua, put your blinders on.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
All right.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
We're gonna come back after a short break for the
last segment of the show. If you have questions, we
can still take one or two more. Eight hundred eight
two five, five, nine, four nine. I'm Lupiro, your host
for Life Happens Radio every Saturday morning here on talk
radio w g Y. My good friend Paul Harding is
live in studio with me. Zach is here in the booth,
and we're gonna come right back after this short break.
(43:59):
We have Bob on the line. Good morning, by welcome
to Life Happens. Will we help you this morning?
Speaker 6 (44:05):
Hey, good morning. I'm calling about I have my in
laws who are both eighty four. They live in New Jersey.
They have four homes, all paid off, and I haven't
spoken to my father in law about this, but my
wife has just spoken to him recently and they've advised
(44:28):
her she has two brothers that when they pass away,
everything's going to be divided equally. Now, they haven't discussed
anything about whether these homes are placed in trust. And
I realize you guys are New York attorneys, but I
was just calling generally to see if he had an
idea of New Jersey law. It sounds to me, you know,
(44:50):
I've listened to your guys program that it would be
beneficial for them to place those houses in trust rather
than devise the from the homes to the you know,
the three kids will and we are.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
Any of them rentals or are they all just personal use?
Speaker 6 (45:09):
I'll personally use Okay.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
So it's funny. I was in my New York City
office yesterday. We have an office at two sixty Madison
Avenue in Manhattan, and I'm sitting with a wonderful family
from New Jersey and we do practice in New Jersey
and they had real estate. So I just had this
conversation about New Jersey and they her brother had passed
away owning a couple of properties and they got split
up among the family and it took them two years
(45:31):
to go through proby. And that's something that you just
can avoid easily, and they would want to avoid. So
a revocable living trust keeps them in control. Keeps them
owning those assets, but if they become incapacitated or upon
their death, those assets can then be sold divided very
(45:53):
very easily without court intervention. So that would be one consideration.
It sounds like if they owned four homes fully paid off,
they may or may not think about medicaid planning, and
medicaid planning in New Jersey is not as good as
it is in New York. But that's another consideration that
they should at least be.
Speaker 6 (46:10):
Discussing right now. If they did have a revocable trust
that you know, upon their death would go to the
three remaining children. Does having it in a revocable trust
like that, does that avoid capital gains taxes or not?
Speaker 1 (46:29):
Well, it will if they own the properties at death,
it gets what's called a step up in basis. So
the basis in the property is what determines your capital gain,
and that would get a new basis on dat to death.
So if they bought it for one hundred thousand is
worth a million upon death, the kids get it with
a basis of a million. If they sell it, there's
zero capital gains, so the capital gain step up is
(46:52):
preserved in the revocable trust. It works very very well
from both provate avoidance and a tax perspective, So only
the solution they want to.
Speaker 2 (47:01):
Be talking about.
Speaker 6 (47:04):
Okay, great, thank you so much. And in terms of
seeing you guys for my wife and I, because we
don't have wills or state planning, what I just call
your office during the week to make an appointment.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
Absolutely, it's five one eight. I'll give you the number
four or five nine, twenty one hundred.
Speaker 6 (47:26):
Great, thanks so much.
Speaker 1 (47:27):
Thanks Bob, appreciate the call. Paul, we have about three
minutes left. You're going to give you the last word here.
What do you want to talk about?
Speaker 3 (47:33):
Well, I will say that it's been uh, you've been commute,
but you've done this show for twelve years and I'll
get asked, I'll be on panels or people ask about
business success and how how do you get successful? And
I think one of the things is is that people
struggle staying with the same thing, getting an idea and
(47:54):
making it work. Whether it was law ten ten and
what we did, it was almost like we just kind
of had it in sight. And you've done the same thing.
I mean, not only with this show but with your firm.
So when people are out there kind of figuring out, Okay,
how do I achieve success or how do I pass
that along? It really is the idea doesn't have to
be super complicated, but get an idea, stick with it,
(48:17):
and that I think is an eighty percent move towards success.
Because I don't know how many people have had a
twelve year run on a radio show. I will say
you are in a small percentage. I'll say you're one
percent of the folks who are doing this, So truly
congratulations to You're a natural market, You're a natural presenter.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
As are you. Just no coincidence we ended up at two.
Speaker 3 (48:37):
For me, maybe we became friends.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
Yeah, apartment with no furniture and going back to that
in those early days, and folks, this is not a joke.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
We didn't have any money. Yeah, we couldn't buy furniture.
Speaker 3 (48:49):
Yeah we didn't. We didn't couldn't pick colors out or something.
We just couldn't buy furniture. And there was a TV though, Yes,
so we were standing or I don't know what we did,
lean and lean against, sat on the floor, Yeah, brought
our pillows out from the bedroom. Yeah, bite friends over
Yeah there it was Yeah, I mean watched a Tyson
fight there.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
I think we did.
Speaker 3 (49:08):
We invited people over and they had to stand and lean. Yeah,
that was gutsy, gutsy move.
Speaker 1 (49:12):
So how far you've come? Fault and harding Mazadi and
Drew Martin.
Speaker 7 (49:17):
Who I got to be good friends with, Yes, super guy. Yeah,
still still live and well, still playing golf. He I
don't know as he just he's just turned ninety. Uh
and I know that last year he played. I don't
know if he's playing this year.
Speaker 2 (49:30):
Ninety. Wow.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
Yeah, that's that's amazing. And your kids, you know, none
of us had kids back then. We were both singles still.
Speaker 3 (49:36):
Yeah, late around Lark Street, right, I was a late
late to the kid party.
Speaker 7 (49:41):
I was.
Speaker 3 (49:41):
Yeah, me too, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:42):
Me both. But you have two beautiful daughters now.
Speaker 3 (49:44):
I do, eighteen and twenty. Andy and Peyton are both
in college and ones at College of Charleston, the other
ones at TCU and uh yeah yeah, that that part's
been great.
Speaker 2 (49:53):
And my wife and lovely wife, Gwen.
Speaker 3 (49:55):
Yeah, yeah, that's been a blessing in a story in
and of itself.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
And I want to give a shout out to one
of our mutual friends.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
So we were just up on the Morgan and Lake
George with Kevin Johnson and Karen and Kevin and Karen
just got married, So a shout out.
Speaker 3 (50:08):
To Kevin john Congratulations to Kevin on that one.
Speaker 1 (50:10):
Congratulations Kevin you won the prize, and Karen You're okay.
Speaker 3 (50:16):
Karen did okay, Kevin them the bacon as they said.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Yeah. We want to thank you all for joining us today.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
Paul, thank you so much for coming in, taking us
your Saturday morning and being with us here on Life
Happens Radio.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
We're back next week at eleven am. Hope to see
you here
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