The Renegade Lawyer Podcast
I am more convinced than ever that nothing that traditional bar organizations are doing is going to move the needle on the sad stats on lawyer happiness ...
The root cause of all lawyers' problems is financial stress. Financial stress holds you back from getting the right people on the bus, running the right systems, and being able to only do work for clients you want to work with. Financial stress keeps you in the office on nights and weekends, often doing work you hate for people you don't like, and doing that work alone.
(Yes, you have permission to do only work you like doing and doing it with people you like working with.)
The money stress is not because the lawyers are bad lawyers or bad people. In fact, most lawyers are good at the lawyering part and they are good people.
The money stress is caused by the general lack of both business skills and an entrepreneurial mindset.
Thus, good lawyers who are good people get caught up and slowed down in bringing their gifts to the world. Their families, teams, clients, and communities are not well-served because you can't serve others at your top level when you are constantly worrying about money.
We can blame the law schools and the elites of the profession who are running bar organizations, but to blame anyone else for your own woes is a loser's game. It is, in itself, a restrictive, narrow, mindset that will keep you from ever seeing, let alone experiencing, a better future.
Lawyers need to be in rooms with other entrepreneurs. They need to hang with people who won't tell you that your dreams are too big or that "they" or "the system "won't allow you to achieve them. They need to be in rooms where people will be in their ear telling them that their dreams are too small.
Get in better rooms. That would be the first step.
Second step, ignore every piece of advice any general organized bar is giving about how to make your firm or your life better.
The Renegade Lawyer Podcast
Ep. 189 – Inside a $2M Practice Area: Teaching the ERISA Disability System
What if you could turn a misunderstood, underserved niche into a multi-million-dollar engine for your law firm?
In this episode, Ben Glass shares a behind-the-scenes recording from a premium, no-CLE seminar where he taught a dozen firms the foundations of his ERISA long-term disability (LTD) practice. This is the same system that generates over $1M in recurring revenue—and another $1M from new cases—each year for Ben Glass Law.
Listen in to learn:
- How Ben scaled the practice using systems, trust-building, and marketing
- Why this niche works, even with laws stacked in favor of insurance companies
- What makes this work so meaningful for clients beyond just financial wins
- The psychological and coaching elements that transform lives—and fuel referrals
Whether you’re looking to grow your firm, launch a new revenue stream, or do more meaningful legal work, this is a can't-miss episode.
Ben Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury and long-term disability insurance attorney in Fairfax, VA. Since 2005, Ben Glass and Great Legal Marketing have been helping solo and small firm lawyers make more money, get more clients and still get home in time for dinner. We call this TheGLMTribe.com
What Makes The GLM Tribe Special?
In short, we are the only organization within the "business builder for lawyers" space that is led by two practicing lawyers.
One thing we're sure you've noticed is that despite the variety of options within our space, no one else is mixing
the actual practice of law with business building in the way that we are.
There are no other organizations who understand the highs and lows of running a small law firm and are engaged in talking to real clients. That is what sets GLM apart from every other organization, and it is why we have had loyal members that have been with us for two-decades.
We are achieving in almost 100% of our cases, of the cases that we accept, achieving money, right? Um, in fact, the only cases in the last couple years that we did not achieve money is when we weren't good enough, I think, in explaining the risk to the client, and the client said, no, no, no, and turned down a whole bunch of money and we lost the case. Uh it it's it's a it's a perfect storm set up for us. It's uh the work that you do in this in this field is really beneficial on several levels uh for the clients. Yes, we can get them money, right? And many of them, I mean, the whole nature of the practice is I'm disabled and I can't work. So they don't have income, right? Many of them, um, you know, they're it's it's a really severe thing where they're like, I need to move out of Northern Virginia. I need to move to a different lower cost area of the state in order to survive. And so we help get them money. But I think as important as that is, a big thing we do, and if you've hung out with me uh at all, you learn that a lot of what we do as lawyers and as marketers of legal services is psychological. And these people come having been told in a report in a denial letter that you're a faker. Your doctors are stupid, your doctors are liars, right? And so you think of someone who's got a chronic illness uh or a progressively um deteriorating disease process, most of the people we see are not they're not here to scam the system. They're here because they and their doctors believe they cannot do their job. And so a lot of what we do, even in cases where the money we get for them isn't a ton, right, is we restore their dignity.
SPEAKER_00:Welcome to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, the show that challenges the way lawyers and professionals think about life, business, and success. Hosted by Ben Glass, attorney, entrepreneur, coach, and father of nine, this show is about more than just practicing law. For over 40 years, Ben has built a law firm that stands for something bigger. He's helped thousands of lawyers create practices that make good money, do meaningful work, and still make it home for them. Each week, Ben brings you real conversations with guests who are challenging the students' quote. Lawyers, doctors, entrepreneurs, thinkers, and builders. These are people creating bold careers and meaningful lives without burning out or selling out. If you're ready to stop playing small and start thinking like a renegade, you're in the right place. Let's dive in.
SPEAKER_02:Welcome back to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast. In today's episode, I'm going to take you back to a seminar we did in our offices a couple of years ago, where I taught for a day and a half our ERISA long-term disability practice. Now, you may say, well, why would I be interested in that? But today that practice generates about a million dollars a year in recurring annualized revenue for folks whose cases we've already won, and we get additional about a million dollars a year from new cases. So it's about a$2 million a year revenue driver in the law firm. Number two, the seminar we did was a day and a half. It was about a dozen firms in the room, each firm paying$8,000 to be there. We didn't offer any CLE credit. This is pure information. And so you could start to think about well, gee, what is it that I know that I could share with other lawyers to generate, on the first instance, obviously, bolus of income. But second, many of these lawyers took the information and began their own ERISA disability practices. Some of them actually compete with us now. That's fine. But others now refer us their cases. So we're making money and they're making money. So this is an overview. This was the first session. Again, it's a day and a half, giving you the overview of the practice area if you're interested. It is, by the way, an underserved niche. And so if you wanted to learn how to do these cases, which are largely in the federal court, they're largely uh kind of quasi-administrative. Um, there's a whole regulatory framework for doing these cases that you really need to know about and that we're studying. We think for young lawyers looking for a practice area, this is an interesting space to go and to learn. Obviously, the$2 million a year that we've built it to so far, and it'll probably grow 30% a year over year uh next year, uh, wasn't built overnight. It's a lot of hard work. We have good systems and we have good people, and you'll hear about some of these good people and good systems in this opening uh session of the event. So I hope you enjoy it. I hope you take it and go, like, how can I transfer this to something in my life and in my practice? And then maybe you'll say, hey, gee, this is a practice area I'd like to learn more about. And so I've got some steps for you. I'm not trying to sell you, I'm not doing a seminar again. I'm way, way too busy for that. Uh, but it's this practice area has been really good for that. All right, so let's get started. Good morning. We're gonna go ahead and get started a couple minutes early. We're the only uh legal CLE group in the whole world that starts early, right? So if you've never been to my name is Ben Glass, um, if you don't know who I am. Um back, Ellen Resident Ham, my top paralegal Olivia is running around here somewhere as well. She's also works in the Sarissa LTD department. Um, my son Brian is a personal injury uh fantastic work who joined us in January and brought his top assistant over. So he's responsible for the fact that even though we moved in here almost a year ago with more space than we thought we could ever fill, that we're now looking for space on the third floor because we are so jammed up with cases and people now. There's Olivia. And so tonight, Ellen and Olivia will be joining us for dinner. Uh, you're invited, but you're kids and stuff. Uh my son Matt is running around. He's a freshman at Virginia Tech, so he's working for us uh this summer, doing sort of deep dive analytics, gauffering, and whatever else we need him to do. So if you haven't been to a live uh Ben Glass great living marketing event before, know that we start and end on time. Uh we don't think that it uh it is right for a moderator to be starting a seminar by when people are in their seats at nine o'clock saying we're gonna wait a few minutes for all the people that are late, right? That dishonors your time. So and we've got a really tight schedule because there's a lot of stuff to do between now and tomorrow at 11:30. But I guarantee you this will be interesting. Uh this is a very interesting practice area that we have sort of, I think we have figured out um over the years. And in the last uh 17, 18, 24 months, we've really systematized it to make it flow even better for us. Um, and we have lots of cases. We probably do more uh than any other firm in Virginia on the plaintiff's side in these disability cases. So, what today and tomorrow is all about is giving you a really practical um framework to begin to handle these cases. This is not a deep dive into ERISA technicalities. You'll find out I know very little actually about ERISA broadly, right? We just know how to do these cases uh very well. Um, the other thing you'll notice is that, hey, it's rainy, of course, and so it makes it humid in here, and we had the burners out there. So the number one issue we've had over time is like moderating temperature in this space. So as the day goes on, you know, we can open some of these doors and get some circulation in here. But we're here to work. We're here to learn how to really jump start and do this stuff. So a couple of uh lawyer-like disclaimers is at the end of the day, you're responsible for your own stuff. We're basically giving you everything that we give our people who join our LTD team, and we've got some outsourced people who help us who who work on a um a part-time basis. Everything that we give to them, we're giving to you. It's just that the stuff we're giving to you is prettier. It's in a nicer binder. And we've organized the whole um but at the end, but we're from different uh circuits. I practice primarily in the fourth circuit. We're handling some cases now around the country with uh co-counsel. In each circuit, you'll see it's a little bit different, but I'm gonna give you the method really to take what we're doing here and get you up to speed in your own jurisdiction because there are some nuances and some varieties. It's not it's not a lot of nuances and varieties, but there are some different flavors of things. It's um uh it's an underserved market. You know, there's a lot of ERISA lawyers in Southern California, there's a lot of cases in Southern California. The district that has the most filings is Northern District of Illinois of these types of cases. Um, I've got a couple of direct, good competitors in this area, and we all have more cases than we could actually do. We see more cases than we can actually handle. What we're going to be doing, so so so again, but it's your responsibility. I mean, the stuff we're giving you is a huge head start. And I've been to a bunch. When I first started to learn this, and I one of these cases found me about 18 years ago, and I thought it was just an insurance case so I could just read the policy and kind of figure out what the case was about. And I don't even remember today how I learned that it was ERISA and even what that was. And but I do remember struggling to figure out like, what the heck does one of these lawsuits look like? And this is really before the advent of PACER and the ability to go in and read everybody else's pleadings. And how do one of these cases actually proceed through federal court? Because at that, the first case I got was a case that was primed, the next step was going to be uh federal court. And then even when I started doing it, uh, a lot of times we were teaching the judges. So when I would go to argue, I would say, just give me an idea. Like, have you done a lot of these things? Because I haven't, but I've kind of learned it and I can tell you the framework. And they would go, tell me the framework. Now, you know, most of the judges we run into, they understand the framework. They actually have scheduling orders that are specific to these types of cases when they are litigated. And by and large, you almost never have to leave your desk to do these, which is kind of cool. I also, you know, I just want to emphasize that, you know, this is we're doing this seminar because this is a money-making venture for us, and we believe it can be a money-making venture for you. And the law of ERISA and the attitude of the insurance companies kind of makes this a perfect storm for us, in that there's tons and tons of denials. These people who are whose claims are being denied don't know what to do. There's very few of us who do them. Uh, the law, by and large, is tilted in favor of the insurance companies, which means that a lot of these cases end up um settling. So a lot of what we do is is management of client expectations. But at the end of the day, these people are coming to you having been denied benefit. They're at zero, right? And we are achieving in almost 100% of our cases, of the cases that we accept, achieving money, right? Um, in fact, the only cases in the last couple of years that we did not achieve money is when we weren't good enough, I think, in explaining the risk to the client, and the client said, no, no, no, and turned down a whole bunch of money and we lost the case. Uh it it's it's a it's a perfect storm set up for us. It's uh the work that you do in this in this field is really beneficial on several levels uh for the clients. Yes, we can get them money, right? And many of them, I mean, the whole nature of the practice is I'm disabled and I can't work. So they don't have income, right? Many of them um, you know, they're it's a it's a really severe thing where they're like, I need to move out of Northern Virginia. I need to move to a different lower cost area of the state in order to survive. And so we help get them money. But I think as important as that is, a big thing we do, and if you've hung out with me at all, you learn that a lot of what we do as lawyers and as marketers of legal services is psychological. And these people come having been told in a report in a denial letter that you're a faker. Your doctors are stupid, your doctors are liars, right? And so you think of someone who's got a chronic illness uh or a progressively um deteriorating disease process. Most of the people we see are not they're they're not here to scam the system. They're here because they and their doctors believe they cannot do their job. And so a lot of what we do, even in cases where the money we get for them isn't a ton, right, is we restore their dignity because of the work that Ellen does, Olivia does, we do in terms of this whole appeal thing that we'll talk about, in terms of writing the story of their life in a really positive way, so that they, the client says, Yeah, yeah, you got it right. You understand what I'm going through. And I think that's important. I know that's important because our whole jobs are not just to be, in my view, right? And by the way, I'll give you lots of opinions about things, and not everyone agrees with everything I say. That's cool. Not everybody does these cases the way we do them. We're gonna show you how they work for us. Um, but in my opinion, as lawyers, part of our job is to restore these people's lives.
SPEAKER_01:We'll get back to you in just a second. If you're the kind of lawyer who believes your practice can be your platform, not just a paycheck, you need to check out my book, Renegade Lawyer Marketing. This isn't your average law firm marketing book. No theory, no fluff. Just the mindset and tools that helped us build a law firm that serves our family and still fights for our clients. Grab your copy at Renegadelawyermarketing.com and start building a law practice that actually works for you. Now, back to the show.
SPEAKER_02:A lot of what I talk about when I'm meeting with a disability client or a PI client or whatever isn't has nothing, almost nothing to do with the case that they came in with. It is about living life big. It is about, okay, let's take our next step. What can we do to improve our lives? It is about being a life coach to them. That's a space I'm very comfortable in. And I can just tell you, and Olivia sits in on a lot of these, she can, I'm sure, do the speech I do for people. You know, people leave here after having a consult with us. I believe have being boosted up about life. Somebody cares, but it's not just, hey, we care for you and we're going to work hard. It's like, I've got some things you can do to go and improve your life, right? Here's some ways you can actually go and make money. Here's some maybe some specialists you ought to see. Here's an example of somebody who came in here a while ago who's um, you know, worse off than you are, and who now is is back in an income-producing world. So I think we help these clients on many different, many different levels. So let me just spend a couple of minutes kind of talking about the agenda, talking about the materials that we've gotten for you and what we're gonna what we're gonna do here. So I'm gonna spend next 80 minutes or so giving you a really broad overview of this whole process. And I'm gonna start really at ground zero, presume no knowledge. Although I know some of you do Social Security, some of you have done these cases. Scott, you've done them on the defense side, right? Years ago, right? Working um for UNAM. And some of you are doing these cases actively, but we're gonna start really at, again, explaining from ground zero. And again, I'm not an expert on ERISA writ large, okay? I'm an expert on these cases. My team is an absolute expert on um these cases. Um, and I'm gonna show you areas where I think lawyers are, you know, um do are inefficient, like making mistakes, wasting time, wasting money in these cases. Again, we're gonna show you what works for us. So that's what we're gonna start. In doing that, gonna kind of go through um go through the binders. And the binders are labeled one through five, but we're not working in the binders necessarily in that order. We're gonna spend the bulk of today, um, after the overview, kind of getting into the nitty-gritty of how you do these appeals, how you talk to, well, at the end of the day, like how you sell the client who has come in, how you how you talk to them, what are their concerns, what do they need to hear from you? And we'll talk this afternoon about the litigation process, which we have really streamlined. And the ERISA defense bar has really streamlined. I mean, I'll just tell you the coolest part about uh the litigation process is that a firm like us, who's small, can take on the biggest firms in the country. Because for some reason, these ERISA um insurance companies or these long-term disability insurance companies, they go to the biggest firms and they pay them a boatload of money. But since there's by and large no discovery, we'll talk about that. I'm not being dragged all over the country and I'm not spending a boatload of money uh in the litigation stage and prosecuting these cases. We know that there was recently some published statistics that about 80% of litigated cases will settle. We'll talk about how to get settlements and what goes into that process. Now, bad news is of the cases that are litigated, two to one the defense wins. All right. That actually sets it up as a business pretty good for us because it keeps out competitors. Because when people hear two to one plaintiffs lose, why would you be doing this business? I'm like, well, we've got to be well, first of all, if you're outside of this room, I go, you're right, you shouldn't do it. It's really hard. Stick to whatever else you're doing because you're never gonna be able to understand E-R-I-SA, which one federal judge said means actually everything ridiculous invented since Adam. Uh so that that's what we we tell the outside world. But it then swings back to we have to have a great trust relationship with the client. And the client has to understand that the law pretty much sucks for them and that if a case is quote litigated, it's two to one against them. That trust building starts with the marketing that you're doing. And so tomorrow morning, we'll spend my marketing team is going to be in here showing you pretty much every step that we use to attract these cases. Now, we'll have time for a QA. So at lunchtime, we're going to, if you want, bring lunch in here. We'll do QA about whatever it is we we're doing this morning. We'll have dinner over at a Tiny Restaurant. We'll probably have enough cars. If you don't have a car, at the end of the day, you'll raise your hand and we'll get you a ride over. It's about a mile away. And what you want to do is sit with Ellen and sit with Olivia and ask them a lot of questions. You can sit with me and ask me a lot of questions too, right? You don't want to sit with whoever you came with if you want to keep learning this. Uh and then tomorrow morning at eight o'clock, optional. We'll we'll have breakfast here. And then nine o'clock, we'll start the marketing part. But eight o'clock, come on in here, we'll do a QA. Now, when we do QA, we want to answer the questions that have to do with ERISA long-term disability litigation first. Because we do want to you to have all of your questions answered. But then if you have other questions about marketing, practice building, culture, all the other things that uh GLM uh you know teaches, and we're, you know, we're constantly working on here, we're happy to answer all those questions too. In your materials, in the outline we gave you, you have my email and you have Ellen's email. So as you leave here and start to get some cases, you're gonna have questions, right? So you have email access to us, and then I want you to note on your calendars. So this is on the page one of the outlines, August 22, what do we say? 60 days or so from now at four o'clock my time, we'll have an optional QA uh call-in and we'll record that. Um, we're recording this event, and so we're gonna make the audio available to you for sure. That'll be up um probably by the end of next week. If anyone wants a video, we can get you the video, but it's a lot easier to listen um to the audio. But so we'll have that uh and we'll send out a reminder for that phone call 60 days from now. Again, uh, if you want, you can get on and ask any questions um that have developed. We really do, we really do want uh to help you learn this practice area. And my wife said, Why the hell are you doing a seminar to teach people how to do this stuff? I go, well, we're good at it. Uh there's more cases out there than we could do, and we really do want to help lawyers. And so this is this is just one of those sweet spots where lack of lawyers, law kind of sucks, but we can make clients happy and we can make money with it. That all kind of blends in. Let's go and have a run at it. Some will go and get a practice and you know, start something new and really run with it. Others, you know, may find uh, well, you know, I really not that interesting. That's okay. Either way, we think uh, you know, we're giving folks the opportunity. So let me just start here, and then I'm one last thing. What we're teaching here is we're about 80% of these claims, what they will look like as they come through your office. We'll show you sort of the variations, right? But what we really want you to be able to wrap your arms around is what are most of these claims that get called in to most law firms look like? And how can you efficiently, ethically, fairly handle them to help the client and to make money for yourself? So that's what we're going to do. Again, there's there are lots of parts to ERISA that I don't know anything about, but we're good at this part. So we'll start here is that what so how many people? So everyone here probably has a long-term disability policy of their own, right? Either an individual or a group policy. Have you ever looked at it? Do you know like what it uh actually protects? These are insurance products that are designed to provide income protection if you can't work. That's what we're talking about here. Many employers, including law firms, so many of them, uh provide group long-term disability benefit, insurance policy benefit, as a part of their benefit package. Most every company does, seems like. Group policies tend to be good enough that insurance companies can sell them without doing underwriting. So whoever's employed is going to be covered by the policy no matter if they have a pre-existing condition. They might not have a valid claim until there sometime, but they have to be priced so that an employer like me can afford to provide the coverage for everybody in the firm. And that these are the policies that we're talking about here. If you're smart, you have an individual policy as well. If you don't have one and you're young and healthy, you should go and talk to a broker and get one. They're more expensive. The coverage is a lot better. These policies, let me step back, take a step back. Because this is a part of an employer's benefit package, it then falls under this umbrella called ERISA, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. I don't want to bore you about it, but when Congress was thinking of this idea, they thought it would be a good idea to protect pension plans. Yeah, that's really good. Let's make sure employers weren't stealing pension money. Good. And at the very last minute, they lumped all of the other scheme of employee benefits into or under this umbrella called ERISA. Congress didn't give a whole lot of direction about how disputes about claims would be sorted out, how they would be litigated. And many years ago, the Supreme Court of the United States said, well, these look like trust agreements. So we're gonna litigate them like trusts. And we're going to give the insurance company who made the decision broad discretion to determine benefits, and we're only going to reverse their decisions if they abuse that discretion. That's very big picture, by and large, how we get here. There are exceptions. So if your client works for a governmental agency, it's not ERISA. If they work for a church, it's not ERISA. You just need to be aware that these things are out there because it's a different rubric of how we are going to attack the case, especially if it goes to litigation. And it's also a different rubric of how you're going to evaluate the case. If you listen to a lot of disability lawyers, they will say to you, this whole thing, most of them will say, this whole thing sucks. Give the insurance company the benefit of the doubt. You don't give me any discovery. How the heck am I supposed to help these people? We like that model because if I had to litigate in real life an insurance contract every time I had one of these cases and fly around the country doing depositions and pay experts to pay attention to give discovery and depositions. Now we're talking like a malpractice case or a serious PI case, and the money model doesn't work for the vast majority of consumers who are covered. So we're good with this model. You just need to know that there are certain times where it's just not an ERISA rubric. And you would have to think about it differently. And if that comes up, you give us a call. Good news is most of these policies say this is governed by ERISA, right? And here's your ERISA appeal rights. And 99.9% of the time, when it says it's governed by ERISA, they're actually telling you the truth. Sometimes they don't even know. The insurance company adjuster doesn't even know. Okay. So that's what these things are. When you are looking at your own long-term disability policy, there's several key things that you would want to know if you're looking at your own policy. And these are the same things you want to look at if you were looking at a client's policy. And the first is what is the definition of disability? Like what does the claimant have to do to meet the condition of the policy? And that's the very first thing you turn to. And what you'll see when you in this typically, so there's typically a definitions page or or a glossary set in these policies. What you'll see is that the typical group long-term disability policy says, we'll protect you, we'll pay you if for the first 24 months of benefits, if you cannot perform your own occupation. Just as an aside, if you go out on the market and you buy one of these policies for yourself, you're going to buy one that says, we'll pay you if you can't perform your own occupation to age 66 or 67. So you have a long period of own occupation protection. But that would be too expensive for an employer to buy that for everybody. What you'll see sometimes is there's kind of an executive level. So if you represent, as we do, CFOs, COOs, CEOs, right? They've got the primo policy, and that's okay. And the worker bees have the policies that have two years of protection for what they call ONOC. So that's a phrase that gets thrown around a lot. Like, what is the ONAC definition of disability? And it's typically 24 months of benefits. You'll find, as I found yesterday in a mediation, if I actually knew it, but there's different ways of determining what your own occupation is. But by and large, it's this. And again, this is a seminar about the 80%. So by and large, it's this. What what were what were the occupational duties that you were performing before you became disabled? Seems to make sense, right? It's not necessarily a job description, although that tells us a lot about the occupational duties. And it's not necessarily how you perform the duties in this particular work environment, right? So for example, client says, Man, I'm I I have all this stress. My my cardiac doctor says I can't work. Because I work in this hellhole. You wouldn't believe the people. My superfighter's an asshole. Every time I go in there, they're mean to me, and I'm a sales rep. I'm on the phone sales rep. Well, the policy doesn't protect this person because of a bad work environment. The policy protects them if they can't do the usual duties of a sales rep. Now, if this particular sales rep spends five days getting on an airplane traveling to five different cities, then that's part of his occupational duties. And so if he gets a disease process or an injury that prevents him from getting on a plane five days a week, then that's the measure against which his claim is going to be evaluated. These policies all have what's called an elimination period, which is kind of the deductible. Typical elimination period is 180 days, which means whatever's going on that prevents you from working, the long-term disability policy is not going to pay you until you've been disabled for 180 days. And that's why we have short-term disability policies, right? Because for a typical employer, they'll have a different plan, still governed by ERISA for the most part, that covers someone in that first 180 days. What we're talking about here, next two days, is the long-term is primarily the long-term disability claim, because these are the claims that are paid by the insurance company. Many of the short-term disability policies are managed by the insurance company. So you have to send your forms into Aetna. Aetna approves you or not, but then the employer actually pays you. That sets up a little bit different rubric if you're going to sue on the short-term disability claim. So I don't want to, I don't want to confuse them. Again, this seminar is about not confusing you about these things. So you've got the own occup, you've got what's the definition of disability? You have what's the own occupation period, you have then what they call the elimination period. And now let me come back to what happens at two years, because this is important, because some of the people who call you will say, I've been on claim for two years. They pay. Paid me for my own ox, but now they're made to so typically the call will be now they're making noises about terminating me. Well, how could that be? It's because at two years, typically, that twenty-four months can change. So I've seen some really shitty policies, like twelve months. Like Verizon has a 12 month policy. I represent a lawyer, a high-end trial lawyer, who works for in-house counsel at a major automobile insurance company. You're a high-end lawyer. You you like manage the whole office. Two months of ONOC coverage. And then what? Then what? So after the whatever it is, 24 months, 18 months.
SPEAKER_00:That's it for today's episode of the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, where we're rewriting the rules of what it means to build a great law practice and a great life. If something sparked a new idea or gave you clarity, pass it on. Subscribe, leave a review, and share this with someone who's ready to think bigger. Want more tools, strategies, and stories from the trenches? Visit GreatLegalmarketing.com or connect with Ben Glass and the team on LinkedIn. Keep building boldly. We'll see you next time.