エピソード

  • Ryan Hancey on the Nine-Year Fight to Hold a Utah Jail Accountable for a Twenty-One-Year

    Ryan Hancey on the Nine-Year Fight to Hold a Utah Jail Accountable for a Twenty-One-Year
    2026/07/26
    What happens when a trial lawyer picks up the phone in his living room on a December evening in 2016 and hears a father sobbing on the other end, who has just learned that his twenty-one-year-old daughter was brought to a Utah jail while withdrawing from opioids, began vomiting the same night a guard saw her, spent five days deteriorating without receiving medical care, and died of dehydration in her cell — and the lawyer immediately says yes, formalizes the relationship the next morning, and then spends nearly nine years fighting through summary judgment rulings that wiped out the county and every jail guard in the case, an interlocutory government immunity appeal to the 10th Circuit specifically designed to buy two years of delay and take the wind out of his sails, a circuit court ruling that let the doctor out but sent the nurse back, the retirement of the original judge mid-appeal and the assignment of a new one who agreed on reconsideration that the county should never have been dismissed, a cert petition all the way to the United States Supreme Court over qualified immunity, and finally in April of 2025 stands before ten jurors who deliberate for six hours and return a verdict of more than fifteen million dollars for the family of Madison Jensen? In this episode of the Trustcast Show, Zane Myers speaks with Ryan Hancey, a shareholder and trial lawyer at Kesler & Rust in Salt Lake City, Utah, about a case he took on a phone call from a grieving father in his living room and did not let go of for the better part of a decade — and what it took in legal strategy, case law research, judicial persuasion, and sheer stubbornness to see it through to a verdict. Ryan explains the government defendant's unique right to file an interlocutory appeal before any final judgment has been entered — a procedural tool no private defendant has, that can pause a case for years, that the government uses specifically because it knows it will drain the momentum and resources of the other side — and how the motion for reconsideration that brought Duchesne County back into the case on the eve of trial changed everything, including what a jury would feel when they looked across the courtroom. He also walks through the Tenth Circuit case law he found that established the systemic failure standard — that liability in a civil rights case does not require pointing to a single bad actor, that a collective environment so obviously broken that harm was virtually inevitable can be enough — and how Judge Barlow's willingness to apply that standard reset the entire trajectory of the case. They also discuss the breach of franchise agreement defendant who claimed to be a mind reader and what the jury did with that answer, the 2018 case Ryan lost because his clients were a dumpster fire on the witness stand despite a dozen rounds of preparation in his conference room — and the juror who called afterward to say they would have hired him personally but couldn't stand his clients — why he refuses to give anyone a percentage chance of winning because no honest lawyer can know that, and why a bottom line number that is not actually your bottom line number destroys the credibility and the leverage you need when the case goes sideways. Ryan also covers why his expertise is in litigation itself and not in any subject matter area, how a strong litigation system is essentially plug and play across construction, products liability, civil rights, and franchising disputes, and why by the time he took a mink ranching products liability case to a federal jury he could have opened his own mink ranch from everything he had to learn in preparation. Ryan Hancey is a shareholder and trial lawyer at Kesler & Rust in Salt Lake City, a firm established in 1980, admitted to the Utah Bar in 2001 and to the U.S. District Court District of Utah, the 10th Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court. He is a graduate of Utah State University and the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, has litigated cases in Utah, Delaware, Idaho, Colorado, Wisconsin, and other states, and has built his entire client base on referrals without a single billboard. Connect with Ryan Hancey: keslerrust.com Email: rhancey@keslerrust.com Phone: 801-532-8000 McIntyre Building, 2nd Floor, 68 South Main Street, Salt Lake City, UT 84101 Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Ryan Hancey 00:23 December 2016 — a father sobbing on the phone and the case that would take nearly nine years 01:24 How a twenty-one-year-old dies of dehydration in a jail cell over five days 02:40 From 2016 to a 2025 verdict — the full arc of the Madison Jensen case 03:28 Three defendant groups: Duchesne County and the sheriff, the medical staff, and the jail guards #RyanHancey #KeslerRust #TrustcastShow #MadisonJensen #UtahTrialLawyer #CivilRightsLawyer #JailDeathLawsuit #QualifiedImmunity #SaltLakeCityAttorney #TrialLawyer
    続きを読む 一部表示
    41 分
  • Jeffrey Liggio on Twenty-Five Years of Military Helicopter Rescues,

    Jeffrey Liggio on Twenty-Five Years of Military Helicopter Rescues,
    2026/07/24
    What happens when a Navy helicopter pilot who spent his early career hauling people out of impossible situations — stroke victims on cruise ships, lost families at sea, a person with a heart attack on a mountainside with nowhere else to turn — decides to go to night school and get his law degree, walks into his first plaintiffs job announcing he wants to be a plane crash lawyer or a maritime disaster attorney, gets force-fed insurance policy after insurance policy every single evening by a boss who docks his pay if he doesn't come in the next morning with the right answer, and slowly — against every instinct he had — discovers that the thing he was being made to learn against his will was actually the rarest and most valuable specialty in the entire plaintiffs bar, that very few lawyers who fight for people actually understand insurance law from the inside out, and ends up building a forty-four-year career doing exactly what he did in the helicopter — getting to people who have nowhere else to turn and bringing them to safety? In this episode of the Trustcast Show, Zane Myers speaks with Jeffrey Liggio of Liggio Law in West Palm Beach, Florida, a decorated retired U.S. Air Force Major, a Board Certified Civil Trial Lawyer, a Super Lawyers selectee, and a recipient of the Florida Justice Association's Al J. Cone Lifetime Achievement Award, about what it actually takes to fight an insurance company that has unlimited lawyers, unlimited money, and institutional muscle behind every single denial. Jeffrey explains why the very first question after a health insurance denial is not what happened but where the insurance came from — because ERISA law, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act, state government plans, and individual policies each carry a completely different set of rights, procedures, and traps, and confusing them before the appeal is filed can cost you your case permanently. He walks through the ERISA trap in detail — the federal law that applies when insurance is a benefit of private employment, that requires you to exhaust every internal administrative remedy before you can set foot in a courthouse, that limits your venue to federal court with no jury trial, and that restricts the judge to reviewing only the internal appeal record you created — which means the paperwork you file on your own, without a lawyer, may be the only evidence a judge ever sees. He also covers why a quick settlement check at your front door the day after an accident is almost always a sign that someone on the other side found something you have not found yet, and why the answer to a fast offer is almost always slow down and call someone first. They also discuss what Florida's gutted attorney's fee law actually left intact — the declaratory action statute, the HMO statute, the group health statute — and the proposal-for-settlement maneuver Jeffrey has used to generate court-awarded fees even where the statute no longer reaches, including a thirty-year story involving the same judge, the same opposing counsel, a $125,000 case, and a fee that ended up above $300,000. Jeffrey explains step therapy — the practice of forcing patients to try cheaper drugs that their doctors already know won't work before approving the medication actually prescribed — and why there is a Florida statute that most insurance companies simply ignore, the watchman device case where a man's insurer called an FDA-approved and Medicare-approved cardiac device experimental, which by federal law it legally cannot be, and the sixteen-year-old girl who now has a five-million-dollar judgment hanging over her entire adult life because her insurance company refused for two and a half years to pay the policy limits on a medium rear-end collision that her own insurer controlled the litigation on. He also covers what third-party administrators claiming no responsibility actually mean under agency law, what independent review doctors moonlighting for a couple hundred dollars and fed a conclusion actually produce, and why institutional fraud is not too strong a phrase for what happens when those reports get altered before they go back to the insurance company. Jeffrey Liggio is the founding partner of Liggio Law in West Palm Beach, Florida, a Board Certified Civil Trial Lawyer by both the Florida Bar and the National Board of Trial Advocacy, a decorated retired U.S. Air Force Major and former Naval Aviator, a Super Lawyers selectee from 2006 through 2023, and the recipient of the Florida Justice Association's Al J. Cone Lifetime Achievement Award. He has practiced for forty-four years, works exclusively in Florida state and federal courts, and is supported by a team that has been with him collectively for over fifty years. #JeffreyLiggio #LiggioLaw #TrustcastShow #FloridaInsuranceLawyer #HealthInsuranceDenial #BadFaithInsurance #ERISALaw #InsuranceLitigation #WestPalmBeachAttorney #MilitaryVeteranLawyer
    続きを読む 一部表示
    42 分
  • Melissa Hansel on Helping Grow a Law Firm's IP Practice to 27 Offices

    Melissa Hansel on Helping Grow a Law Firm's IP Practice to 27 Offices
    2026/07/24
    What happens when a girl who grew up in Atlanta goes to MIT planning to be an architect, takes an office job doing technology transfer to fund her way through school and discovers for the first time what it feels like to sit at the intersection of law and business, builds a career in Boston for fifteen years, takes a detour to live in Madrid and work entirely in Spanish at a European law firm, returns to the United States and joins Nelson Mullins as a specialist, raises her hand for a document management system conversion that nobody else wanted and turns that visibility into a regional management role, spends years traveling office to office building teams and trust and structure inside a growing intellectual property practice — watching law firm founders grind through 70 and 80 hour weeks because they were the only person they trusted to do anything right — eventually walks away from all of it, and starts telling managing partners that the answer to their problem is not to take whoever has been loyal the longest and push them past what they are actually capable of, not to hire a mediocre COO on a limited budget and hope it works out, but to rent a great one — and realizes that twenty years of watching it go wrong from the inside was exactly the preparation she needed to finally fix it? In this episode of the Trustcast Show, Zane Myers speaks with Melissa Hansel of Outlook Advisory Group in Charlotte, North Carolina, about helping law firms grow and scale by delivering the kind of executive-level operational guidance that most small-to-midsize firms cannot afford to keep in a full-time seat — and what it costs them when they try anyway with the wrong person or the wrong budget. Melissa explains why the first instinct every founder has when they hit their capacity ceiling — go hire somebody — is often precisely the wrong move, how a fractional COO gets firms farther faster at a price point that actually makes sense for where they are, and why the staff member who has been with the firm the longest and is most deeply trusted is almost never the right person to drop into a COO role even when they want to be. She also walks through what the Peter Principle looks like inside a growing law firm, how leadership development is part of the fractional engagement and not separate from it, and what it actually takes to overcome the "who is this interloper" resistance that surfaces in every firm when someone new arrives with seniority — the short answer being that titles and credentials do not do it, early wins do. They also discuss what Melissa does in the first 90 days of an engagement to lift the COO burden off the founder so they can be visionary again rather than operational by default, why firms trying to run 47 initiatives simultaneously never finish any of them and how prioritization alone can feel like a breakthrough to a team that has been stalled for years, why the question "when is the last time you truly took a vacation and actually unplugged" is one of the most revealing diagnostics she runs on any managing partner, and why the discovery audit she conducts at the start of every engagement — diving deep into accounting systems, intake flow, processes, and team dynamics and mapping all of it into a written plan — almost always changes what a founder thinks they need before they have spent a dollar implementing anything. Melissa also walks through the 40-hours-of-work test she uses to help firms figure out whether they genuinely need a full-time COO or a fractional one or simply a better-structured office manager, and why the biggest mistake she sees growing firms make is getting so reactive to week-to-week cash flow that they lose the thousand-foot view entirely and start making hiring and investment decisions off a single signal instead of the full picture. Melissa Hansel is the founder of Outlook Advisory Group in Charlotte, North Carolina, an MIT Sloan School of Management alumna, Lean Six Sigma and Legal Project Management certified, bilingual in Spanish and English, and a former regional operations leader at Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough. She runs a monthly roundtable for law firm owners and managing partners and serves clients virtually nationwide. Connect with Melissa Hansel: outlookadvisorygroup.com Email: melissa@outlookadvisorygroup.com LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/melissahansel Instagram: @outlookadvisorygroup Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Melissa Hansel 00:12 Growing Nelson Mullins' IP practice from 13 offices to 27 and into the top 70 highest-grossing firms — and why she walked away to go fractional 01:15 The diluted COO problem — why small and midsize law firms keep getting this hire wrong #MelissaHansel #OutlookAdvisoryGroup #TrustcastShow #FractionalCOO #LawFirmGrowth #LawFirmOperations #LegalManagement #LawFirmConsultant #MITSloan #LawFirmLeadership
    続きを読む 一部表示
    42 分
  • Emanuel Galimidi on Leaving Nearly Twenty Years of Insurance Defense Behind to Fight for the Injured

    Emanuel Galimidi on Leaving Nearly Twenty Years of Insurance Defense Behind to Fight for the Injured
    2026/07/22
    What happens when a lawyer who spent nearly twenty years sitting in claims management meetings for the world's largest insurance companies — watching how reserves get set, how excess layers get triggered, how a VP of claims and a room full of supervisors actually decide what a human injury is worth — finally has a friend look him across a table and say, well why don't you just do it, then spent about a year saving enough to give himself an eighteen-month runway, walked away from every institutional client he had ever built, started with zero files and zero clients on day one, got a call within a couple of weeks from a former adversary whose colleague needed help after her mother died falling down a staircase at a short-term rental, resolved that case in nine months, watched what that result did for that family, and realized that the thing he had been doing all along on the wrong side was exactly the training he needed to make the biggest possible difference on the right one? In this episode of the Trustcast Show, Zane Myers speaks with Emanuel Galimidi of Galimidi Law in Miami, about the two decades he spent defending insurance companies that gave him something most plaintiff attorneys will never have — not just a working knowledge of how adjusters think, but a front-row seat at the table when the very best plaintiff firms in the country were litigating against him, letting him see exactly how the ones who win handle a case and exactly how the ones who don't fall short. Emanuel explains why a settlement check arriving the morning after your accident is one of the most alarming things that can happen to you and almost always means someone on the other side spotted something significant you have not found yet, why one in four drivers in Florida is operating a vehicle with either zero bodily injury coverage or the bare minimum of ten thousand dollars, and why the adrenaline still moving through your body at the scene of a crash is actively working against you — masking soft tissue soreness, suppressing neck and back pain, and concealing the mild traumatic brain injury symptoms that people mistake for stress and leave unreported for weeks. He also covers why what you say to the police officer in the first minutes after a crash is permanent in a way your memory of that day will never be, why the friendliest opposing attorney in a deposition room is almost always the most dangerous one, and what it actually looks like inside a claims hierarchy — from the frontline adjuster to the supervisor to the director to the VP of claims — when a case is large enough to require the full escalation. They also discuss the trial moment where a more experienced opposing counsel asked his expert witness if he wanted to tell a story, got exactly the story he did not want, and handed the case to the other side — and what that moment taught him about the one rule you cannot break at trial, the terminally ill parent whose injuries were compounded by a crash a carrier refused to take seriously until the right demand package changed everything, the coverage gap that swallows Uber and Lyft drivers who are simply waiting for a ping and get into an at-fault accident without a rideshare endorsement on their personal policy, and why he believes the coming wave of self-driving car crashes will be product liability cases rather than negligence cases — and why the early lobbying by companies like Uber to reduce minimum coverage for passengers already has him worried about what consumers will have left when those crashes come. Emanuel Galimidi is the founding partner of Galimidi Law in Miami, Florida, a Super Lawyers selectee from 2023 through 2025, a member of the Miami-Dade County Bar Association and the Miami Foundation's Professional Advisors Network, and a former head of the Product Liability Practice Group at one of the fastest-growing defense firms in the United States, where he handled catastrophic injury, wrongful death, sexual assault, and class action defense before bringing everything he learned across the aisle to the people who need it most. Connect with Emanuel Galimidi: galimidilaw.com Email: egali@galimidilaw.com Phone: 786-442-2873 66 W Flagler St Suite 1001, Miami, FL 33130 Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Emanuel Galimidi 00:11 Nearly twenty years defending insurance companies — and the friend who finally said why don't you just do it 01:57 Starting with zero files and zero clients — and the first case that came from a former adversary 03:08 The financial reality of plaintiff work nobody warns you about — advancing costs with no guarantee at the end 04:51 First case resolved in nine months — what a strong result actually does for a family #EmanuelGalimidi #GalimidiLaw #TrustcastShow #MiamiPersonalInjuryLawyer #FloridaPersonalInjuryLawyer #InsuranceDefenseToPlaintiff #FloridaCarAccidentLawyer #RideshareAccidentLawyer #SelfDrivingCarLiability #TrialLawyer
    続きを読む 一部表示
    32 分
  • Erik Heninger on the $110 Million Alabama Record,

    Erik Heninger on the $110 Million Alabama Record,
    2026/07/22
    What happens when a kid who grew up watching his father leave before dawn and come home just before dinner, decided there had to be an easier way to make a living, went to college planning to be an English teacher, figured out that wasn't going to work financially, went to law school because what else does a philosophy and English major do, fell completely in love with it, and then found himself carrying a check to create a trial advocacy chair at his law school — and realized on that walk over that one case had touched a family, changed Alabama law about how commercial vehicles operate on public roads, and given something lasting back to the community — and thought, that is exactly what I want to do? In this episode of the Trustcast Show, Zane Myers speaks with Erik Heninger of HGD Law Firm, about the day the firm secured the $110 million settlement that remains the largest personal injury recovery in Alabama history — a knife fight in a phone booth involving multiple law firms, new technology, and an insurance company that got tight when there was real money on the table — and what it actually takes to build a career that generates more than three billion dollars in client recoveries. Erik explains why the insurance company for the truck that hit you already has a team working on your case that night, why the answer to the insurance adjuster who calls is yes but not right now, and why Alabama's contributory negligence law — which technically bars recovery if you are even one percent at fault — sounds devastating but almost never plays out that way because juries will not hold that someone sitting still at a red light contributed to their own accident. They also discuss the sexual abuse case where no money changed hands at all but the client and her parents still refer friends to the firm years later, the cheerleading coach who was caught at the border with recordings of minors on his laptop and now has a $1.5 million default judgment sitting against whatever he ever earns, the open heart surgery malpractice case where two doctors pointed fingers at each other the entire trial and the jury got so confused they ruled for neither — and what Erik would do differently now — why depositions are far more critical than closing arguments even though closing arguments are more enjoyable, and what his firm's private AI focus group tool is doing for jury research in Alabama. Erik Heninger is a partner at HGD Law Firm in Birmingham, Alabama, three-time Medical Malpractice Lawyer of the Year, and one half of a rare father-son pair who have each won Alabama's Lawyer of the Year Award. Connect with Erik Heninger: hgdlawfirm.com Email: erik@hgdlawfirm.com Phone: 205-326-3336 Social: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok @hgdlawfirm Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Erik Heninger 00:38 Growing up watching his father work before dawn and after dark — and why that was intimidating not inspiring 01:44 English teacher to law school — and the moment something clicked 02:41 Carrying a check to the law school to create a trial advocacy chair and having the lightbulb moment 04:12 About five cases in a career that really fill you up 05:00 Smaller cases that matter just as much — the sexual abuse case where no money changed hands but the family still refers friends 07:09 Just got hit by a semi — the first thing to do and why the lawyer can wait but not too long 08:00 Why you should never wave off the ambulance even when adrenaline says you are fine 08:45 The insurance company for the truck already has a team out that night preparing their defense 09:38 Does the insurance company ever lead with their best offer — no, never, bolded and italicized 10:30 Do not talk to the insurance company because those conversations are always recorded 11:24 Your own insurance company — a different risk, same principle — yes but not right now 13:14 Alabama's contributory negligence law — one percent at fault means zero recovery — and why it almost never actually works that way 14:39 The woman sitting still at a red light that the insurance company tried to say contributed by leaving home that day 15:45 How do you prove fault when it is his word versus mine — technology, black boxes, in-cab cameras, apps 17:53 How do you figure out what my case is worth — the million-dollar question answered five times a day 18:45 Severity of conduct, severity of injuries, available insurance, identity of defendant, and venue all factor in 20:12 Rapid fire — soccer dad turning volleyball dad, clean desk, depositions versus closing arguments, jury consultants 21:43 The private AI focus group tool built specifically for Alabama and their case types 22:26 One word that makes a great trial lawyer — authenticity #ErikHeninger #HGDLawFirm #TrustcastShow #AlabamaTruckAccidentLawyer #MedicalMalpracticeAlabama #PersonalInjuryAlabama #TrialLawyer #LawyerOfTheYear #AlabamaCivilRights #SexualAbuseLawsuit
    続きを読む 一部表示
    49 分
  • John Surma on Why the First Statement to the Press Became the Roadmap for Plaintiff Attorneys,

    John Surma on Why the First Statement to the Press Became the Roadmap for Plaintiff Attorneys,
    2026/07/22
    What happens when the person on the other end of the phone is frantic, emotional, angry, and hurt all at once — because somebody died on their watch — and the attorney they are calling has personally investigated over 400 workplace deaths, refinery explosions, pipeline blasts, and construction collapses, and has learned from every single one of them that the first 24 hours will either protect the company or haunt it for the next two and a half years of litigation? In this episode of the Trustcast Show, Zane Myers speaks with John Surma, partner at Fisher Phillips, about what a company needs to do in the first hour before a lawyer even arrives — call 911, preserve the scene, document everything, and get grief counselors moving before anyone starts talking — and why the three biggest mistakes in the first 24 hours are failing to preserve the scene, failing to notify the right authorities, and releasing a hastily drafted press statement that becomes the plaintiff attorney's roadmap. John explains the difference between a serious citation, a willful citation, and a criminal referral, why the criminal path almost never happens unless you lie to OSHA or destroy evidence, and why invoking your Fifth Amendment right is available but has to be used sparingly because doing it excessively looks like obstruction. They also discuss the case where a press release about process instability handed plaintiff attorneys a two-and-a-half-year lawsuit against a company that didn't need to be there, how John got six heat-related citations thrown out against a security company by challenging the multi-employer citation policy and drilling the opposing OSHA attorney until he agreed to vacate them, the maritime case where OSHA cited the wrong standard entirely and vacated once the error was pointed out to the solicitor of labor, the constitutional challenge to OSHA's in-house judges using the logic from the Jarkesy Supreme Court decision — and why OSHA keeps withdrawing citations rather than risk losing in district court — the $4.95 million recovery from an EPC firm that delivered a boiler project that failed to achieve its promised efficiencies or emissions controls, and why cooperating fully with OSHA is one of the most dangerous myths in workplace safety law. John Surma is a partner at Fisher Phillips, representing employers in OSHA investigations, workplace fatalities, regulatory compliance, and related litigation nationwide. Connect with John Surma: Email: jsurma@fisherphillips.com Phone/Text: 409-351-5824 fisherphillips.com Chapters 00:00 Introduction to John Surma 00:44 What the person on the other end of the phone sounds like when someone just died at their facility 01:44 How companies find John — word of mouth in the worst moments 02:49 Nine years as a trial lawyer in Beaumont and the slow shift to 100% workplace safety 03:41 How do you stay emotionally grounded when you are around death five hundred times 05:16 How you grieve differently after that much exposure to other people's loss 06:09 Counseling CEOs through survivor guilt while also protecting shareholder interests 07:05 Why John advocates strongly for grief counselors even at the highest levels of management 07:16 What to do in the first hour before you have even called a lawyer 08:46 How fast does OSHA usually show up after a fatality — and what that Sunday afternoon call looked like 09:48 Do employees have to allow OSHA interviews without representation — the nuance 10:56 The single biggest mistake a company makes in the first 24 hours — actually it is the big three 12:19 How to handle the press when you are also trying to preserve a legal position 12:53 Why you need a crisis management firm before anything ever goes wrong 13:54 The case where a press release provided the roadmap for plaintiff attorneys for two and a half years 15:53 The difference between a serious citation, a willful citation, and a criminal case 18:40 Can you just shut up with OSHA the way you can with police — the Fifth Amendment answer 19:54 Why cooperating fully with OSHA is a myth that gets companies in trouble 20:50 What OSHA is really looking for when they ask for your safety records 22:27 If you get cited is fighting it realistic or are you just negotiating the penalty 23:30 Everything is negotiable — the alleged violation description, the classification, the penalty, the abatement, and the payment plan 24:03 Does the playbook change by industry — and what is actually the same across all of them 25:54 General counsel hat versus pure litigator — how that changes the emotional and strategic relationship 27:29 Six heat-related citations thrown out at a tire manufacturing plant — what happened 29:36 Did throwing out the citations affect the personal injury liability — yes and how #JohnSurma #FisherPhillips #TrustcastShow #OSHADefense #WorkplaceSafety #WorkplaceFatality #OSHACitation #EmployerDefense #WorkplaceSafetyLaw #OSHAInvestigation
    続きを読む 一部表示
    50 分
  • Charein Faraj on Why Startups Skip Their Lawyer Until It's Too Late,

    Charein Faraj on Why Startups Skip Their Lawyer Until It's Too Late,
    2026/07/22
    What happens when an attorney who minored in computer science, started her career in traditional commercial litigation watching founders bleed money in disputes that should never have reached a courtroom, jumped to a legal tech startup where she helped build AI-powered contract review tools, reviewed over 40 legal AI products and kept finding the same problem — brilliant engineers building things that didn't solve the actual problem practitioners face — and then decided to build an AI-first law firm from scratch specifically for the founders who know they need a lawyer but can't justify the hourly meter every time they pick up the phone? In this episode of the Trustcast Show, Zane Myers speaks with Charein Faraj, founder of Innovation Attorney, about why growth-stage startups consistently make the same contract mistakes — using boilerplate warranties and limitation of liability clauses that don't match the actual transaction, sending non-attorneys to execute agreements, skipping data processing addendums because they assume the privacy policy covers everything — and why those decisions tend to show up years later as the exact litigation she used to handle on the commercial side. Charein explains the difference between a privacy policy and a data processing agreement, why SaaS agreements need to be customized depending on whether you're using a large language model, what third parties are touching your data, and what kind of information is being processed, and why Delaware incorporation is almost always the right call if you're planning to go through funding rounds. They also discuss the physician client who was about to sign a non-compete that would have blocked her from practicing within fifty miles of any location of a startup with practices everywhere — and how Charein negotiated her out of it and built in termination protections that held up when the client inevitably needed to leave — what she found when she reviewed 40-plus legal AI tools and kept telling the same founders their ICP did not match their product, how she builds custom AI agents for contract review and motion drafting that output fully formatted Word documents with captions and signature blocks rather than just text, and why she believes the flat fee model for transactional work and the monthly subscription for ongoing work are both better for clients than hourly billing that creates friction every time someone considers picking up the phone. Charein Faraj is the founder of Innovation Attorney, an AI-first law firm for technology startups and growth-stage companies, based in Michigan and serving clients nationwide for transactional work. Connect with Charein Faraj: innovation-attorney.com LinkedIn: Charein Faraj Free 15-minute consultation available on the website Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Charein Faraj 00:52 Starting in commercial litigation, watching outdated processes, and making the jump to legal tech 01:30 Working at LexCheck — building AI contract review tools and seeing firsthand what startups skip 02:00 Founders who avoid calling their attorney until they are already in litigation 02:56 The AI objection — how she addresses concerns about quality and hallucination 03:42 What the firm actually is — not a product, a law firm that uses custom AI agents for contract review and drafting 04:12 Why SaaS agreements, NDAs, and MSAs are all different depending on the product and what data is being processed 04:54 Early stage startup counseling — Delaware incorporation, shareholder agreements, governing documents, privacy policy, terms of service 06:55 Growth stage mistakes — salespeople executing agreements, promises being made that fall apart, slow hourly turnaround killing deals 08:30 What clean documentation means for due diligence when you want to get acquired or raise a round 09:17 What kinds of tech companies she works with in Michigan — cybersecurity services, custom software, MSAs and IP protection 10:20 The difference between a privacy policy and a data processing agreement — and when you need both 11:10 What happens when founders think the privacy policy covers everything and skip the DPA 12:26 The trap founders fall into with data processing — they do not even know they need it 13:18 If you are a SaaS founder what should be in your contracts that most templates leave out 13:42 Warranties and limitations of liability that make no sense to the actual transaction — why boilerplate does not exist 14:55 The firm uses AI more extensively than traditional firms — custom agents built for specific transaction types 15:33 How building her own agents with no overhead translates to lower cost for clients 16:09 A deal where she helped a client walk away before it became a disaster #ChareinFaraj #InnovationAttorney #TrustcastShow #StartupLawyer #AIFirstLawFirm #ContractReviewAI #TechStartupLegal #FractionalGC #SaaSContracts #LegalTechFounder
    続きを読む 一部表示
    32 分
  • Chris Werner on Why He Named His Firm After the Norse God of Vengeance,

    Chris Werner on Why He Named His Firm After the Norse God of Vengeance,
    2026/07/15
    What happens when a litigator who spent his early years defending Fortune 100 companies in bet-the-company cases — taking the lead on a hundred depositions as a third and fourth year associate, getting pulled into environmental contamination lawsuits stretching from New York to the International Chamber of Commerce in the EU, and building healthcare tech compliance frameworks from first principles before telehealth was even a recognizable category — decides the most interesting thing he can do with 25 years of experience is spend it helping founders in AI, quantum cryptography, cannabis, blockchain, and other emerging technologies avoid the landmines he spent his early career watching companies step on? In this episode of the Trustcast Show, Zane Myers speaks with Chris Werner, founder of his firm in Chicago, about why he named the firm after the Norse god of vengeance — because lawyers don't have to be loved, they have to get results — what a fractional general counsel actually does day to day, and why five to ten hours per month is the rough threshold where a flat-rate arrangement starts making more sense than hourly billing. Chris explains why the stereotypical lawyer who says no to everything and treats every decision like the sky is falling is the opposite of what entrepreneurs need, what the single most dangerous contract clause for growing companies is — indemnification, almost always written so broadly that founders sign away millions in liability they can't even remember agreeing to — and why he has never once taken equity as compensation despite being offered it, because he never wants even the temptation of his interests diverging from his client's. They also discuss what it was like to build AI governance frameworks for companies before there was a federal regulatory scheme to follow, why he gives away checklists, worksheets, and intellectual property self-evaluation tools for free to founders who cannot yet afford counsel, how he went up against a team of partners from a major Boston law firm representing the investor on a fundraising round and found it genuinely fun, why he prefers working his way out of jobs rather than holding on, and what drink order got him through nearly two months of trial in a suit and tie in West Palm Beach in August and September. Chris Werner is the founder of his firm in Chicago, serving fast-growing startups and emerging technology companies as fractional general counsel and outside counsel nationwide. Connect with Chris Werner: LinkedIn: Chris Werner Chicago, Illinois Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Chris Werner 00:31 Naming the firm after the Norse god of vengeance — and the real reason behind it was not wanting to rebrand constantly 02:06 The focus of the practice — emerging technology, AI, quantum cryptography, fractional GC for companies not ready for full-time counsel 03:36 Drinking from a fire hose on new technology — from casino licensing to cannabis to blockchain to AI 05:00 What gets him out of bed — the energy of entrepreneurs and always finding the next thing 06:05 Fractional GC versus ad hoc outside counsel — what the practice actually looks like day to day 06:50 Early litigation experience as a roadmap — all the things that can go wrong and how to prevent them 07:49 A recent regulatory landmine — HIPAA and FTC issues on a new technology play and how the conversation actually went 09:30 Never bring a problem without at least three solution options — and always have a recommendation 10:11 How to tell a founder something they don't want to hear without creating friction 12:39 How do I know if I need a retainer versus just calling when something comes up 13:30 The five to ten hours per month threshold where fractional GC starts making sense 14:30 Why hourly billing is the worst way for lawyers to sell their time and terrible for clients 15:30 A ten to fifteen minute call can save a startup from a lawsuit — why the friction of the meter kills that 16:17 What is the one contract clause growing companies get wrong most consistently 16:26 Indemnification clauses — why they are sneaky, written in legal ease, and can represent millions in hidden liability 17:34 How to write indemnification clauses on the other side — narrow them to real scenarios you can actually explain and insure 19:11 Do clients have to be in Chicago — no, and some have been in the UK with ICC arbitrations 20:01 When does a company outgrow a fractional GC — the fifty percent of time threshold 21:00 Going full-time as GC and COO through a private equity acquisition with one former fractional client 22:00 Helping clients find and hire their first full-time general counsel when they are ready 23:17 Working yourself out of a job — why that suits how his mind works #ChrisWerner #TrustcastShow #FractionalGC #StartupLawyer #EmergingTechnologyLaw #AIGovernance #StartupLegal #ChicagoAttorney #FractionalGeneralCounsel #FounderLegal
    続きを読む 一部表示
    42 分