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From a life-changing story to a lifelong mission.

In this episode of The Jeffrey Gross Show on WWDB Talk 860, host Jeff Gross, founding partner of Gross & Kenny, LLP, sits down with co-host Joe Dougherty for an inspiring continuation of their discussion on workers’ compensation law and what it truly means to fight for injured workers in Pennsylvania. Jeff shares the powerful story that shaped his calling—the moment his grandfather’s compassion for a factory worker inspired Jeff to dedicate his career to protecting the “little guy.”

Listeners will learn how Jeff’s first case defined his passion for advocacy, why communication is the cornerstone of his client relationships, and how 35 years later, that same passion earned him induction into the Legends of Justice Hall of Fame.

If you’ve been injured at work and feel lost in the maze of workers’ compensation law, don’t face it alone.
📞 Call the Law Offices of Gross & Kenny, LLP at (215) 512-1500 or visit PhilaWorkersComp.com to schedule a free consultation.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Announcer (0:00): The following program is sponsored by the Law Offices of Gross & Kenney.

Announcer (0:04): The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of WWDB, its staff, or management.

Announcer (0:16): Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Jeff Gross Show, here on WWDB Talk 860.

Joe Dougherty (0:22): We’ve got a fantastic broadcast.

Joe (0:25): This is part two of a series on StreamYard Radio that will also be available on Apple, Roku, and Fire TV.

Joe (0:33): We’re ecstatic to bring into the broadcast our host, Jeff Gross.

Joe (0:37): How are you, Jeff?

Jeff Gross (0:38): Great, Joe. How are you today?

Joe (0:40): I could not be better.

Joe (0:42): And so, really, really loving this format.

Joe (0:46): And last month, we talked about, it was a tutorial on workers’ comp.

Joe (0:51): And we’re going to touch on plenty of that.

Joe (0:52): We’re going to talk about the clients and typically how you educate them on avoiding mistakes that certainly can be a problem.

Joe (1:05): And that’s communication between them and their attorney is such a big deal.

Joe (1:10): But, Jeff, remind our listeners, as we start the show, a little bit about yourself and the firm.

Joe (1:17): But then I want to go right into where we left off last month.

Joe (1:22): And that is really a cool story about how you got into workers’ compensation.

Jeff (1:28): Sure thing.

Jeff (1:29): Well, first of all, I handle workers’ compensation matters on behalf of injured workers who cannot work as a result of a work-related injury.

Jeff (1:38): I’ve been doing this for the past 35 years.

Jeff (1:41): I absolutely love what I do.

Jeff (1:43): It’s a different situation than most lawyers that I know.

Jeff (1:48): They don’t love what they do.

Jeff (1:49): In fact, most lawyers say, I hate what I do.

Jeff (1:51): I can’t wait to retire.

Jeff (1:53): That’s not me.

Jeff (1:54): I love what I do, and I love my clients, and I love my office staff.

Jeff (1:58): They’re really great people.

Jeff (2:00): We’re like a family.

Jeff (2:01): And so I basically take care of people who have been hurt at work and are unable to do their jobs from both a wage loss perspective as well as a medical perspective.

Jeff (2:14): Under the workers’ compensation law, you’re entitled to two things when you get hurt at work.

Jeff (2:19): You’re entitled to wage loss benefits, usually at the rate of two-thirds of your gross average weekly wage, which is a topic in and of itself on a show, because it’s not always two-thirds of your gross average weekly wage.

Jeff (2:33): Sometimes it’s 90%.

Jeff (2:35): Sometimes it’s one-half of the statewide maximum benefit rate.

Jeff (2:39): And I can get into all that stuff if you ever want to down the road.

Jeff (2:43): And you’re also entitled to medical benefits.

Jeff (2:46): Medical benefits get paid at the rate of 113% of whatever Medicare would pay for that procedure in question, whether it’s therapy, whether it’s surgery, whether it’s injections, medications, what have you.

Jeff (3:02): But there is no copay in workers’ compensation.

Jeff (3:06): There is no deductible in workers’ compensation.

Jeff (3:09): So my clients should never have to pay anything out of their pocket for medical benefits.

Jeff (3:16): Now, that’s basically workers’ compensation in a nutshell.

Jeff (3:20): But before I get into me, I just want to say workers’ compensation is a maze.

Jeff (3:25): When I say that, I mean it is a convoluted three-volume statutory construct that takes up, like I said, three volumes of Pennsylvania statutes.

Jeff (3:37): And that’s just the law.

Jeff (3:40): There’s case law that changes and influences and basically regulates how the legislature put together the law.

Jeff (3:48): And I am very familiar with not just the law but the nuances in the law and how it’s been shaped over the course of many, many years, longer than the 35 years that I’ve been practicing.

Jeff (4:02): In fact, it’s been over 100 years since the law was enacted back in 1916.

Jeff (4:10): And so I give my clients an education about the law.

Jeff (4:14): I give them an education about how that law affects their case.

Jeff (4:19): And I apply the facts in their case so that they understand everything so there’s no confusion between what we do for our clients and my clients’ understanding.

Jeff (4:31): We always contact them because communication in this business is key.

Jeff (4:37): And without communication, what I find is that people get confused.

Jeff (4:42): They don’t know what’s going on with their case.

Jeff (4:43): They call their lawyers to no avail.

Jeff (4:47): And they’re not satisfied with the way things are going only because they don’t know what’s going on.

Jeff (4:54): And so I make it a point of not only educating my clients but communicating with them about their case and the progress of their case to make sure that they are in full understanding, that they have a full understanding as to what’s going on with them so that there is no confusion.

Jeff (5:10): The big problem that most people face is that they can’t get in touch with their lawyers.

Jeff (5:16): So what I do for every case, if you’re my client, like I said, you’re my family, I give everyone my cell number.

Jeff (5:24): My cell number is my personal and my business cell number.

Jeff (5:29): I answer it.

Jeff (5:31): I call people back within minutes, within hours.

Jeff (5:34): I don’t ever let a day go by without calling back my clients.

Jeff (5:39): So if you ever have a question, I’ll always either answer or get back to you immediately.

Jeff (5:45): I’m a very prompt person and of the belief that communication is the key to most things in life, not just handling workers’ compensation cases.

Jeff (5:54): So you’ll find that if you are communicative to the people you need to be in communication with, things in your life will go smoother.

Jeff (6:03): So you had asked me, Joe, how did I get started in this?

Jeff (6:08): And the answer is I got started in this from my grandfather’s influence.

Jeff (6:15): He was not a workers’ compensation lawyer.

Jeff (6:19): He was an assembly line worker that worked for a bread manufacturing company in Philadelphia.

Jeff (6:24): And that company was no longer in existence, but he had worked at this company for many, many years.

Jeff (6:33): And in 1953, when he was the foreman of this assembly line at this plant in Philadelphia, one of the women workers who was on the line, the assembly line, was not wearing a hairnet.

Jeff (6:48): She got her hair stuck and caught in the assembly line process, and it basically ripped her scalp right off.

Jeff (6:56): He saw the whole thing and he stopped the presses and he rushed to her to try to help her.

Jeff (7:02): And she’s screaming and he grabbed her and grabbed her scalp and ran with her and her scalp to his car, where he drove her to the hospital and waited with her for her while she was undergoing surgery for her scalp.

Jeff (7:21): And he was all bloody working from midnight to 8 a.m.

Jeff (7:24): That was his shift. You were working midnight to 8 a.m. shift, Joe?

Joe (7:28): Yes, I did. I worked on the Frankfurt.

Joe (7:32): I was an iron worker.

Joe (7:32): And we had the night shift and it’s a different ball of wax.

Joe (7:36): It’s a different ball of wax.

Jeff (7:36): So he’s standing there waiting there in the wee hours of the morning with her, with her in the operating room.

Jeff (7:43): And he’s in the waiting area, all bloody. Not much he can do at that point.

Jeff (7:49): Finally, as the day broke and things started opening, he ended up getting her flowers and a teddy bear or something like that and said, don’t you worry, we’re going to take good care of you.

Jeff (8:00): You really got hurt and went back to the plant where the people started drifting in and the management started coming in around eight, nine o’clock in the morning and said to them, hey, listen, there was a nasty accident last night.

Jeff (8:15): And they basically turned their cheek at her and said, we are not going to help her.

Jeff (8:28): In fact, she’s fired because she didn’t comply with wearing a hairnet.

Jeff (8:28): And we’re not going to ever talk to her. You could let her know she’s fired.

Jeff (8:32): And my grandfather was appalled at that and couldn’t understand why they would treat her that way.

Jeff (8:38): Anybody would treat anyone that way.

Jeff (8:38): And so he told me this story after I graduated law school and he said, Jeff, you could do anything you want.

Jeff (8:48): He called me Jeffy, actually. He said, Jeffy, you could do anything you want with your life as a lawyer.

Jeff (8:54): You could be a divorce lawyer.

Jeff (8:54): You could be a criminal lawyer, a tax lawyer.

Jeff (8:59): But the little guy needs your help. And that’s the worker.

Jeff (9:12): And he told me this story. And I was so taken aback by the story that it stuck with me in the back of my head.

Jeff (9:12): Then I started working for a firm.

Jeff (9:20): You know the name of the firm, Joe?

Joe (9:20): Was it Mesa? Was it Joe Mesa?

Jeff (9:22): Yeah, the actual firm was Ominski, Welsh, Rosenthal and Steinberg. But Joe Mesa got his start there.

Jeff (9:28): And he was actually my mentor.

Jeff (9:28): He came in to me on a Friday afternoon and he said, hey, Jeff, what do you know about workers’ compensation?

Jeff (9:37): I said nothing.

Jeff (9:37): He said, OK, here are the three statutes, the three books on workers’ comp that are all the statute in Pennsylvania.

Jeff (9:45): Go home tonight.

Jeff (9:45): Read them over the weekend.

Jeff (9:45): And then when you come in on Monday, I have a new client for you to help represent.

Jeff (9:55): And I said, oh, my God, how am I going to do this?

Jeff (10:02): I got I went home. I literally spent the entire weekend reading this.

Jeff (10:02): Took notes, thought I was the king of the world and I could conquer anything having to do with workers’ compensation at that point.

Jeff (10:09): Came back in on Monday.

Jeff (10:09): I met with this poor guy and his family.

Jeff (10:13): And it turns out that this guy was driving a beer truck from Golden, Colorado, to New York City.

Jeff (10:23): And he lived in Cheltenham in Philadelphia.

Jeff (10:27): And while he was in Pennsylvania, trying to make the trip in a one fell swoop time period so that he would get a bonus,

Jeff (10:36): that he would get if you made it within a certain number of hours from A to B.

Jeff (10:41): He fell asleep at the wheel because he was trying his hardest to make this time to get his bonus.

Jeff (10:48): And because he fell asleep at the wheel on Route 80 in upstate Pennsylvania, he literally went over an embankment and almost died.

Jeff (10:56): The entire load of beer was ruined.

Jeff (11:01): The truck was ruined.

Jeff (11:01): And they had to airlift him from the accident site to the University of Pennsylvania Hospital.

Jeff (11:08): I think it was Presbyterian where he actually went.

Jeff (11:11): And I met with him because they had denied his claim, saying that they weren’t paying him.

Jeff (11:17): He lost the entire load and they it was just they were pissed off.

Jeff (11:22): And so after having read the statute on workers’ compensation, the entire thing, I know that Pennsylvania workers’ compensation is a no fault act.

Jeff (11:34): Meaning it doesn’t matter whose fault the accident is, whether it’s your fault, my fault, his fault.

Jeff (11:41): You’re still entitled to workers’ compensation as you did as long as you didn’t intentionally cause the accident or the disability that you have.

Jeff (11:50): And sure enough, this poor guy did not do that.

Jeff (11:56): He was trying to make his bonus.

Jeff (11:56): And it just so happened he ran out of gas, so to speak, and he passed out at the wheel.

Jeff (12:03): But I had to litigate that case from the beginning to the end.

Jeff (12:08): It took a relatively long time. Eventually, I won the entirety of the claim.

Jeff (12:13): And this guy got paid and he got paid everything he was entitled to and he got paid all of his medical bills.

Jeff (12:20): And I was helpful in getting him to a doctor throughout the entire time and making sure his surgeons would continue to see them.

Jeff (12:28): And I took the deposition of three of the surgeons and I took his deposition all because the insurance company refused to pay.

Jeff (12:39): When we got into court for his testimony, the judge looked at me after I was done taking his testimony.

Jeff (12:46): The judge looked at me and looked at the other lawyer and kicked everyone out of the room, including my client and his family, and yelled and screamed at my opposing counsel.

Jeff (12:55): How can you not pick up this claim? Go tell your client that the judge is telling you to accept this claim.

Jeff (13:01): That’s what the judge said.

Jeff (13:01): And this other attorney on the other side said the judge, I recommended that they do that, but they want they don’t they’re not going to accept the claim.

Jeff (13:13): And so he said, Mr. Gross, you go put on all your evidence and then we’ll see what happens at the end of the case.

Jeff (13:20): And I did not knowing that, you know, I was going to win.

Jeff (13:26): I thought maybe I could win.

Jeff (13:26): But who knew? Right. It was my first case.

Jeff (13:26): And I did all of my evidence and I did it religiously and I did it to the letter of the law, just like I was reading and what needed to be done procedurally.

Jeff (13:38): And at the end of the time period for litigation, I won the case. I won everything you could think of.

Jeff (13:46): I won the attorneys. I won an unreasonable contest attorney’s fee. I got a penalty for them failing to properly investigate and follow the rule of the law.

Jeff (13:58): I got him his wages. I got him interest on that back wages. I got him ongoing payments into the future.

Jeff (14:06): And all the medical bills were paid in accordance with the decision. It was actually one of the happiest days of my professional life because it was something that I had put my heart and soul into.

Jeff (14:19): When you put your heart and soul into something and it pans out, you can bet you you’re going to be happy.

Jeff (14:25): So at the end of the case, they came in and I actually told them the story about my grandfather. But I had explained what they won. I explained to them where we were going.

Jeff (14:41): And sure enough, they were happy. It was like a big celebration.

Joe (14:46): How old were you at the time? What was your age?

Jeff (14:49): How old was I? I had just graduated law school.

Jeff (14:49): This was in 1991.

Joe (14:54): Wow.

Jeff (14:56): I’ll never forget it.

Jeff (15:00): And this was in the spring of 1992 that I won.

Jeff (15:00): And so when I won that, I was so happy that I decided this is what I want to do.

Jeff (15:08): I don’t want to do anything else.

Jeff (15:13): I don’t want to do personal injury anymore or this or that or the other thing.

Jeff (15:13): This is what I want to do. And slowly but surely, I started getting more and more cases.

Jeff (15:19): And I developed a nice little book of business with my cases, all because I just felt so satisfied by helping these people achieve what they needed to achieve.

Jeff (15:32): And my grandfather was my hero in my life. He really was.

Jeff (15:38): But he used to tell me, he used to say, if you could help someone, why wouldn’t you?

Jeff (15:43): Help people as best as you can. It’s the only thing you have for yourself.

Jeff (15:50): If you can’t help people, you’re of no good to this world, basically.

Joe (15:55): And Jeff, one of the things that you had told me, a very touching story, and it is so inspirational.

Joe (16:01): I want to also ask you at what point you went out on your own to start your own firm.

Joe (16:06): But before I do, you would mention to me about this story that there are grounds for opposing, you know, and trying to get those you’re not allowed to sleep on the job.

Jeff (16:18): Right. I was really getting into the nitty gritty when I told you that.

Jeff (16:21): And I can get into that, too.

Jeff (16:21): But basically what happened was the defense was very similar to the reasoning behind when my grandfather had that woman had her scalp when she was basically decapitated almost by the by the assembly line process.

Jeff (16:40): The same kind of a defense that was in play there was in play here.

Jeff (16:45): In that case, though, the woman decided not to do anything because she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to not only win, but she would never get a job anywhere else.

Jeff (16:55): And she just kind of put her tail between her legs and wandered off into the sunset.

Jeff (16:59): But had she done something, I don’t know what the courts would have done back then in the 1950s.

Jeff (17:06): But I will tell you that it’s called a violation of a positive work order.

Jeff (17:12): If there’s a sign on the side of the wall that said hair nets must be worn and you don’t have your hair net on and you have an injury because you don’t have your hair net on, that’s a defense under the workers comp law.

Jeff (17:26): In this case, there was a little different. There was no positive work order other than the statement that you’re not allowed to sleep on the job.

Jeff (17:35): Well, if you’re not allowed to sleep on the job and you involuntarily fall asleep because you’re trying to make a bonus that they gave you the incentive to achieve, then it’s hardly an intentional issue.

Jeff (17:50): And it takes away from that violation of positive work order.

Jeff (17:54): But that was their defense, and they knew they weren’t going to prevail.

Jeff (17:58): But the attorney on the other side was given these marching orders.

Jeff (18:02): And so when he said, I can’t settle this case, your honor, he the judge said, fine, you do what you do.

Jeff (18:09): Mr. Gross will do what he does and I’ll take care of the rest.

Jeff (18:13): And he did. And it was it was justice served. It really was.

Jeff (18:17): And I was so happy at the end of that.

Joe (18:20): Jeff, when you are able to obviously have that result, OK, talk about how gratifying that moment was when, you know, you talked about it, but when you give that information to the client after everything that they’ve gone through.

Joe (18:39): OK, that has been a gratifying part of the job.

Jeff (18:43): Absolutely. There’s a lot of gratification in receiving a check when you ultimately win the case.

Jeff (18:48): Right.

Jeff (18:48): But I will tell you personally that in all the cases that I’ve had over the course of these many years, there’s something that’s more satisfying than receiving the actual check.

Jeff (18:59): When you win, the actual gratification is the win and communicating the win to your client because you’re you’re you’re you’re actually that’s that’s when their entire world changes.

Jeff (19:13): It goes from despair and, you know, inability to make ends meet to I finally have my life back.

Jeff (19:24): I finally can afford to live my life and put food on the table.

Jeff (19:28): I’m finally not you know, I’m able to provide for my my wife and my child or my husband and my child.

Jeff (19:36): If it’s a woman who gets hurt.

Jeff (19:36): But the point is that when you tell your client that not only did we win, but we won this, that and the other thing.

Jeff (19:46): And and it’s coming to you shortly. It’s it’s the greatest feeling.

Jeff (19:52): It makes you feel that you are moving mountains so that you what you thought in the beginning was impossible.

Jeff (20:01): What your clients thought would never, ever happen is actually coming to fruition and happening.

Joe (20:06): Do you always make? I mean, if that was I’d have to make them calls myself.

Joe (20:11): I mean, in other words, do you make them calls?

Jeff (20:14): Of course. When I win a case, I don’t do anything.

Jeff (20:18): When I find out that I won the case, I don’t do anything before calling my client.

Jeff (20:23): The first thing I do is I read the decision. I make sure I’m looking at the right thing.

Jeff (20:27): Right. Sometimes you can read things and it’s not what you’re actually looking at.

Jeff (20:30): But I make sure it’s right. I pick up the phone. I call my client and I say, are you sitting down?

Jeff (20:36): I have good news. I don’t say we have a decision in your case and I want to go over with you.

Jeff (20:42): No, I say I have good news for you because they need to know that it’s not bad.

Jeff (20:49): The feeling of getting a call from your lawyer about a decision on a case is very stressful.

Jeff (20:54): If you don’t know what that is, that answer is. So I immediately say good news.

Jeff (20:58): Then when I tell them the nuances about the win and the decision of the judge, I can hear it.

Jeff (21:06): I can hear it in my in my soul how they feel.

Jeff (21:09): And it’s one of the greatest feelings you’ll ever have.

Jeff (21:09): So, yeah, that’s a great feeling.

Joe (21:15): At what point did you go out on your own? You know, you now realize, OK, this is what you want to do.

Joe (21:23): OK.

Joe (21:23): One of the most complicated areas of law. OK.

Joe (21:27): Not a great personal injury lawyers will tell you.

Joe (21:32): And I’m sure you know this better than anybody.

Joe (21:32): They may have dabbled in the workers’ comp for a week or two or some longer than they should have.

Joe (21:40): But those with any integrity at all got the hell out, because if you’re not going to do it full time, you know, it’s it’s one of the most complicated.

Joe (21:49): It’s a law. Talk about that. And also when you hung your own shingle and the reason you did.

Jeff (21:57): So basically, there’s two kinds of situations going on. A lawyer to be a lawyer is not easy.

Jeff (22:04): You have to go through college and law school.

Jeff (22:08): You get a job.

Jeff (22:08): You got to really learn the law and you got to excel at your practice, whatever it is.

Jeff (22:13): There are a lot of people that do a lot of different things.

Jeff (22:17): They have a general practice and they do a lot of different areas of law.

Jeff (22:20): That is a really hard thing to do, in my opinion.

Jeff (22:25): You’re better off specializing or focusing in one particular area and becoming an expert in that particular area.

Jeff (22:33): It gives you a lot more credibility and it allows you to help your clients best.

Jeff (22:39): If you only know a little bit about a lot of stuff, you can only help your clients so much before you then have to refer the client out to a specialist.

Jeff (22:49): I know a lot about divorce law.

Jeff (22:55): I know a lot about malpractice and personal injury law.

Jeff (22:55): I don’t do those because I don’t practice that on a daily basis.

Jeff (22:59): I’m smart enough to be able to refer that out to other lawyers that do focus in on that area and only that area of the law.

Jeff (23:07): So for me, my area of focus is workers’ compensation. I can tell you I don’t do anything else.

Jeff (23:15): I’ve been able to become what you may call an expert in that field because it’s what I do.

Jeff (23:21): I’m a certified specialist in workers’ compensation law under the Supreme Court qualifications for that.

Jeff (23:29): So I have a certification in that.

Jeff (23:31): But it’s so important to just focus in on one area so that you can actually become that expert and you can give your clients the best possible service they deserve.

Jeff (23:42): And so what has happened with me is when I decided that’s what I wanted to do, I learned everything I could about workers’ comp.

Jeff (23:51): I read – they have this thing called the Bible. We call it the Bible.

Jeff (23:55): It’s a yellow book that’s very, very thick, and it’s got all kinds of case law and law that’s mixed, and it shows how the law developed.

Jeff (24:04): It gives a legislative history about it.

Jeff (24:07): It’s what I call a treatise, but it’s not actually a treatise.

Jeff (24:11): It’s basically a course book on workers’ compensation published by the Pennsylvania Bar Institute.

Jeff (24:19): And that – I have this on my shelf, and it updates every two years.

Jeff (24:26): But I learned that thing backwards and forwards.

Jeff (24:29): I would read stuff at night just because I was interested.

Jeff (24:32): I wanted to learn all about how specific loss benefits worked.

Jeff (24:35): I wanted to learn all about how calculations of the average weekly wage and the corresponding wage rate shape up and what nuances there are.

Jeff (24:45): For some reason, I became fascinated with workers’ compensation just like I’m fascinated with airplanes.

Jeff (24:52): I’m a big-time airplane enthusiast, and I love aviation.

Jeff (24:56): I became a pilot also in 2004 as one of my passions, but my big passion is workers’ compensation.

Jeff (25:03): And so what I have done is I’ve learned the entirety of the law as I know it.

Jeff (25:09): I am constantly researching law and workers’ compensation and developing my practice that way.

Jeff (25:17): So once I started doing all that, people, my friends, started sending me workers’ compensation claims, and I ended up developing a big workers’ compensation practice.

Jeff (25:31): Now, I said there’s two kinds of people that handle the law.

Jeff (25:36): There are attorneys that handle their specialty or their subset of specialties or generalists.

Jeff (25:43): Those are practicing lawyers, and it’s not easy to be a lawyer.

Jeff (25:47): It’s hard.

Jeff (25:48): But there are also people that run the business of law.

Jeff (25:52): I have a background in accounting and business administration from college that I took very seriously and was planning on getting an MBA before I decided to go to law school.

Jeff (26:05): And so I’m very interested in business and running businesses and that kind of thing.

Jeff (26:13): And so I do both.

Jeff (26:15): I handle my firm.

Jeff (26:17): I’m the managing partner of my firm, but I’m also a lawyer.

Jeff (26:23): I can’t give that up.

Jeff (26:24): I love it too much.

Jeff (26:25): I love representing these people, so I don’t want to give that up, so I do both.

Jeff (26:29): And it’s not easy to do one or the other, but to do both is doubly hard.

Jeff (26:33): What were you going to ask me?

Joe (26:34): Well, I was going to say you run your own business.

Joe (26:39): And let’s do this.

Joe (26:40): We’re going to take a quick break.

Joe (26:41): We’ve got a whole other half hour coming.

Jeff (26:43): All right.

Joe (26:44): Then I’ll get into how I went out on my own after that.

Joe (26:47): Oh, yeah, absolutely, because it’s a fascinating story.

Joe (26:51): And typically speaking, being a great lawyer and a great firm owner can be two different things.

Joe (26:59): And so it’s fantastic when you find someone who does it both very well.

Joe (27:04): We’re going to have more from the Jeff Gross Show in just a minute.

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Announcer (28:17): Welcome back to the Jeff Gross Show here on WWDB Talk 860.

Announcer (28:21): This broadcast is also available on Apple, Roku, and Fire TV via the NetStream app.

Joe (28:30): And we’re having a great conversation.

Joe (28:32): Really, so one thing I’d like to say before we get back into it is Jeff was recently inducted into the Legends of Justice Hall of Fame.

Joe (28:40): And so this is a fascinating discussion about Jeff’s career and the firm.

Joe (28:46): And really, it’s like a tutorial on success at the highest level in the field of the law and workers’ compensation.

Joe (28:55): But let me just say one thing.

Joe (28:57): I’m executive director on that committee.

Joe (29:00): It’s an initiative that spans from our Legends of Labor initiative.

Joe (29:05): So the labor movement, injured workers is a big deal.

Joe (29:09): And especially when you’re talking about the building trades and all.

Joe (29:12): And so the initiative is very near and dear to me.

Joe (29:15): And so we have a committee, top-shelf committee, and Jeff was one of three workers’ compensation attorneys that was elected to be inducted into the 2025 Legends of Justice Hall of Fame.

Joe (29:33): And so to paint that picture, I mean, there are literally hundreds and hundreds of workers’ compensation attorneys.

Joe (29:41): And I was so – I’ve done radio with Jeff for a long time.

Joe (29:45): So it was a hell of an honor when I saw the votes being cast.

Joe (29:50): And it was – and these people were – our board members were sending in their votes totally in an autonomous way.