Attorney Howard Abrams

Intro: [00:00:05] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Chicago, Illinois, it’s time for Chicago Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Stone Payton: [00:00:18] Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Chicago Business Radio. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Howard Abrams Law, the man himself, Mr. Howard Abrams. How are you, man?

Howard Abrams: [00:00:36] Good. Thanks for having me, Stone.

Stone Payton: [00:00:38] Oh, delighted to have you on the show, man. I got a ton of questions. I, I know we’re not going to get to them all, but I, I think maybe a good place to start is if you could give us just a little bit of an overview, mission, purpose. What are you and your team really out there trying to do for folks, man.

Howard Abrams: [00:00:56] Well, I mean, I’ve been a plaintiff’s personal injury attorney since 2006. And, you know, I started my career like everyone else did in, uh, you know, law firm law clerking, learning how things go, and then realized there’s two worlds to, you know, being a lawyer. There’s the courtroom, uh, where I spent the first ten plus years of my career. And then there’s the claims side where you try to resolve cases outside the courtroom. And I took a sort of hybrid approach when I started my law firm in 2016 of handling both prelate and litigation files. And I found that, you know, the litigation skills don’t go away as long as you keep going to court. But there is a different area of the law and practice of handling these claims outside the court when the clients first got injured. So my focus has been since Covid, when things kind of came a little bit of a halt in the litigation arena on helping clients really at the beginning of the cases, which in turn helps them at the end of the case.

Stone Payton: [00:01:58] So what prompted you to go out on your own?

Howard Abrams: [00:02:03] Uh, it’s a good question. I didn’t it wasn’t one exact moment. It was sort of a domino effect of like. Things happening in my career and the law firms I was at while I had good relationships there. Didn’t really have anywhere for me to like, advance or be promoted. You know, there’s partners and. There could be an equity or non-equity or, you know, you can pay people more and all those types of things. But once you. Uh, develop a clientele or way to get cases. It’s hard to stay somewhere that doesn’t, you know, value that. And so the firms I was at at the time, while they valued my skills as an attorney, I didn’t think valued, you know, the business I was bringing in. And after talking to other colleagues who had went out on their own, it seemed like that was at least a no brainer approach to my next step. Instead of just trying to find another law firm that might value me that I had no relationship with besides, you know, knowing who each other were.

Stone Payton: [00:03:06] So after all those years of practicing and now particularly out on your own, what’s what’s the most rewarding man? What’s the most fun about the work for you?

Howard Abrams: [00:03:17] The fun part is, while it’s usually the hardest part on the clients is giving them, not always. It’s not necessarily legal advice where it’s about the law, like you get in a car accident. It’s not rocket science to figure out right and wrong, right? Like we know what the traffic laws are. We can kind of, you know, use common sense approaches to who was at fault or, you know, it’s the little games that the insurance companies like to play in the beginning. And it’s amazing. Even though people know the answers, they’re just not expecting that, like they’re being put to a test by the insurance companies. And when I give them this, you know, introductory or free consult, and then they become my client, you know, they’re like, oh, all that stuff you told me was true. And like, because it happens to them. Because even though insurance companies technically aren’t supposed to call clients, once they know they’re retained by attorneys, they still do. And, you know, it’s only, you know, for the benefit of the insurance company, not for the injured party.

Stone Payton: [00:04:17] So how does the whole, I guess, the whole sales and marketing thing worked for a law practice? Because you don’t really need a personal injury attorney until you need one, right?

Howard Abrams: [00:04:29] Oh, that is something that I’ve been trying to figure out, you know, especially since I’ve been out on my own and there’s sort of two schools of thought. There is, you know, the good old fashioned advertising. You used to see it, you still see it, but billboards, TV commercials, it used to be the good old Yellow Pages, which not many people even know what those are anymore. Um, then, you know, the internet era of Google is still the. Traditional way to advertise, which you know is only increasing. Um, but then there’s this good old fashioned marketing where there’s a lot of lawyers, there’s a lot of professionals that are lawyers that get in touch or people that get injured have contact with, and it’s knowing how to market to them or being able to be a leader or a presence. Um, so those people seek you out when they are recommending attorneys to somebody who was injured. So I take the latter approach.

Stone Payton: [00:05:33] Got it. So I bet there’s been a lot of changes in your in your tenure as an attorney. Has a lot changed over the years.

Howard Abrams: [00:05:44] Yes. Um. Too many to count or too many to talk about. But, you know, the biggest changes are that, you know, things used to be done, you know, the old fashioned way on typewriters and mail and, you know, you would go to court and come back and write up a whole summary where now with technology and apps, you know, I can communicate with my clients via text or, uh, email, obviously the court system. Until Covid, I would say didn’t go through a lot of changes. I mean, yes, they have increased the use of technology, but you still had to go to court in person. Um, zoom didn’t really come into play at all. I didn’t even know what it was until Covid hit. Mhm. Um, they knew what a video call was, but I don’t think I ever did one besides maybe Skype, you know, which I’m not even sure if that still exists. Uh, but what has happened now is the ability for remote proceedings has allowed one attorney’s to branch across multiple jurisdictions where you usually just practice where you, you know, your office is. And two, I’ve seen a lot of law firm growth in terms of these we could call mega firms. I don’t know how you would define it, but these firms that are starting to go nationwide. And while that’s not to discount that they are they have quality lawyers. You just don’t know unless you do your research as a client, if that attorney is even, you know, present in the state, which I think has some downside, if you are, you know, considering a court case.

Stone Payton: [00:07:22] Yeah. I’ll bet. All right. Let’s talk about the work a little bit. And, um, I guess the only way I know to attack this is from my perspective, if if I think I might have a claim or I’ve been in an accident or something, I reach out to you or I’ve been referred to you because I have another trusted advisor in some other capacity that says, oh, for that, you need to talk to Howard. Um, I come to your office, we sit down and chat. What? What is that? Especially the early stages of that engagement or process look like?

Howard Abrams: [00:07:54] Yeah. I mean, a lot of it is fact finding. I mean, usually if, you know, we’ll use automobiles because those are the bread and butter and personal injury. Although I do every type of personal injury case from, you know, slip and falls premises, uh, animal attacks. Uh, you know, medical malpractice, which is, you know, a very complicated field. There’s construction, I mean, but, you know, the the, the majority of cases do fall in the automobile, uh, arena. Um, in this day and age, I mean, people don’t even usually have the police report. I mean, they get, like a report number, which is then uploaded to a site like LexisNexis or some, depending on the the size of the county or town that you get the accident in. You have to do a FOIA request, but it’s getting the accident report that’s, you know, the starting point of any good consult. Mhm. Um, you know, obviously you’re going to get the version that the driver or a passenger that they have. And but a lot of times they come in and they don’t even necessarily, you know, know they just know they got hit like they don’t know where the person came from or what speed they were going. So you know, the police reports, the big part, I then, you know, still believe in good old fashioned investigative work where, you know, not on every case, but I will tend to take my client to the scene of the accident, because you will find that when you bring someone to the scene of any sort of trauma, no matter big or small, things come back to them. They remember certain things that you, you know, there’s just, you know, it’s one thing if you’re stopped at a red light and you get rear ended, it’s another thing if the driver’s coming from, you get T-boned.

Howard Abrams: [00:09:39] And you said you had a green light and the police report says, you know, both drivers said they had the green light. We both know that’s not possible, but somebody’s not telling the truth. Right. So I tend to, you know, sometimes I just meet them initially at the scene if it’s convenient because the sooner I can get there with them in time, as opposed to going out there six months later, you’d be amazed on the information that I can get from a client, and it’s a free consult in the beginning. Or even if they’re signed up, I’m not charging them an hourly rate or contingency fee, so we only get paid at the end of the case if we collect for them. So all these things we’re doing is for their benefit. And why would I do something that wasn’t, you know, the further the prospects of the case, you know, and I find that the clients that want to meet me in person or want to go to the scene, you know, they have a vested interest and are probably, you know, injured to the point where, you know, there’s things going on there. We don’t know the extent, but they have a real injury. They’re not just, oh, I got bumped and bruised and yes, you have a case, but do you really need a lawyer? You know, for some bumps and bruises you should probably handle, you know, talk to the insurance company on your own.

Stone Payton: [00:10:47] Uh, so these scenarios, um, any of them that you describe strike me as a, a good opportunity to shoot yourself in the foot if you don’t, um, if you don’t at least consult with someone like you first, or do you run into some of the same mistakes over and over, or or do you find yourself, you know, like very quickly saying, okay, do this, do this. Whatever you do, don’t do that till we talk, that kind of thing.

Howard Abrams: [00:11:13] Yeah. I mean, there’s some golden rules that any attorney who’s been, you know, actually does this type of practice and not just, you know, represents them. Because once you’re an attorney, you can, you know, there’s no like it’s not like medicine where you get, you know, you get a subspecialty in orthopedics or anesthesiology or, you know, ear, nose and throat. Any lawyer can do personal injury. Just like I could hold myself out as a criminal lawyer, you know, there’s nothing that all I need is a license. I don’t need anything else. What? You know what separates, I think, myself or others that have had the experience I have, and I have almost 20 years of plaintiffs personal injury work, having started off as a litigator in the courtroom doing jury trials. You see the end of the case, right? And the end of the case, good or bad? Mostly good in my world. Um, you’re prepared for anything then, right? You know, so talking to somebody now, 15 years later or 14 years later, when I went out on my own talking to people at the beginning of the case, I was already thinking about the end of the case, what jurors told me, what mistakes clients made and what the you know, all those things help, you know, separate. I think the attorneys that actually, you know, do more than just file an insurance claim for the plaintiff, uh, or potential plaintiff. And, um, you know, I think that shows when I meet with a client, right.

Howard Abrams: [00:12:37] Like, anyone can tell you anything over the phone, anybody can. You know, everyone can be a salesman for something. Um, but where I, where I remind people, is what those conversations they have at the beginning about. Hey, you’re going to get a call from the insurance company, you’re going to get a call from, you know, four other lawyers looking for your business. That’s fine. You know, that’s just the world we work in. You don’t just get, you know, one lawyer recommendation these days. Um, and if you go on Google, you can get a thousand. Um, it’s telling them the things up front that they’re going to experience or what they’re not going to experience. I can tell sometimes just from talking to a potential client, I guarantee you I had one the other day I signed up, uh, he’s out of state in Maryland, but he was here for work in a rental car. Right. Which nothing wrong with that. He gets rear ended, he returns the Hertz rental car, um, for property damage. He was going home three days later. He didn’t think he was seriously hurt. So he’s like, I’ll see how I feel. He went home. He wasn’t feeling well, so he went to the, you know, urgent care at home and his family doctor at home. And he got my name from a prior client. And when I talked to him, I go it had been almost a week, right. Which doesn’t sound like a lot of time, but in automobile world, that’s a lot can happen in a week.

Howard Abrams: [00:13:53] I go, well, have you heard from XYZ Insurance Company? You know, um, and he goes, no. And I go, well, you’re never going to hear from them. And he goes, why not? I’m like, because you’re in a Hertz rental car with no reported injury from Hertz, because they probably didn’t even ask you. And Hertz is only concerned about getting the car fixed. And, you know, I said, you know, he signed my paperwork, but I haven’t even sent out my letter rep to the insurance company because I wanted to get some medical records in. It’s been now two weeks, and he called me the other day. He’s like, yeah, I haven’t heard anything. I was like, you won’t. They’re gonna they’re gonna get a letter from me as their first knowledge because insurance companies aren’t. You know, actively looking for claims, right? You know, but they’re looking at this as a property damage only claim they’re not going to even ask for it if the other party was injured. They want to wait for you to make the claim. So you know that that gentleman, had he not had his friend who I represented successfully, might have waited a month. And that doesn’t necessarily mean he does he still have a claim? Yes. But had he not sought medical treatment, had he not taught, you know, then they’re denying the case just because they don’t believe he’s injured.

Stone Payton: [00:15:04] In the path to take can can vary. When you take all that into account, you do your investigation. You get the information. You may very well go. My whole frame of reference for this is watching stuff on TV. So forgive me, but you, you, you might go to a courtroom, or you might take a whole different path and settle and settle it out of a courtroom environment. Yes.

Howard Abrams: [00:15:28] Of course. And listen, I don’t avoid court. I mean, that’s. Silly, for lack of a better word. I’m not trying to think of a better word to put out. You know, uh, put on it. But port is long. It is exhausting. And the insurance companies know that, and they are built to withstand the time. Right. It’s not their you know, they are a business corporation. You know, they have X, you know, millions of dollars, you know, otherwise they’d be out of business. Um, they don’t care if a case lasts three, 4 or 5 years. But in Illinois, for example, it’s a two year statute of limitations for personal injury. So you have up to two years. You don’t have to wait that long. And most attorneys don’t. But you don’t also want to rush off and file a lawsuit, because in Cook County, where the city of Chicago is, where my office is, is, you know, the. You know, third largest media market. And I think it’s I think besides Los Angeles County, the highest volume of um, cases are filed. Wow. Statistics. So, yes. Does everybody get their day in court under our legal system? Of course. But it’s going to take longer than in a smaller town or where there’s only so many files or cases.

Howard Abrams: [00:16:52] Do we have more judges? Yeah, we do, but there’s always, you know, short judges or short staff or short jurors, and you wait and wait and wait. I tell any client from the beginning that if we can’t resolve their case outside of court, you plus and you have to file a lawsuit on average, you will wait. I tell them 2 to 3 years, and I can probably count on one hand the amount of cases. I got the jury trial in two years. Wow. It is much closer. Three and that was before Covid. Covid then had a backlog. Depending on who you ask, they will tell you that that backlog has cleaned up. I, I am skeptical of that belief, but you know it doesn’t. It is still 2 to 3 years minimum as opposed to 2 to 3 years in your case will be resolved. Um, and that’s in addition to the one, you know, six months, a year, 18 months, up to two years that you might try and resolve it outside of. So you’re talking 4 to 5 years to go to jury trial from when the accident actually happened.

Stone Payton: [00:17:55] Wow. This is a very sobering conversation. Okay, let’s go back to the one where the guy got rear ended or anything like that. What if I’m the guy that did the rear ending? Should I still also maybe be in touch with a with some legal counsel as well, just in anticipation of what might be coming down the pike?

Howard Abrams: [00:18:15] Uh, yeah. I mean, I tell every client or potential client, I should say, or any referral source, they’re like, oh, so and so I said, have them call me. I tell them, or call somebody, right. Like one. It’s free. I mean, like, I know that’s like silly and that’s like a line on every advertisement. Like, no, you know, it is literally a free consult. It doesn’t cost you anything but your time. And sometimes you don’t know what may or may not be coming down the pipeline. That’s what talking to an attorney does, is it gives you one free advice and help you. Sometimes I call clients and I tell them, yes, you have a case, yes, I can help you, but it’s really not worth your time and energy to hire a lawyer because you told me you went to the emergency room only you’re not going to seek follow up treatment. It’s been 45 days since the accident. Your car has been fixed by the insurance company. You just don’t know what to settle for.

Stone Payton: [00:19:13] Right.

Howard Abrams: [00:19:14] And you don’t want an attorney for that situation. But calling an attorney, someone like me and will still give him a five minute talk and I say, hey, what’s your er bill? And I’ll, I’ll be like, I would demand something like this. Do I get paid on it? No. Will that person ever call me again? No, no, but it doesn’t hurt. Um, you know, from a marketing standpoint, that person might know somebody or think of something like helping people out is, you know what I’m in the business of doing? I would always say, even if you don’t think it’s the case, or even if you’re not sure, you should always call an attorney, because even the ones that will charge you the initial consult or initial call isn’t going to cost you. They don’t charge you 500 bucks just to get on the phone. They do go running. Um, it can’t hurt. It can only help. So, you know, that’s my my, you know, long and winded answer to that is I would always call an attorney if you’re concerned whether from a defendant or a plaintiff side. Okay.

Stone Payton: [00:20:09] So from either side. Yeah that’s okay. So like even if I think or know that it’s pretty sure it’s my fault, then at least have a conversation.

Howard Abrams: [00:20:17] I’d have a conversation and you call your insurance company because that’s what you’re paying them for.

Stone Payton: [00:20:21] Gotcha. And then I guess I and maybe the maybe, you know, good counsel. I don’t have to worry about it too much, but I gotta I gotta say, I’m a little intimidated at this point. Like, I don’t even know what to ask or or what red flags are like. If if I were to hire a consultant, I came from that world. I know some things to look for, but I don’t know what to red flags, you know, yellow flags and or green flags. And talking to a potential engaging an attorney.

Howard Abrams: [00:20:50] Yeah. I think, you know, the good advice is that it sounds too good to be true. You know, it still rings true for anything in the sales world, right? If an attorney tells you he could do it quicker or cheaper. There’s a reason why. Because you’re not getting the same level of service. I mean, personal injury work has been, you know, around since the United States, you know, developed its legal system, right, like in some fashion. And personal injury contracts have more or less looked the same for well over 100 years. I don’t know how long exactly. I’d have to do some digging on that answer, but there’s no there’s nothing in a personal injury like retainer contract that shouldn’t tell you exactly what the fees are. You’re you’re paying that there’s no fee unless you recover. You know what costs are. You know that the attorney is fronting and can reimburse for. And then every state has like a right to in Illinois, it’s like up to five days after you sign a contract, you can null and void it for any reason with either side. Like if you don’t understand the document that you’re signing, then you know and the attorney doesn’t explain it to you. There’s your first red flag, right? You know, I always when I get on the phone and I explain what I do, I, you know, I give them a short version, the legal documents longer it’s one page because they’re not going to look at anything longer than that. And I always tell them, read it.

Howard Abrams: [00:22:15] Any questions, let me know you know, and we’ll go through it line by line if you want. But you know the attorneys or. People that you know are just looking to make a quick buck. As I like to say to clients, they’re the ones rushing in to sign the paperwork, rushing you to settle the case, doing everything just what seems like very quickly, which again, you know, I believe I know people get frustrated with the length of a case sometimes and like you are hearing me talk about and I’m not saying longer is better, but you have to take into account a timeline, right? If you get into an accident. And you’re hurt. At a minimum, it’s usually a 2 to 3 month acute injury phase where you’re getting treatment or therapy or seeing specialists. Right. And any good lawyer is going to. Even if you sign up the client from day one, I don’t evaluate a case for settlement until I see a discharge from therapy. The specialist, wherever, because that tells me that the client has healed right? And then I still wait another 30 days because people have setbacks. So you’re talking about at a minimum from date of accident, six months is what I tell clients before I’m even talking to the insurance company about a settlement, because I don’t know what your injury is. How can I evaluate or make a demand or make any sort of suggestion about what your case is worth if you’re still in treatment or you’re still hurting?

Stone Payton: [00:23:51] Sounds to me like rushing it is probably. There must be several mistakes and pitfalls, but like the biggest mistake you could possibly make and in trying to in filing a claim is just getting in a hurry.

Howard Abrams: [00:24:06] Correct. I always tell clients like the consult, and if you and the other benefit of what I’ve learned from the prelate phase, what I call outside accord is, you know, luckily I do get a lot of clients relatively soon to the accident, which isn’t an easy thing to do, is they get this free advice. And I said, listen, you can sign with me six months from now, right? But you’re still going to pay me the same attorney’s fee. I don’t reduce my attorney’s fees because I work for me less. It’s contingency by signing with me on, you know, day one or day seven, whatever day it is after the accident. Now you get to call. I mean, I don’t want you to call me every day, but you get to ask me whatever questions you want because you hired me as your attorney, and that’s my job. And I walk them through this, you know, step by step. And there’s a lot of, you know, a lot of attorneys just want to go to court. Um, and that’s okay. But there’s a lot to work to do before you go to court. And that’s where I’ve sort of specialized the last few years, is walking these clients through these steps in anticipation that if I can settle it with the insurance company. You don’t have these red flags or pitfalls in your case in the courtroom that, you know, the defense attorney is going to try and wave the wave, the flag about that, why you’re not as injured as bad as you say you are.

Stone Payton: [00:25:25] I’ll tell you something that’s coming to light for me during the course of this conversation, I guess I in my mind, I was thinking that your relationship with the attorney would be more transactional. But it seems to me like you’ve got to establish so much trust and that, I mean, your work is really pretty heavily grounded in relationship, everything from the sales and marketing aspect of it, but actually trying to work with and get the best set of results for a client. I mean, it’s really pretty heavily grounded in relationship, isn’t it?

Howard Abrams: [00:25:57] I think, you know, I think you nailed it right on the head. And that’s the service that I’m trying to offer my clients is there are a lot of good litigators out there. I would not pretend then to, you know, say that who’s the best? And there’s a lot of, you know, media or marketing or advertising that says that, you know, this attorney is the best here, this one. There’s a lot of us, you know, who can litigate. And yes, some, I guess, you know, it’s subjective, some objective. Who’s the best one. And, you know, I’m not even gonna, you know, pretend to say that that’s who that is or why that is. What I think is important is again. It’s not. We’re not talking a you know, there are complex personal injury cases. Okay. There’s product liability and things like that where, you know, people have developed specialties and that’s why it’s good to, you know, be in the industry for a while. You can refer cases to other attorneys if you think it’s something outside your wheelhouse. But for your standard personal injury case or for an auto case, um, I think the personal level of service is something that is missing, you know, and it’s not required. It’s not something that is, you know, you’re required to do to handle the case. But it’s personal injury. It’s personal. I’m like, I’m not trying to make a joke, but it is personal. So I mean, you got hurt like you lost time from work or all those different, you know, areas of damages.

Howard Abrams: [00:27:21] But, you know, those are the main ones. It’s very personal to the client. And yes, it’s a transactional, you know, relationship. But, you know, someone told me a long time ago, you almost like, you know, a therapist for the client to, you know, I would recommend they see, you know, factual help if they really need it. But they’re going through a lot. Their car needs to get fixed and they need it for work. They, you know, their job won’t give them time off to seek medical treatment. All these things that they have to deal with because someone else caused an accident or caused them an injury that they’re not, you know, necessarily going to get compensated for. Because at the end of the day, an insurance claim is a loss for the insurance, right? They’re in the business of writing underwriting policies and collecting premiums and investing that money for their business. The claims department is where they lose money. So their goal at the end of the day is not to just pay you off. Their goal is to pay you as little as they can or not at all, because it’s better for their business. Bottom line. So, you know, taking those two things into account if you don’t establish some sort of personal relationship, I don’t know how you can best represent a client in this business.

Stone Payton: [00:28:33] Well said. So what’s next for you? You’re going to try to grow the firm and expand what’s on the horizon for you.

Howard Abrams: [00:28:43] Um, expansion is definitely a consideration. I think I’d like to continue to focus on the early stages. I know how to litigate, and I can teach other attorneys how to do that. So I’m happy to sort of push some of that work onto, you know, other attorneys or, uh, as I grow my law firm and continue to focus on, like, the early stages, I can always go. I mean, I’m never going to stop going to court. Uh, it’s time consuming. And, you know, I find lately that I’m better service of my clients in the beginning. And as long as my law firm can offer every stage, whether it’s me, you know, the whole time or other people taking over, if we go to court, I’m comfortable with that. And, you know, I think I could do the best for my clients by being involved, um, early on and staying involved early on and not being like, oh, can I call you later? Because you can get stuck in court all day. And the client. Yes. You know, their question may might not have been urgent, but it was important to them.

Howard Abrams: [00:29:49] And it’s hard for me to be able to, you know, have a full conversation with them because the judge is, you know, yelling at me to get in the courtroom. So, yeah, I mean, that is the plan is to continue, you know, to expand so that I, you know, because when you’re in pre-suit there, besides the statute of limitations to file the claim, there’s no deadlines. You know, the insurance company might make you think there are or that you have to get them something or they’re not going to. That’s just, um, you know, trying to make you do things that you don’t want to do is I can take the time, whether it’s a five second conversation or a five hour conversation, I hope not with my clients, I can I can give that level of service because the other attorneys in my firm are handling the court calls and the court cases, and if I need to go to court, I will, but it won’t be. You know, I used to spend every day of my life in court, and it can be exhausting.

Stone Payton: [00:30:47] I’ll bet. All right, man, what’s the best way to contact you? Have a conversation with you or someone on the team. Whatever you feel like is appropriate website, email, LinkedIn, whatever.

Howard Abrams: [00:30:58] Yes, it’s all pretty easy. It’s Howard Abrams Law.com is the website, uh, phone number (312) 985-7368. And if you want to reach me by email Howard at Howard Abrams Law com.

Stone Payton: [00:31:13] Well, Howard, it has been a real delight having you on the program. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for your insight, your perspective. We sure appreciate it, man. You’re doing important work.

Howard Abrams: [00:31:26] I appreciate your time today. This was a lot of fun.

Stone Payton: [00:31:28] My pleasure. All right, until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Howard Abrams with Howard Abrams Law, and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you again on Chicago Business Radio.