The RAPEL Method: How Vocational Experts Organize an Earning Capacity Opinion

RAPEL is a structured approach to earning capacity assessment described in the rehabilitation and life care planning literature (Weed & Berens, 2018). Each letter is a question the vocational evaluation must answer in order:

• R - Rehabilitation plan. What services, training, accommodations, or medical steps would realistically support a return to work, and what would they cost and take?
• A - Access to the labor market. Given the person's education, skills, work history, and documented restrictions, which occupations remain open, and which are now closed?
• P - Placeability. Of the occupations that remain open, how likely is the person to actually be hired, considering the local labor market and real-world barriers?
• E - Earning capacity. What wage range is reasonably available now and over the working life, compared with pre-injury capacity?
• L - Labor force participation. How consistently can the person be expected to work over time, full time, part time, or intermittently, and for how many remaining work years?

The rehabilitation plan component asks whether a realistic path back to work exists and what it requires. The evaluator considers medical recommendations, functional capacity findings, retraining or education options, assistive technology, and workplace accommodations. The plan is documented in terms of specific services, duration, and cost so that the same assumptions can be carried into the economic analysis and, where applicable, a life care plan.

Access is established through transferable skills analysis: the evaluator identifies the worker traits and skills acquired through prior work and education, then compares them against occupational requirements using the Dictionary of Occupational Titles and O*NET (U.S. Department of Labor, 1991; National Center for O*NET Development, n.d.). Medical restrictions are applied to exclude occupations whose physical, cognitive, or environmental demands exceed the documented capacity. The result is a defined set of occupations the person can still perform, and a defined set that has been lost.

Placeability asks a different question than access. An occupation can be within a person's capacity yet be difficult to obtain because of local demand, hiring practices, licensing or certification requirements, the need for schedule flexibility, visible limitations, gaps in work history, or age. The evaluator may use a labor market survey and published employment data to test whether the remaining occupations are realistically attainable in the relevant geographic area. Placeability is an assessment of likelihood supported by evidence; it is not a job search and does not guarantee an outcome.

Earning capacity compares what the person could reasonably earn before the injury with what remains available after it. Pre-injury capacity is grounded in actual earnings history and the occupations held or realistically attainable. Post-injury capacity is drawn from the wages of the occupations that survive the access and placeability analysis, using published wage data such as the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, n.d.). The opinion is typically expressed as a reasonable range rather than a single figure, and the difference between the two sides is the loss of earning capacity that the forensic economist then projects and discounts to present value.

The final component addresses how much of the remaining work life the person can be expected to spend working. It considers whether full-time, part-time, or intermittent participation is realistic given the condition, the expected course of treatment, and the demands of the surviving occupations. Published worklife expectancy tables provide the population baseline, with case-specific adjustments where the record supports them (Skoog, Ciecka, & Krueger, 2011).

RAPEL does not favor a plaintiff or a defense position. Its value is that each conclusion is tied to a stated question, a stated method, and identifiable data, which lets the court and opposing counsel trace how the evaluator reached the opinion. Organizing the report this way also supports admissibility review, because the reliability inquiry under the reliability standards that govern expert testimony turns on whether the method is recognized and was applied consistently to the facts of the case. Professional standards for forensic vocational practice likewise call for opinions that are objective, documented, and reproducible (International Association of Rehabilitation Professionals, n.d.).

"RAPEL produces the damages number." It does not. RAPEL organizes the vocational findings; the economic loss is calculated separately from those findings.

"Placeability means the expert found the person a job." Placeability is an evidence-based estimate of the likelihood of employment in identified occupations, not a placement service.

"A RAPEL report is only for plaintiffs." The same framework is used to evaluate or rebut an opposing opinion, and an evaluation may conclude that little or no capacity was lost.