Massachusetts Vocational and Economic Experts

The Superior Court is a trial court of general jurisdiction for Massachusetts, as its page states, and its justices sit in courthouses in all of the state's counties; the Suffolk County Superior Court's location page places it at the Suffolk County Courthouse in Boston, the state capital, with a Civil Clerk's Office for civil business. The same Superior Court page states that the court has exclusive authority to convene medical malpractice tribunals. The Probate and Family Court hears the divorce and support matters in which a spouse's earning capacity is evaluated. The District Court Department's page states that in civil matters it hears cases in which the damages are not likely to be more than an amount the page states, together with small claims, and the Boston Municipal Court Department's page states that it handles both criminal and civil matters for the City of Boston and the Town of Winthrop. Appeals go to the Massachusetts Appeals Court, which its page describes as the Commonwealth's intermediate appellate court, a court of general appellate jurisdiction over the decisions of the trial judges of the Departments of the Trial Court, and the Supreme Judicial Court is the Commonwealth's highest appellate court. The U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts states on its Divisional Offices page that it has three divisional offices, in Boston, Worcester and Springfield, its Boston courthouse being the John Joseph Moakley U.S. Courthouse. Where KWVRS is retained in a product liability, medical device or pharmaceutical case in that court, the life care plan and the vocational report are prepared to its procedure.

The Department of Industrial Accidents (DIA) oversees the Massachusetts workers' compensation system, as its page states, and lists a Boston main office and offices in Fall River, Lawrence, Springfield and Worcester. The department's page on the steps in the dispute resolution process lists conciliation, conference and hearing, with a pre-hearing conference before the hearing and an appeal of the hearing decision to its Reviewing Board, and describes the hearing as the trial phase of the case, at which witnesses are called; as the Massachusetts Appeals Court's page states, appeals from final decisions of the Industrial Accident Board go to that court. KWVRS prepares vocational reports for DIA proceedings and Superior Court matters alike, organized to the procedural requirements of each forum. MassAbility, formerly the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission, is the state vocational rehabilitation agency.

Boston lies in the Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH metropolitan area, and this site's Boston page carries that area's wage and employment record; wages come from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics series and unemployment rates from the Local Area Unemployment Statistics series, both from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the analysis uses the data of the region where the claimant lives and works. KWVRS works with attorneys nationwide from its New Jersey, Virginia and Rhode Island offices. Attorneys confirm the governing rule for their case.