Massachusetts Vocational Expert Witness Services

KWVRS's vocational evidence is offered in Massachusetts matters pending in the Superior Court, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, the Department of Industrial Accidents and the Probate and Family Court. In the Superior Court, a trial court of general jurisdiction by its own page, they are personal injury, employment and disability actions; in the federal court, federal matters heard from its Boston, Worcester and Springfield divisional offices; before the department, disputed workers' compensation claims; and in the Probate and Family Court, the divorce and support matters in which a spouse's or a parent's capacity to earn is at issue, as the Massachusetts matrimonial page describes. Attorneys confirm the governing rule for their case.

Vocational evidence enters a Department of Industrial Accidents claim as the evaluator's written opinion, offered by the party that retained it, and, if the claim reaches a hearing and the evaluator is called, as the evaluator's testimony. By the department's description of its dispute steps, conciliation is an informal meeting with a conciliator, the conference is an informal discussion before an administrative judge that can end in a temporary order, and the hearing is the trial phase at which witnesses are called and testimony is recorded. A conference opinion states the worker's capacity to earn and its basis; a hearing report carries every occupation, wage and source. Vocational evidence at the Massachusetts DIA describes each step.

Massachusetts workers' compensation law sets the weekly wage an employee is capable of earning, if any, after the injury at the greatest of four amounts: actual weekly earnings; the earnings in the pre-injury job and those in a particular suitable job, each if made available and the employee can perform it; and what the employee is capable of earning. A suitable job is one the employee is physically and mentally capable of performing, including light work, considering the nature and severity of the injury, that bears a reasonable relationship to the employee's work experience, education or training, before or after the injury. A vocational evaluation speaks to the last measure; attorneys confirm the governing rule for their case.

A Massachusetts vocational evaluation addresses whether the person can work, in which occupations and at what wage, and how that compares with the work and the wage the person had before. The evaluator reads the medical, educational and employment records, interviews and where indicated tests the person, runs a transferable skills analysis against the documented restrictions and a labor market survey where the person lives, then states pre-injury and post-injury earning capacity with every occupation, wage and source named, so that the other side's expert can reproduce the analysis. The vocational evaluation guide sets out each step.

A Massachusetts vocational report prices a person who lives and works in Boston and the communities around it to the Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH area, which the metropolitan release of the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics names. A person elsewhere in the Commonwealth is priced to the published area for that place, and the report names the area it applied and explains the choice when a work history reaches into a second labor market. The labor table on this page names the wage areas this site reports for Massachusetts cities.

A Massachusetts vocational report is organized to the disclosure requirements of the forum where the matter is pending, which differ between the Superior Court, the federal district, the Probate and Family Court and the Department of Industrial Accidents. It documents the methodology, the records and data relied on and each opinion, so that it can be served as the disclosure and reproduced by the opposing expert. In the Probate and Family Court, the answer to an expert interrogatory can be drawn from it. Massachusetts expert disclosure summarizes the state's practice and the Massachusetts expert admissibility standard describes the standard applied to expert opinion; attorneys confirm the governing rule and its timing for their case.

Before any work begins, counsel receives a written fee schedule and an estimate for the requested scope, and the engagement agreement sets the fee and its payment terms; testimony is priced on the fee schedule apart from the report. The estimate turns on the records, the vocational issues in dispute, any interview and testing and any labor market survey. A full report is typically 30 to 60 days from receipt of complete records; a Department of Industrial Accidents hearing date or a Superior Court disclosure deadline is met by fixing the schedule at engagement, and a rush timeline is arranged case by case. The cost and engagement guide explains each driver.

The Office of Education and Vocational Rehabilitation at the Department of Industrial Accidents, by its page, assists injured workers with an accepted or established workers' compensation claim to return to meaningful employment, with the stated goal of the pre-injury average weekly wage; it reviews the worker's medical, educational and employment history and, where the worker is eligible, asks the insurer to arrange services. MassAbility, the agency the Commonwealth renamed from the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission, describes its programs as careers and training, home and community life, and legal rights and benefits. A forensic vocational evaluation is retained by counsel to answer a forum's earning capacity question and records any rehabilitation services the file shows.