Vocational Expert in Boston, MA

The Suffolk County Superior Court, placed by its location page at the Suffolk County Courthouse on Pemberton Square, is a state forum in the county for the personal injury, employment and disability actions in which KWVRS's earning capacity opinion is offered. The Boston Municipal Court Department, by its own page, has both criminal and civil matters before it for the City of Boston and the Town of Winthrop, and a civil claim with an earnings component pending there receives the same evaluation. The Appeals Court and the Supreme Judicial Court both sit at the John Adams Courthouse, also on Pemberton Square by their pages. A federal action is heard at the Boston divisional office of the District of Massachusetts, labeled Eastern on the court's page, at the John Joseph Moakley U.S. Courthouse.

A Boston worker's disputed compensation claim goes to the Department of Industrial Accidents, whose page puts its main office at Lafayette City Center in Boston. The dispute steps page describes conciliation and conference as informal and the hearing as the trial phase, at which, in the page's words, witnesses are called; appeals of hearing decisions go to the Reviewing Board. KWVRS writes the report to the step the claim has reached: a short statement of what the worker can still earn for the conference, and a full report naming each occupation, wage and source for the hearing, where the evaluator may be called as a witness.

The evaluation asks what work the person can do after the injury, where that work exists and what it pays. Restrictions come from the treating records and skills from the school and work history; an interview and testing measure what remains; a transferable skills analysis matches those abilities to occupations; and a Boston-area labor market survey tests whether employers are hiring in them and what they pay. The wage figures are the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program's for the Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH area, which the program's metropolitan area estimates list, the area to which a Boston resident is priced. The report identifies the area and sets pre-injury and post-injury earning capacity side by side with every occupation and source.

In the Suffolk Probate and Family Court the same method answers a different question, what a spouse or a parent could earn, in the divorce and support matters for which counsel retain KWVRS. Whichever side retains KWVRS, the opinion rests on the same records, method and published wage series, and can be that the person already earns what the Boston labor market supports. Plaintiff and defense counsel get the report in the form the forum's expert disclosure practice requires. KWVRS works with attorneys nationwide from its New Jersey, Virginia and Rhode Island offices. Attorneys confirm the governing rule for their case.