A Skilled Injury Lawyer Supplied with Key Information from a Vocational Expert Can Help You Recover full Damages for Your Present and Future
When you’ve been in a serious automobile or work accident, your whole life can change in a matter of moments. One of the most difficult byproducts of a serious injury is that it could adversely affect your ability to earn a living utilizing the skills you gained through education, training, and experience. When handling serious personal injury cases, our attorneys know when to engage the services of a vocational expert to support our client’s claim, ensuring that any loss to future earning capacity caused by an accident injury is compensated. If you are an injury victim in Hopewell, Trenton, West Windsor, Pennington, Lambertville, or elsewhere in New Jersey caused by someone else’s negligence, contact a member of our team at Cohen & Riechelson to discuss the injury you sustained and your rights to pursue compensation, including ongoing costs and impacts to your quality of life. Learn more about how we use vocational experts to make sure you recover compensation for accident-related injuries and losses.
The Unbiased Opinion of a Vocational Expert in NJ
A vocational expert is an objective third party expert who is trained to conduct a review of an individual’s loss of earning capacity due to the injury they have sustained. In the case of serious injury accidents, a victim may sustain injuries that severely diminish their ability to continue in their regular day-to-day, including their profession. Such injuries could include traumatic brain injury, spinal injuries and paralysis, loss of limbs, and injuries that diminish mental function, among others. A vocational expert’s role is to review not what earnings they lost as a result of the incident, but what their future potential as a professional has been diminished as a result of their accident. Read on to learn how they calculate diminished earning capacity.
Vocational Expert’s Primary Responsibility in Personal Injury Cases
A vocational expert conducts an investigation of numerous sources to develop a comprehensive understanding of the victim’s earning capacity or professional trajectory before the accident and their capacity following the accident. The expert reviews the victim’s educational career, work history, and past income, perhaps conducting interviews with former employers and family members to gain a sense of their vocational capacities and interests. They may facilitate vocational assessments with the injured individual to get an objective sense of their cognitive and physical function, as well as thoroughly review post-accident medical records to determine the extent and longevity of medical incapacitation and diminished ability causing a professional impact. Through the above and additional methods, the vocational expert generates an evaluation of whether they would likely be able to continue with the vocations for which their training, education, and experience prepared them. Based on their review of the victim’s injuries and the vocational evaluation, the expert would investigate jobs in the area that are available to the victim given their condition and their earning potential. This detailed information would be used by the victim’s personal injury attorney to seek damages due to diminished earning capacity.
Prevalent Types of Injuries Observed by Vocational Experts
Vocational experts are generally called upon by a personal injury attorney or the defendant’s insurance company to determine reduced earning capacity due to serious injuries. Minor injuries, whose physical and professional consequences are usually short-lasting, do not require the services of vocational experts as they do not reduce capacity, though they do temporarily reduce earnings.
Vocational Expert Feedback for Determining Compensation
The evidenced opinion of a vocational expert creates a solid framework for determining the compensation you are entitled to in a personal injury case. The objective third-party opinion is usually respected by juries in personal injury cases as solid evidence for compensation. As such, vocational experts can be essential factors in recovering the full scope of damages you deserve in a major injury accident caused by someone else’s negligence.
The Life Care Plan and Vocational Experts in NJ
A life care plan takes into account the medical expertise of doctors and therapists to determine vocational opportunities that are available to you after a serious accident that renders you incapable of continuing on your prior path, at least in the near future. A vocational expert can help you develop a life care plan by conducting a thorough investigation of available opportunities, their earning potential, and required therapeutic or educational supplements toward those newly appropriate professional goals.
Talk to Our Personal Injury Lawyers Who Can Maximize Your Chances of Winning an Injury Claim by Working Side by Side with Vocational Experts in New Jersey
When it comes to serious accident injuries, you can’t take chances on ensuring that you are compensated completely for your immediate and long-term medical expenses and associated changes to professional earning capacity. You need the support of our team of personal injury attorneys at Cohen & Riechelson, who have decades of experience getting our clients in Princeton, Ewing, Willingboro, Hamilton, Robbinsville, and towns in Mercer County, Middlesex County, Burlington County, and throughout New Jersey the compensation they deserve after they are victims of serious injury accidents. Contact us immediately at 609-528-2596, and let us help you get back in the game as your best version.
