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I was recently asked by a claimant's attorney to consider additional information from him personally after I had already completed my disability evalution of his client. He admitted that he was advocating and only asked that I look the information, not to change my decision directly. Specifically, he wanted me to consider the availability of post-injury jobs in the person's labor market, a major market in Washington, that he read was a majority blue collar. And to consider if his client lost his current position, with high earning potential in commission-based sales, would my findings be the same re: earning capacity.

I know better than to change my opinions at the request of an attorney, on either side. But I wondered: is it even appropriate to reconsider your initial findings knowing the requester is looking for a specific outcome? I thought it would be an interesting conversation to know what others thought about this kind of advocacy and how they dealt with these kind of requests in a forensic setting.

How do you maintain your objectivity and manage relationships with referral sources?  

I was recently asked by a claimant's attorney to consider additional information from him personally after I had already completed my disability evalution of his client. He admitted that he was advocating and only asked that I look the information, not to change my decision directly. Specifically, he wanted me to consider the availability of post-injury jobs in the person's labor market, a major market in Washington, that he read was a majority blue collar. And to consider if his client lost his current position, with high earning potential in commission-based sales, would my findings be the same re: earning capacity.

I know better than to change my opinions at the request of an attorney, on either side. But I wondered: is it even appropriate to reconsider your initial findings knowing the requester is looking for a specific outcome? I thought it would be an interesting conversation to know what others thought about this kind of advocacy and how they dealt with these kind of requests in a forensic setting.

How do you maintain your objectivity and manage relationships with referral sources?  

Certainly, providing information about a region where an evaluee works/resides is standard practice and good information for any party to have when assessing someone's vocational profile.

I'm often be asked to address a specific question and have no problem providing the average wage earning capacity of a flying squirrel if that is of interest to the parties. However, I am certainly not going to provide any sort of "desired" outcome for that same flying squirrel. Flying squirrels are flying squirrels, no matter what you might otherwise want them to be.

It seems like in this instance, the attorney is asking whether when someone loses a white-collar job in a primarily blue collar area, does that impact their earning capacity? Its an interesting question. I don't have the facts of the case, but I would assume "no", or at least the availability of work in the labor market (and therefore their capacity) was taken into consideration in the first place when establishing their wage earning capacity.

I was recently asked by a claimant's attorney to consider additional information from him personally after I had already completed my disability evalution of his client. He admitted that he was advocating and only asked that I look the information, not to change my decision directly. Specifically, he wanted me to consider the availability of post-injury jobs in the person's labor market, a major market in Washington, that he read was a majority blue collar. And to consider if his client lost his current position, with high earning potential in commission-based sales, would my findings be the same re: earning capacity.

I know better than to change my opinions at the request of an attorney, on either side. But I wondered: is it even appropriate to reconsider your initial findings knowing the requester is looking for a specific outcome? I thought it would be an interesting conversation to know what others thought about this kind of advocacy and how they dealt with these kind of requests in a forensic setting.

How do you maintain your objectivity and manage relationships with referral sources?