CVE, CRC, CDMS, FVE
Individualized Re-Employment Services and Effective Case Interventions and Resolutions

Registered Forensic Vocational Expert — Litigation Support

The role of the vocational rehabilitation consultant and expert is to assist the trier of fact to understand evidence, to help determine facts at issue and ultimately to assist in determining economic loss damages. The vocational rehabilitation evaluator is an experienced and credentialed vocational rehabilitation professional who applies medical evidence to build a bridge between the client's skills and abilities, and the economist's financial analysis.

In the forensic arena, "vocational evaluation" is a process of gathering data and personal information that are synthesized into a profile of a person that can be used both to describe current functioning and to determine potential for working in specific jobs.

Vocational expert service had its beginnings within the Social Security Disability Insurance system in 1962. Until that time, disability determinations were made on broad bases by citations to industry and government studies. These were challenged in courts as theoretical and speculative. Vocational experts met these challenges by studying each case and then testifying to a claimant's employability, on a case-by-case basis. In the 1980s, responding to rising medical costs, workers' compensation systems began to use vocational case managers to assist with suitable re-employment of injured workers. Vocational case managers would also assist in benefit hearings to explain issues and clarify facts. This expertise has since grown and divested into many other arenas including long term disability, personal injury, product liability, medical malpractice, family law, discrimination and wrongful termination.

R. Brad Coffey, M.Ed., M.B.A., has provided consulting and testifying expert services in the following lines of work: State and Federal workers' compensation hearings, long-term disibility cases, and in civil cases scheduled for trial. Civil case evaluations include personal injury, medical malpractice, and wrongful termination. He has provided deposition and trial testimony for plaintiff and defense in both State district court and Federal court. Since 2001, Mr. Coffey has testified in hundreds of Social Security disability hearings, assisting administrative law judges with the 5-step sequential disability determination process.

By careful examination of pertinent file records and from thorough evaluation interview of the client — with appropriate vocational testing — Mr. Coffey establishes an integrated vocational profile. He applies peer-reviewed methodologies, considering career development factors. He evaluates fundamental components of vocational impairment. A comprehensive verbal or written report accounts for key case aspects, and degree of diminished earnings capacity.