Articles Posted in Firm News

For years, we have had an office in the center of Allentown, and represented injured workers all along the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton corridor.  We have attended workers’ compensation hearings at the Workers’ Compensation Judge office in Allentown (on Tilghman Street), as well as at the Northampton County Courthouse (where Northampton County workers’ compensation hearings are held).  Indeed, both Allentown and Bethlehem/Easton appears on our website as communities we proudly serve.  Recently, it occurred to us that we have never become members of the Northampton County Bar Association (NCBA).  We have been members of the Bucks, Lehigh and Philadelphia County Bar Associations, so it certainly seemed like a logical step for us to join the NCBA.

While other bar associations simply welcome new members by having them complete an application, the NCBA handles these things in a more dignified and traditional fashion.  Indeed, both of our attorneys (Dina Brilliant and Glenn Neiman) had to obtain sponsors, attend a quarterly NCBA meeting, and be formally approved to become members of the NCBA.  And so, at the meeting on September 12, 2019, both Ms. Brilliant and Mr. Neiman were approved as members of the NCBA.  We are proud to have been admitted into the NCBA, and we look forward to becoming further involved in the wonderful work the NCBA does in the community, as we have done with the other Bar Associations of which we are members.

We will continue striving to serve injured workers in the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton community through our Center City Allentown office, as we do with injured workers in the Bucks, Montgomery and Philadelphia areas through our offices in Trevose and Warminster.  And, for those injured workers elsewhere in the Southeastern to Central areas of PA, we also are happy to meet clients in various other locations conveniently located throughout the region.

We have talked before on this blog about how an injured worker can go about choosing a Pennsylvania workers’ compensation attorney.  Since this is such a common question, the issue is so important, and there are so many choices, we even have a page on our website devoted to the topic.  So, this blog post is not about how to choose a workers’ comp lawyer.  Instead, this entry will talk about one of the more important jobs we, as attorneys who represent injured workers, have in the process.

The vast majority of injured workers are not familiar with the Pennsylvania workers’ compensation system.  From the outside, it can appear to be a complex and complicated arena.  Indeed, it can even be complicated for those of us who work with the system every day.  Perhaps the scariest aspect of this for the injured worker is simply the vast unknown.

We regularly participate in various injured worker message boards on the internet, providing general legal information to those who ask (we, of course, cannot provide legal advice to someone we do not represent).  Many of the questions we see, from injured workers who are already represented by an attorney, as well as those who are not, deal with the PA workers’ compensation process and how it works.

We are not the official workers’ compensation law firm of the NFL.  Or of any major sport.  What does that even mean?  We do not have a slick marketing department, which puts our faces on billboards or TV.  What we ARE is the law firm for injured workers.  Our focus is not on fancy marketing; it is on delivering the best personal attention to your case.

We do not have multiple paralegals for each attorney, nor do we have more attorneys than you can count.  We have two attorneys that will actually handle your case.  What does that mean for you?  It means that both of our attorneys are experienced and certified as specialists in workers’ compensation law.  Each of our attorneys has over 25 years of experience in the field.  You will never have your case handled by a junior attorney with little or no experience.  You can be confident that every step of your case will be handled by an experienced and qualified attorney.

Some firms have paralegals and assistants handle the day-to-day things on a case.  The injured worker doesn’t speak to his or her attorney; the injured worker speaks to the attorney’s “team.”  That is not how we operate.  At Brilliant & Neiman LLC, one of our two attorneys is personally handling your case.  You can speak directly to your attorney to have any concerns addressed or questions answered.

Anyone who follows our blog, or the Pennsylvania workers’ compensation system, knows that one of the fastest changing areas these days is that of Impairment Rating Evaluations (IREs).  To keep pace with these changes, and continue our goal of educating the injured worker throughout PA, we have updated the IRE section of our website.  The new page can be accessed here.

For those unfamiliar with the IRE process, this was something the insurance industry lobbied hard for when major changes were made to the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Act (Act) in 1996.  As seen with other States in the Country, an IRE process can change the status of an injured worker from “total” disability to “partial” disability.  While this may not (and in PA does not) change the amount of the weekly benefit received by an injured worker, it does start the clock ticking on the number of weeks of partial disability benefits an injured worker can receive (in Pennsylvania, an injured worker can only receive a maximum of 500 weeks of partial disability benefits; there is no limit to the number of weeks of total disability benefits that can be received).

In 2017, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania declared the IRE process, as set forth in the Act, unconstitutional.  This set the powerful insurance lobby into full panic mode (though, frankly, the actual financial impact of the loss of the IRE process on the insurance industry is in dispute).  As a result, the PA legislature capitulated to the lobby and passed Act 111, reinstating the IRE process.  To the surprise of very few, the elected representatives chose to side with the insurance industry over the injured worker.