ESS Settlement Services

ABLE Accounts: providing a better life experience for New York’s disabled residents

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ABLE Accounts: providing a better life experience for New York’s disabled residentsThe New Year has already brought a change for the better for people with long-term disabilities who reside in New York State thanks to the availability beginning this year of tax-free ABLE accounts to fund medical, housing, education, transportation and other expenses related to their disability.

These ABLE accounts are structured along the lines of other tax-advantaged savings accounts, such as the popular 529 college savings account, where earnings from contributions (subject to a $14,000 annual limitation) can accumulate on a tax-free basis.  Made possible by federal legislation introduced back in 2014, the New York legislature passed its enabling bill last year, with New York becoming the 20th state thus far to make these useful accounts available for use by qualified disabled residents.

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Bringing Your Client to Mediation: the pros and cons considered

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pros and consThis week we return our attention to a topic we have discussed previously on the blog (most recently here). It is a question that comes up for consideration just about every time you prepare a case for mediation: should you bring your client to the mediation?

Many personal injury lawyers we know seem to be in the consistent habit of bringing their clients into mediation. There is also a sizable number who take the contrary view.

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How To Identify Which Cases Are Ripe For Mediation

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How To Identify Which Cases Are Ripe For MediationThere’s an old Oliver Wendell Holmes maxim we remember from law school – great cases like hard cases make for bad law. Not to quibble with the venerable Justice Holmes, but in our experience as settlement consultants, we have found that this observation is not so true, at least when it comes to mediation. Great cases and not so great ones both make for good mediations, at least when measured by that all-important yardstick of positive financial outcomes.

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The CMS Recovery Portal: helping put money in your pocket faster

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ess- medicareEarlier this month, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) published a long-awaited update and clarification on the conditional payment process for the Medicare Secondary Payer Recovery Portal (MSPRP or Recovery Portal). This is a significant development for us and our clients and the broader community of the plaintiffs’ bar because it affects the timeline and best practices that should be followed in resolving any case where Medicare has rights to receive reimbursement from the settlement proceeds.

CMS has been working for several years now to develop the Recovery Portal as a means for expediting the resolution of Medicare lien claims. Chronic delay from the Medicare bureaucracy in determining the final reimbursement amount has long been a cause of considerable frustration for plaintiff’s attorneys.

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Getting the Most of Out of Your Next Mediation

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ESS ebook coverWith settlement season now in full swing, this week we are pleased to announce the publication of our new e-book: How to Get the Most out of Mediation. You can click here to download your free copy.

For those of you who are regular readers of our blog, you will find some familiar material here, as we have drawn on a number of articles that first appeared on the blog over the course of this past year. Our goal in putting the e-book together was to distill our experience and insights, gathered over the course of our participation in hundreds of mediations, and to present the material in one convenient place so you would have a practical and handy guide to use as you prepare for your next case settlement.
Key topics covered in the e-book include the following:

• How to identify which cases are ripe for mediation
• How to find the best mediator for your case
• How to make your initial demand
• How to develop a negotiation strategy
• How to maximize settlement value for you and your client

We hope you find the e-book a useful tool in your practice. And if you have a moment, please send us an email and let us know what you think. Feel free to let us know if you have any questions or pointers of your own you’d like to share with our readers, to help make this settlement season more productive for all of us.

 

Open Enrollment: Time to Check Up on Your Clients’ Healthcare Coverage

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open enrollmentNovember 1st is an important day on the calendar in contemporary American life. It’s nowhere near as festive occasion as Halloween, which comes the day before, nor is it a holiday for somber reflection as is Veteran’s Day, which follows only 10 days later. But is highly significant all the same as it marks the day on which the open enrollment period begins under the Affordable Healthcare Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. For those of us who represent and fight the good fight on behalf of personal injury victims, the open enrollment period provides an important opportunity to protect the interests of at least some of our clients.

Let’s face it. Many people are flummoxed when it comes to picking a policy on the healthcare exchanges. This is not at all surprising given the operational problems attendant on the rollout of Obamacare and the inherently confusing nature of most policy descriptions. This process can be even more of a challenge for people who formerly qualified for some form of government assistance and are unaccustomed to dealing with and analyzing the fine print on healthcare policies. All too often we have found situations where clients, left to their own devices, end up selecting policies with unreasonably high deductibles or other similar deficiencies, which effectively eviscerate the benefits of coverage.

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Knowing When to Say No and When to Say Yes in Settlement Negotiations

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ess-interestaccrualIn our business as settlement consultants we are keenly aware of the different dynamics that come into play in personal injury litigation and how those dynamics can often help promote a negotiated resolution of the case. As we’ve written before, the various weaknesses you become aware of in the course of developing your case, as either plaintiff or defense counsel, will often create an incentive to prefer negotiation over the courtroom.

But it’s not just perceived weakness in your own position that creates an incentive to settle. Sometimes it’s the strength of your position that gives rise to a dynamic in favor of settlement. And in those situations, experience has shown us that it’s important to play your strong hand wisely (and without showing much willingness to compromise) in order to achieve an optimal negotiated outcome.

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Understanding the Real Value of a Structured Settlement

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Piggy bankLately I’ve been hearing a lot of concerns and objections from a lot of otherwise financially unsophisticated and inexperienced plaintiffs about the IRR on structured settlement proposals. While they are correct that the rate of return is currently low by historical standards, they are missing the bigger picture.

To start with, it’s important to remember that structured settlements are tax advantaged, in the same way a 401(k) plan works, with undistributed returns compounding on a tax-free basis. So a structured settlement product with a stated return of 3% provides closer to a 4% or more return on a tax-adjusted basis. Also, the first question I ask people who tell me that the rate of return is low is, “Compared to what?”

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The Importance of Being Well Prepared for Settlement Negotiations

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medicare lienWe are now a few weeks into Settlement Season and the pace of our consulting business has noticeably quickened. But there is one point we want to make about why it is important not to wait until the last minute to give us a call. In fact, it is far better to reach out to us at an earlier stage, well in advance of conducting a first mediation session or the formal commencement of settlement talks.

The reason for this is pretty simple: it’s far better for us to be brought into a new situation too early than too late. When we are brought in too late in the process the cake may already be too far baked for us to do as much as we can in improving the flavor. In other words, the more up to speed we are in terms of the particulars of any given lawsuit (and the health care profile of the personal injury plaintiff), the more benefit we can provide when it comes to planning and structuring a settlement in order to maximize the long-term benefits both for you and your client.

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Some Things You May Find Behind a Super Lawyer’s Success

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New York Super LawyerLast week the most recent listings for Super Lawyers in the New York Metro area were published as a special supplement in the Saturday edition of the New York Times. Now Sunday morning is usually a time reserved for being with the family but this weekend, much to my wife’s annoyance, I took the occasion to do a little homework by giving a close look at the listings.

First of all, I want to extend our hearty congratulations to all of our clients who made the grade as Super Lawyers this year. It’s always nice to be recognized for your hard work. And while being a Super Lawyer may not carry quite the cachet as being designated a Super Hero, the listings are actually based on a combination of peer recognition and professional achievement, including peer nominations and evaluations, as well as independent research done by the Super Lawyer staff. In other words, it means a lot more than a simple pat on the back.

What was particularly striking to me is how the firms we work with dominated the Super Lawyer listings for the personal injury practice area on the plaintiffs’ side, both for general negligence and medical malpractice. In fact, in both those areas, reading through the listings was almost like reading through our client roster. It made me proud to realize that — whatever else these firms might have in common — behind a lot of this year’s personal injury Super Lawyers you could find the same structured settlement consultants, ESS SETTLEMENT SERVICES. [Read more…]

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