By Kevin L. Connors, Esquire

ConnorsO’Dell proudly announces that Joseph Forkin, Esquire, has joined the firm as a Partner in its Workers’ Compensation Practice Group.

Joe will be handling the defense of workers’ compensation matters, having been a practicing workers’ compensation defense attorney since 1996.

Joe is a Graduate of LaSalle University in Philadelphia.

He then served as a Philadelphia Police Officer for five years.

After his service as a Philadelphia Police Officer, Joe graduated from the Dickinson School of Law in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, graduating in 1996.

Joe then passed the Pennsylvania and New Jersey Bar exams, and is admitted to practice in both States.

Following law school, Joe served as an Opinion writer for the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board, having written in excess of 200 Appeal Board Decisions. Clearly, Joe knows the ins and outs of Appellate Practice before the Appeal Board.

After being a Decision writer for the Appeal Board, Joe became an Associate in the General Counsel’s Office of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, with Joe being responsible for the defense of various inmate-filed Civil lawsuits.

Leaving Corrections, Joe became an Associate at the Delaware County law firm of Dozor-Auslander, where Joe defended workers’ compensation claims for Employers and Insurers.

Joe then moved in-house with Guard Insurance, ascending to be Guard’s Managing-Attorney for its in-house counsel office, in the course of which Joe was responsible for all staffing and legal results, as well as his very active caseload.

At Guard, Joe was responsible for auditing outside law firms, reviewing internal claims handling procedures, and making case, policy, and personnel recommendations for Guard Insurance.

Joe also served as co-counsel, with the now Honorable Lawrence Beck, on the seminal Weney v. WCAB (Mac Sprinkler Systems, Inc.), Decision, 960 A.2d 949 (Pa., 2008), which Decision helped curtail the serial Review Petition-filing practice that had tainted Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Litigation system, as Claimants repeatedly challenged various benefit entitlements under their workers’ compensation claims.

Leaving Guard, Joe then defended workers’ compensation claims at the law firms of Tom Lowry and Neil Dombrowski.

Joining ConnorsO’Dell, Joe brings his extensive experience defending workers’ compensation claims to represent our clients in minimizing and negating workers’ compensation liabilities.

Joe welcomes the opportunity to represent our clients in workers’ compensation-related matters, and Joe is always available to assist clients in the course of assessing any and all aspects of workers’ compensation claims and litigation.

ConnorsO’Dell LLP
Trust us, we just get it! It is trust well spent!

We defend Employers, Self-Insureds, Insurance Carriers, and Third Party Administrators in Workers’ Compensation matters throughout Pennsylvania. We have over 100 years of cumulative experience defending our clients against compensation-related liabilities, with no attorney in our firm having less than ten (10) years of specialized experience, empowering our Workers’ Compensation practice group attorneys to be more than mere claim denials, enabling us to create the factual and legal leverage to expeditiously resolve claims, in the course of limiting/reducing/extinguishing our clients’ liabilities under the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Act.

Every member of our Workers’ Compensation practice group is AV rated. Our partnership with the NWCDN magnifies the lens for which our professional expertise imperiously demands that we always be dynamic and exacting advocates for our clients, navigating the frustrating and form-intensive minefield pervasive throughout Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation practice and procedure.