What’s still possible.
Vocational evaluation, return-to-work counseling, and expert testimony from a licensed clinical psychologist in San Clemente, California — for injured workers, and for the attorneys and claims professionals who represent them.
I was injured at work
You may have received a voucher you didn’t ask for and don’t fully understand. Here’s what it is, what it covers, and what it costs you.
Start hereI’m an attorney or claims professional
Credentials, methodology, practice areas, and what’s in a report — including how an opinion is structured to survive review.
Start here- Licensed Clinical Psychologist, California — PSY 9840
- Listed by the California Division of Workers’ Compensation as a Vocational Return-to-Work Counselor
- Ph.D., 1987
- San Clemente, California — serving {{jurisdictions}}
the practice
One evaluation. Six places it matters.
The underlying work is the same — records, interview, testing, labor market. What changes is the question being asked and who’s asking it.
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Workers’ compensation
Vocational evaluation, return-to-work counseling, and rebuttal opinions for California workers’ compensation matters.
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Personal injury
Employability and earning-capacity analysis where an injury has changed what someone can earn.
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Family law
Earning capacity and imputed income analysis in marital dissolution matters.
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Social Security disability
Residual functional capacity measured against the occupational base.
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Long-term disability & ERISA
“Own occupation” and “any occupation” analysis for claim and appeal.
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Employment matters
Mitigation, front-pay horizon, and accommodation analysis in wrongful termination and discrimination claims.
why this practice
The psychological testing and the vocational opinion come from the same person.
A clinician, not a referral chain
Most vocational experts hold a master’s degree in rehabilitation counseling. When a case involves depression, PTSD, chronic pain, or cognitive complaints, they read someone else’s psychological report and take it as given. I am a licensed clinical psychologist. I administer the testing and I write the vocational opinion, and there is no interpretive gap between the two for anyone to open up on cross-examination.
Forty years of listening to people describe their work
A vocational evaluation is only as good as the interview underneath it. Four decades of clinical practice is four decades of getting an accurate account out of someone who is frightened, guarded, in pain, or all three. That is not a soft skill in this work. It is the whole foundation of the record.
One practitioner, start to finish
The person who reads the file is the person who conducts the interview, administers the testing, writes the report, and appears for deposition. Nothing is delegated, and nothing gets lost between people.
Portrait of Dr. Martin
Environmental portrait, San Clemente office. Awaiting the client photography session.
methodology
A report that measures lost earnings gets reversed. A report that establishes non-amenability to rehabilitation holds up.
California permits a permanent disability rating to be rebutted by vocational evidence. The line of authority runs from LeBoeuf (1983) through Ogilvie (2011) and Contra Costa County v. WCAB (Dahl) (2015), and was narrowed further by the Appeals Board’s Nunes decisions in 2023.
Dahl is the case that matters most, because it is the one that failed. The vocational opinion there recalculated diminished future earning capacity and argued the result was more accurate than the schedule. The Court of Appeal rejected it — the standard is not that the worker earns less. It is that the worker, because of the industrial injury, is not amenable to rehabilitation and cannot compete in the open labor market. Every report from this practice is built to that standard, on the record, in that order.
1983 → today
the line of authority every rebuttal opinion has to satisfy.
how it works
Four steps, and you’ll know where you are in all of them.
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We talk first
A conversation about what happened, where the claim stands, and whether an evaluation is even the right thing. No charge, no obligation.
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Records review
Medical reports, work history, education, wage records, and any prior evaluations. The file before the person.
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Interview and testing
An in-person or remote session. Aptitude, interest, and — where the case calls for it — psychological testing, administered and interpreted here.
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The written opinion
A report you can hand to a judge, with the labor market analysis and the reasoning on the page, followed by deposition or testimony where it’s needed.
If you have a Supplemental Job Displacement voucher, this may cost you nothing.
California workers’ compensation vouchers set aside up to $600 for a vocational or return-to-work counselor. Comprehensive Vocational Services is on the state’s list of Vocational Return-to-Work Counselors, which means that portion of your voucher can be billed directly to the claims administrator. Not to you.
Figures reflect California Division of Workers’ Compensation rules as published at dir.ca.gov. Amounts and rules are set by statute and can change — confirm current figures with the DWC or your claims administrator. This page explains a benefit; it is not legal advice.
about
William W. Martin, Ph.D.
I’ve practiced as a licensed clinical psychologist in South Orange County since 1987, and I’ve spent much of that time on the question of what work a person can actually do after something has changed — after an injury, an illness, a claim, or a career that stopped fitting.
Comprehensive Vocational Services is the part of that practice devoted to vocational evaluation and return-to-work counseling. It operates from the same San Clemente office and it answers to the same standard: an honest account of what a person can still do, written so that it holds up when someone tests it.
Start with a conversation.
No cost, no obligation, and you’ll leave it knowing whether an evaluation is worth doing.