Disability Insurance Law Group

Focus and practice areas

Disability Insurance Law Group works on one corner of civil law: the money an insurance policy is supposed to pay when someone can no longer work, or when a family loses a wage earner. The firm handles disability insurance claims, appeals of disability claim denials, life insurance claims and long-term care insurance claims. It also takes on eating disorder claims, which is a narrower category than most insurance practices list.

That focus covers both sides of the disability world. The firm handles individual disability policies, the kind a professional buys directly, and it handles ERISA and group benefit plans obtained through an employer. Those two run on different rules, different deadlines and different appeal procedures.

The firm also describes itself as working in employee benefit disputes more broadly. In my opinion, the pairing makes sense. Group disability sits inside employee benefits law, so a firm doing one seriously will keep running into the other.

Where a case is picked up

The firm says it handles claims at every stage of the process. That includes denied claims, the administrative appeal that follows a denial, and trial when a matter gets that far.

The appeal stage deserves a note. In ERISA disability cases, the administrative appeal is often where the evidentiary record closes. What a claimant submits at that point tends to be what a court later reads. A firm that says it works at the appeal stage is saying something specific about when it wants to be involved.

How the team is built

Two attorneys carry the firm's name on its site: Alicia Paulino-Grisham and Mindy L. Chmielarz. The site does not publish law schools, bar admission years or individual titles for either of them.

Alicia M. Paulino-Grisham practices as a litigation attorney with DI Law Group. Her listed practice areas are litigation, employee benefits and insurance. She handles disability insurance claims and the appeals that follow them, which lines up with the firm's stated focus.

The firm states that its attorneys have more than 50 years of combined experience in insurance benefit claims. It also says it has represented clients against major insurance companies. Both are the firm's own descriptions, and readers should weigh them as such.

What a two-attorney structure tends to mean

A small roster changes how a case moves. With two named attorneys, the person a client speaks with early is likely to be the person handling the file later. Larger practices often route work differently.

As a reviewer, I read the size and the subject matter together. Disability benefit claims turn on medical records, policy language and procedural deadlines. Depth in one policy type usually matters more than headcount.

Geographic reach

The firm operates from Fort Lauderdale and lists service areas across Florida cities. It also says it represents clients nationwide.

Beyond Florida, the site names eight additional states: Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and South Carolina. That spread is worth reading in context. ERISA is federal law, and much disability claim work happens through written submissions to an insurer before any court gets involved. Both facts make multi-state practice more workable in this field than in many others.

The Florida base still anchors the practice. Fort Lauderdale sits in a metropolitan area with a large population of professionals holding individual disability policies and retirees drawing on long-term care coverage. Those are the policyholders this kind of claim work reaches.

What the record shows

Everything above comes from the firm's own website, including its structured data markup. The site does not publish a founding year or a formal legal name. It also does not list case results or settlement figures, so this review contains none.

The firm offers free initial consultations. It maintains a presence on Facebook, X and YouTube, linked from its own site.

How to read the claims

The combined-experience figure and the reference to litigating against major carriers are marketing statements the firm publishes about itself. They are useful context. They are self-reported, and a careful reader treats them that way.

What holds up better under scrutiny is the shape of the practice. The list of covered claim types is narrow and consistent across the site. The distinction between individual policies and group plans appears in the firm's own description of its work. Those are the sort of details a practice states when the work is routine for it.

Who this listing will matter to

A policyholder whose disability claim has been denied faces a clock. ERISA appeal windows are short, often 180 days, and missing one can close off later options. That timing pressure explains why appeal work sits so prominently in this firm's description of itself.

Beneficiaries on life insurance claims fall into a related category. So do families dealing with a long-term care policy that stops paying. The firm names all three.

The eating disorder claims category stands apart from the rest of the list. Treatment for eating disorders often involves residential or intensive outpatient care, and insurers frequently dispute medical necessity or level of care. A firm naming that claim type is signaling familiarity with a specific denial pattern.

What a prospective client can verify independently

Both named attorneys can be checked through the Florida Bar's public member search, which shows admission status and any disciplinary history. That check takes a few minutes and applies to any firm, in any state.

Court records offer a second route. Federal ERISA cases are public, and PACER lets anyone search by attorney or firm name to see filed matters. For a practice that describes trial work as part of its range, that search gives a reader something the website cannot.

In my opinion, the firm's clearest strength as presented is definitional. It tells a visitor exactly what kinds of claims it takes, across a set of policy types that share the same underlying question: whether an insurer has to pay what a policy promises. Disability Insurance Law Group lists nine states of service, two named attorneys and one field of law.