Bross & Frankel, P.A.

Focus and practice areas

Bross & Frankel, P.A. works out of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and its client base falls into two broad groups: people seeking disability benefits and people hurt in accidents. The firm handles Social Security Disability and SSI claims, veterans disability compensation and pension, long-term disability and ERISA claims, workers' compensation, and employment law including discrimination. Personal injury rounds out the list.

The injury side covers car accidents, slip and fall claims, pedestrian cases, rideshare collisions, and motorcycle crashes. That mix pairs sensibly with the benefits work. Someone hurt badly enough to stop working often has both an injury claim and a benefits claim running at once.

In my opinion, the grouping is the most telling thing on the site. Social Security, veterans benefits, ERISA disability, and workers' compensation are four separate systems with four separate rulebooks, and a firm that takes all four has committed to disability as a subject rather than to one forum.

How the team is built

The site names five attorneys: David S. Bross, Richard L. Frankel, Jennifer Stonage, Elizabeth Berenato, and Mychal Giansanti.

Backgrounds the site states

David Bross founded the firm. Before that he worked as a Benefit Authorizer for the Social Security Administration, a role inside the agency that decides and processes benefit awards. That is unusual experience for a claimant's lawyer to have, and it means someone in the building has seen the file from the government's side of the desk.

Richard Frankel is managing partner and has practiced in the disability benefits field for nearly two decades. Jennifer Stonage joined as an associate after more than ten years handling Social Security disability claims. Elizabeth Berenato is a certified trial attorney who has appeared in hundreds of trials and worked thousands of personal injury cases and SSA hearings.

New Jersey's certified trial attorney designation comes from the state Supreme Court and requires a documented volume of trial work plus a written examination. It is a credential the court grants, not a title a firm assigns itself, which makes it one of the more checkable facts on the page.

Where the firm covers

The main office is in Cherry Hill. The firm also lists offices in Philadelphia and Media in Pennsylvania, and Mt. Holly in New Jersey, and describes its service area as southern New Jersey and the Philadelphia region.

That footprint matters more in this practice than it might elsewhere. Social Security hearings are scheduled through regional hearing offices, workers' compensation in New Jersey runs through district offices assigned by county, and Pennsylvania has its own separate compensation system. A firm with addresses on both sides of the Delaware can take a client whose accident, employer, and home address sit in different states.

How disability claims usually move

The firm's practice areas are easier to weigh with some sense of how each process runs. What follows is general background on these systems, not a description of any particular result at this firm.

Social Security and SSI

A Social Security disability claim starts with an application to the agency, which a state Disability Determination Services office reviews. Most first applications are denied. The claimant can ask for reconsideration, then request a hearing before an administrative law judge, then appeal to the Appeals Council, then to federal district court. The hearing stage is where representation usually earns its keep, because the judge takes live testimony and often hears from a vocational expert about what jobs a person with stated limitations could still do.

Medical evidence drives the outcome. Treatment records, function reports, and opinions from treating doctors carry the weight, and gaps in treatment history are a common reason claims fail. Prior SSA employment, like Bross's Benefit Authorizer work, gives a firm direct familiarity with how the agency reads those files.

Veterans disability

Veterans claims run through the Department of Veterans Affairs on an entirely separate track. The core questions are whether a condition connects to military service and what disability rating it earns under the VA's schedule. Decisions can be challenged through a higher-level review, a supplemental claim with new evidence, or an appeal to the Board of Veterans' Appeals. Ratings determine monthly compensation, so a few percentage points can change a benefit for life.

Long-term disability and ERISA

Long-term disability claims through an employer's plan fall under ERISA, a federal statute with its own procedural traps. The internal appeal to the insurer is the stage that decides most cases, because a court reviewing the denial later is often limited to the record built during that appeal. Deadlines are short and the definition of disability in the policy frequently shifts after two years from the claimant's own occupation to any occupation. Firms handling these claims spend much of their effort assembling the administrative record before litigation is even possible.

What the site says about client contact

The firm states that its staff answers calls directly and returns most calls within minutes to hours. As a reviewer, I treat that as a stated policy rather than a measured outcome, since nothing on the site quantifies it. It is still worth noting, because responsiveness is a recurring complaint in benefits practice, where claims sit for months and clients hear nothing between mailings.

The firm maintains a Facebook page and a LinkedIn presence. Its site does not state a founding year.

What the record shows

The verifiable material here is the attorney roster, the practice area list, the office locations, and the specific background claims attached to four of the five named lawyers. Those claims are concrete enough to check: a former SSA position, a state trial certification, and stated years of practice in a defined field.

Mychal Giansanti appears in the attorney navigation without an accompanying description on the pages our research covered.

The picture that emerges is a regional firm organized around income replacement after illness or injury, staffed by lawyers whose stated experience sits in that same area, operating from four offices across two states.

How the directory classifies the firm

The directory places the firm under insurance law, life and disability insurance, and employment law. Those categories are broader than the descriptions supplied in the record. In particular, the insurance law label should be read through the specific disability-related work identified elsewhere in the listing. The record does not describe disputes involving other types of insurance.

The employment entry has a similar limit. Employment discrimination is the only specific employment subject identified. The record supplies no further detail about the kinds of discrimination matters accepted or the firm's role in disputes that fall outside that description. A reader comparing employment firms therefore has less information here than a reader focused on disability claims.

Address and direct contact details

The Cherry Hill street address is 725 Kenilworth Ave. That detail is useful because the broader office description gives only the city and regional footprint. The record does not provide a suite number, floor, or separate mailing address.

Two telephone numbers appear in the listing: 856-795-8880 and 866-708-2163. The record does not assign different purposes to them, so it would be unsafe to label one as an intake line or connect either number to a particular office. The website is listed as https://brossfrankel.com/.

Limits of the venue information

No courts are named in the supplied record. Although the attorney descriptions refer to trial work and Social Security Administration hearings, the listing does not identify any state court, federal court, or named administrative hearing location in which an individual lawyer is admitted or regularly appears. In this reviewer's view, that omission matters most for a reader evaluating a case that may proceed beyond an agency or insurer.

The record also does not state which jurisdictions have admitted the listed attorneys. Office locations can indicate where a firm meets clients, but they do not establish an individual lawyer's authority to appear in every court associated with those places. The directory material should not be used to infer admissions from addresses alone.

Information the record leaves open

No languages are listed for attorney or staff communication. The record also provides no general firm summary separate from the detailed overview. These are gaps in the directory data rather than evidence that a service is unavailable. Anyone who needs communication in a language other than English would need to ask the firm directly.