O'Connor Law PLLC

Focus and practice areas

Two connected areas of New York law define this firm's work: workers' compensation and Social Security disability. O'Connor Law PLLC helps injured workers file claims and pursue benefits, and it handles Social Security disability applications along with appeals when a first request falls short. Its practice-areas pages also cover Schedule Loss of Use awards, a specific workers' compensation benefit tied to permanent loss of function in a body part.

The mix tells you where the firm puts its time. Workers' compensation and disability claims run on their own rules, deadlines, and medical evidence. A firm that handles both can represent the same client across a workplace injury claim and a later disability determination, since the two systems often touch the same person and the same medical file.

Claims and appeals

Appeals form a large part of both areas. A denied workers' compensation claim goes before a judge at the state Workers' Compensation Board. A denied Social Security disability application moves through reconsideration and then a hearing before an administrative law judge. The firm lists applications and appeals together, which suggests it stays with a claim past a first refusal.

How Schedule Loss of Use works

Schedule Loss of Use awards run on medical measurement. After an injury to a limb, hand, foot, eye, or similar body part heals as far as it will, a doctor assigns a percentage of lost use. That percentage sets the number of weeks of benefits the worker receives. Handling these awards well means reading medical reports closely and, at times, questioning the percentage a carrier's doctor assigns.

The founder's background

According to the firm, its founder previously worked as defense counsel for workers' compensation insurance companies. That detail carries weight in this field. Comp claims are contested by insurers, and a lawyer who once argued the carrier's side has seen how those companies build and defend a file.

This kind of background is uncommon enough to be worth stating plainly. Many claimant firms are staffed by lawyers who have always worked the claimant side. A founder who crossed over brings a different starting view of how a file will be challenged.

The firm presents this history as part of how it approaches claims. As a reviewer, I read it as a statement about method: someone who defended carriers knows the arguments a claimant will meet, and where a weak file tends to break. The site ties that experience to its current work for injured workers.

How the team is built

The Our Team page names five attorneys: Mary Ellen O'Connor, listed as Attorney and CEO, along with Vanessa Noel, John Talbot, Karlee Makely, and Martha Dallman. The page presents each of them by name and title.

Around the attorneys, the firm describes a wider staff of paralegals, intake workers, and settlement coordinators. That structure fits the volume side of comp and disability work. These cases generate medical records, employer forms, and hearing dates, and the paperwork moves faster when trained non-attorney staff handle intake and settlement logistics. In this kind of practice, that support often decides whether deadlines are met and records arrive on time. The firm states that its team offers multilingual service, which matters across a client base as varied as New York's.

The kinds of workers the firm serves

O'Connor Law names specific groups of workers in its materials. Its pages address corrections officers, construction workers, and hospital staff, three occupations with distinct injury patterns. Construction work brings falls and lifting injuries. Hospital and corrections jobs add exposure risks and physical confrontation.

The firm also handles occupational illness. Its practice-areas page points to conditions such as asbestos exposure and toxic mold for corrections officers, illnesses that develop across months or years on the job. These claims follow a longer path, since the worker has to link a diagnosis to workplace conditions, often well after the exposure began. A firm that names these conditions is telling clients it takes the slower, evidence-heavy occupational cases.

Occupational claims often turn on exposure history. The worker, or the firm acting on their behalf, gathers a work record, medical evidence, and at times expert opinion connecting the illness to the job. For a group like corrections officers, that can mean documenting years spent in older facilities where asbestos or mold was present.

What the record shows

The firm makes two numerical claims on its home and about pages. It states that it has handled over 100,000 cases, and that it has represented New Yorkers for more than 85 years. The site does not give a specific founding year, so the exact starting point stays general.

Those figures describe scale and longevity. A practice that has run for more than eight decades has worked through many revisions of New York's comp and disability rules. A six-figure case count points to a high-volume operation, staffed to move many files at once. In my opinion, a claimant weighing options will value that kind of focus, because comp and Social Security disability reward lawyers who keep to a small set of fields.

O'Connor Law names the five attorneys who lead its work and supports its claims with a long history in a single area of law. The firm serves clients across New York State from its offices in Larchmont and the Bronx.