Our Story
As the leading New Jersey and Pennsylvania elder care law firm, Rothkoff Law Group helps families navigate issues involving chronic illness by counseling clients and their caregivers on Medicaid benefits, Veterans’ benefits, estate planning, long-term care, care coordination, health insurance, disability planning, and many more services not found in a traditional elder law firm.
For over two decades, Rothkoff Law Group has helped clients and their families respond to the legal, financial, physical, and psychological challenges associated with the aging process in both New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Rothkoff Law Group is committed to giving you peace of mind as you plan for the future. Our office believes that dedicated and superior customer service and individualized attention can make this seemingly overwhelming process empowering and even rewarding.
– Jerold E. Rothkoff
It has been over twenty years since I opened the doors to Rothkoff Law Group. As I look back, I am reminded of the events that forever altered the course of my professional career. In 1999, I attended the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys annual conference which took place in Philadelphia. Within the first two hours at the conference, I became energized in a way that had eluded me in my first years in the practice of law. Upon returning home from the first day at the conference, I advised my wife I wanted to practice elder care law.
I knew back then that there was something about this field of elder law that would fulfill me in ways which I could never have imagined when I went to law school and set out upon my journey to become a lawyer. Two hours at the conference changed my life.
For the first time in my career, I felt I had an impact on a client’s life that was confronted with real problems. I had become a problem-solver, and it felt good. It still feels good today. Like almost every elder law attorney over twenty years ago, I thought elder law was about protecting assets from the nursing home, drafting estate planning documents, and guardianships. Over the years, I have learned how narrow-minded my views actually were.
Clients and their caregivers were coming to our office with typically more pressing issues than simply “protecting the money.” Issues such as how to convince dad to leave the home to keep him safe, how to best take away dad’s car keys, and how therapy can be maximized under insurance coverage. In 2005, I realized I needed to do better to truly address our clients ever increasing concerns.
In 2005, our firm adopted the “Life Care Planning” practice model by incorporating social work to assist families in advocacy for their loved ones. Life Care Planning has enabled us to truly provide “holistic” services that our clients need and deserve. Over the years, we have expanded our services to include veterans’ benefits, client education programs, health insurance navigation, and additional advocacy in a home and community-based setting not found in a traditional elder law firm.
As I look back on these past twenty plus years, I have probably learned more from my clients than they have learned from me. The most important thing I have learned is to listen. Listen to the clients’ wonderful stories about the wars they have fought, the places they have been, and the people they have met. We have much to learn from the elderly and disabled, and they have much to share. It has been an honor and privilege assisting seniors, the disabled, and their families. It is a debt of gratitude that I can only hope to repay.
– Jerold E. Rothkoff