Eliott Dear, J.D. — New York Attorney & Founder of Claims Assassins

Law school drills one habit before it teaches any single rule: name the issue, put the evidence under it, and leave a record a stranger can follow. Eliott Dear learned that habit at Fordham University School of Law, where he earned his J.D. and served on the Fordham Law Review. He was admitted to the New York bar in 2005 under registration #4329546 and is in good standing.

What Law Review Editing Teaches

Law Review work is mostly checking. Every sentence in an article has to rest on a source, every source has to say what the sentence claims it says, and every citation has to point to the right page. An editor learns to distrust an assertion with nothing underneath it. Eliott Dear brings that instinct to Independent Dispute Resolution, where the reviewer has only the pages in front of it and no reason to take anyone’s word for anything.

Issue

A submission opens on the issue: what the physician billed, what the insurer allowed, and why the gap is in dispute. For a fully insured New York plan, that gap is measured against the benchmark New York law names, the FAIR Health 80th percentile. Putting the question at the top lets the reviewer read every page after it with the question already in mind.

Evidence

The evidence comes from three documents. The EOB shows what the insurer decided. The operative note shows what the surgeon or emergency physician actually did and how involved the work was. The billed charges show what the practice asked for. Eliott Dear ties each statement in the argument to one of those three, the way a footnote ties a sentence to its source.

Record

The record is what is left once the argument is written: an ordered file that a reviewer in New York State IDR, the process the Department of Financial Services administers, can read once, front to back, without hunting for a page. Eliott Dear reviews and signs that file under his own bar number, so the record also carries an attorney’s name and accountability.

From the Classroom to Claims Assassins

Eliott Dear has about twenty years of work in out-of-network physician billing and founded Claims Assassins in 2018. The practice serves plastic and reconstructive surgeons, emergency physicians and oral and maxillofacial surgeons on a 10% contingency on the improvement, with no upfront fee and no contracts. A physician can send one claim and its EOB for a free review and hear Eliott Dear’s read on the issue it raises.