Attorney Jay Symonds
Jay Symonds is a Partner at Dell Disability Lawyers with nearly three decades of ERISA disability litigation experience and more than three thousand ERISA disability claims, appeals, and lawsuits under his belt.
Jay spent the first half of his career on the insurer side, serving as in-house and outside counsel for some of the country’s largest disability insurance carriers, including Sun Life Financial, Reliance Standard Life Insurance Company, and Boston Mutual Life Insurance Company. As Senior Litigation Counsel at Sun Life Financial, he managed all ERISA disability litigation filed in the United States involving the company’s group insurance products. He also spent several hundred hours training insurer claims and appeals units on DOL regulatory compliance, claims investigations, and ERISA case law.
In 2009, Jay served as Chair of the Defense Research Institute’s annual Life, Health, Disability and ERISA Seminar in New York City — the largest and most prominent ERISA defense conference in the country. He also served as a seminar speaker in 2005, 2007, and 2009. In 2014, he co-authored the “ERISA – First Circuit” chapter of the American Bar Association’s Misrepresentation in the Life, Health, and Disability Insurance Application Process: A National Survey.
A cum laude graduate of New England Law and Bentley University (B.S. in Finance), Jay has been a member of the Massachusetts Bar since 1998 and is admitted to practice in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First, Second, and Third Circuits. Since joining Dell Disability Lawyers in 2015, Jay has used his deep carrier-side knowledge to fight for claimants who are unfairly denied disability and life insurance benefits under ERISA.
Bar and Court Admissions
- Commonwealth of Massachusetts
- United States District Court, Massachusetts
- First Circuit Court of Appeals
- Second Circuit Court of Appeals
- Third Circuit Court of Appeals
Affiliations
- Boston Bar Association
- Massachusetts Bar Association
- American Bar Association
Education
- Bentley University, BS in Finance, cum laude
- New England Law, JD, cum laude
Publications
- ERISA – First Circuit: Misrepresentation in the Life, Health, and Disability Insurance Application Process: A National Survey. American Bar Association (Second Edition).

