Heather Jean Gold

We were referred to Heather by a friend and feel so fortunate that she took our case. She has a deep knowledge of special ed law and is fearless when trying to get the best outcome for children. She thinks of the child and family first and remains focused throughout the process. Heather is organized,... efficient and keeps the family on task while sensitive to expenses families incur. She is highly regarded in the legal and special ed community. Her expertise, intense compassion for children and honesty helped us through a lengthy process. Now with a successful outcome, we know she will always be there for us as a legal advisor and friend.

We wish we had found Heather earlier, but just so glad we did finally find her. With Heather, it’s all about preparedness and laying out a plan. As parents, she put us to work with various action items and deliverables as part of the overall plan, which not only laid out the history and painted a p...icture of our story, but also helped in keeping legal costs as low as possible. She was always steps ahead of us in terms of preparing for the multiple routes our case could possibly go, and was ready for each one of those paths. We’re not sure our case would have actually gone to hearing, but with Heather in our corner, we were certainly ready, and I believe, because she was in our corner, there was no way our district wanted any part of a hearing. Heather is passionate, to put it mildly, but is as invested herself, as we were as parents. If you’re willing to take an active role as parents, I would highly recommend Heather, as she will collaboratively work with you as a team in taking the best steps to achieve the best outcome.

We have worked with Heather for over 6 years as we've partnered with the school system to provide the best possible educational programming for our daughter. Heather provided us clear instructions and action items at every point along our journey. Heather has only one goal - to get us the best possib...le outcome for our child. She is also extremely efficient with our time (and, therefore, keeps the legal costs as low as possible) so that our conversations are focused and quickly actionable. In the end, we have our child in a program that we feel is the best for her and we could not have done it without Heather's guidance.

When our world came to a confusing and frightening halt 13 years ago, when our son was diagnosed with PDD-NOS, and our school district refused to provide him with what was recommended for therapies/teaching methods, a colleague referred us to Heather Gold. When we met with Heather, she thoroughly ex...plained our new "world" to us and what our options were, she listened to our concerns, and she immediately got to work on our son's behalf. Because of Heather's invaluable legal expertise, dedication and determination, our son has had the opportunity to grow from a struggling preschool student with almost no verbal skills, to a confident and thriving High School Senior this coming year. We are incredibly proud of how well our son has done and how hard he works every single day but, if it weren't for Heather's help, none of it would have been within reach. Heather is also a wonderful person who dedicates her life to helping families of children with special needs receive the help they need and require in order to learn and grow to be high-functioning young adults. It takes a special person, like Heather Gold, to dedicate herself completely to all of our children and their families. We are incredibly fortunate that our child was one of the children whose life she has touched in countless ways. We unequivocally and enthusiastically recommend Heather Gold.

I've kept Heather Gold on retainer for over a decade so I could reach out to her whenever I needed an expert's advice, even though I'm a lawyer myself. She has such broad experience in Massachusetts special ed law that she knows what position is likely to be a winner at the BSEA and what will likely... lose. I found it's better to keep my special ed lawyer behind the scenes so that I could maintain a cordial, lower-key relationship with my school district. I would provide Heather Gold with all of my son's IEP paperwork and get her advice about what I could ask for and how to ask for it. Then I would do the talking and negotiating with the school district myself to keep things from getting escalated unproductively. I got exactly what I wanted with her counsel. I'd highly recommend Heather Gold for both ongoing advice and representation in an appeal.