THE HEARING IS LIKE A TEST. PASSING REQUIRES PREPARATION.



A Social Security disability hearing is a lot like a big test you took in school. The test may only last 1 hour.  However, you put many hours into preparing for it.  You don't just walk into the classroom and take the test, not if you want to pass.

Social Security disability hearings, in my view, are won in preparation as much as in the hearing itself. Preparation includes finding and obtaining all the medical records from doctors, clinics, hospitals, emergency rooms, psychologists, school counselors, insurance companies, or employers--anyone that may have records about the claimant's condition.  There may be hundreds of pages of these records that the representative must read tediously, extracting important facts from each one.  That can take weeks or months to do it right.

Employment or work history needs to be evaluated carefully to determine whether the claimant has performed skilled, semi-skilled or unskilled work--or a combination of those.  Are there skills that might transfer to a job category with a lower exertion requirement?  Has the claimant completed any special schooling or vocational courses that might permit direct entry into skilled work?  And past work needs to be classified by exertion categories:  sedentary, light, medium, heavy or very heavy.

A legal theory of the case must be developed.  This may require many hours of study, research and development. There are literally thousands of Social Security rules and regulations that may need to be consulted. Writing an effective pre-hearing brief may take weeks. If there is sufficient medical evidence to warrant an "on the record" decision without a hearing, this should be submitted as soon as possible.  (This can save the claimant a lot of money on the representative's fees, since fees are based on a percentage of back pay awarded.  The earlier the case is won, the less the fee is going to be).

If a student were about to take an examination that would impact the rest of his life, he certainly would want plenty of time to study and prepare.  Since a disability representative wants to win your case (which will impact the rest of your life), he/she needs time to prepare the case.  Incidentally, the representative's fee is not increased because he is appointed to the case early--just his chances of success. Appointing a representative in January won't cost any more than waiting to appoint one in November.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

GETTING MONEY FROM SSDI

SSDI stands for Social Security Disability Insurance .  When you first began working, the Government deducted a percentage of your wages, called a FICA tax.  This continued as long as you worked, in most cases.  This money was matched by your employer and set aside in a government trust fund to help you if you later became disabled and could not work. SSDI is a type of government sponsored insurance program, usually called "Social Security disability insurance."  To get benefits out of SSDI, you must prove  that you have a medical disability so severe that you cannot work any full-time job; that this disability has lasted, or is expected to last, for at least 12 consecutive months. That sounds simple but Social Security has made it rather difficult to prove that you are disabled.  One reason is that their definition of 'disability' is so strict.  You usually must prove that you cannot perform even simple, unskilled work at the sedentary (sitting) leve
Read more

POST HEARING EVIDENCE

Many people assume that a Social Security disability case is over when the hearing has been held.  This isn't always the case.  Often there is post hearing work that should be done to achieve the best chance of a favorable decision. Everyone at a disability hearing works under pressure.  This includes the claimant, the representative, the vocational expert and even the administrative law judge.  Hearings are generally limited to less than one hour.  The judge will ask questions that place the claimant under stress to answer correctly.  The representative or attorney will be asked to respond to procedural issues or points of law that place him or her under pressure.  The judge must constantly conduct the hearing so that it follows Social Security laws, rules and regulations.  Further, the judge must form accurate hypothetical questions for the vocational expert based on the medical and vocational evidence in the file and upon the claimant's testimony.  The vocational expert th
Read more

PARTIALLY FAVORABLE DECISIONS ON DISABILITY

You attended a hearing on your Social Security disability claim.  A few weeks later, you receive a Notice of Decision in the mail that says you have received a Partially Favorable decision.  Does this mean that you are only partially disabled, not fully disabled? ANSWER:  No.  Social Security does not make awards for partial disability.  You are either disabled or not disabled.  There is no such category as "partially disabled" within Social Security law. A "partially favorable" decision means that the administrative law judge has found you to be disabled.  However, he or she has changed some material fact in your application.  Most often, this change involves the established onset date--the date you were found to have become disabled.  For example, in your application you may have alleged that you became disabled on June 1, 2012.  After reviewing the facts of the case, the judge may have decided that you did not become disabled until September 1, 2012.  Theref
Read more