Will a lawyer improve your chances of winning disability benefits in California?
It's very common to say that, at the initial claim and first appeal levels, a lawyer can do little to have any substantial impact on the outcome of your disability claim. However, whether this is actually true or not probably depends on the individual or firm providing representation on an SSD or SSI case. Some lawyers and non attorney representatives will proactively seek to win a claim at the earliest level possible.
At the disability hearing level, however, few would argue against the fact that having a qualified lawyer or non attorney representative is beneficial. Statistically, in the past about forty percent of unrepresented claimants who have their cases heard by administrative law judges are successful, while about sixty percent of represented claimants win their claims at hearings. Those numbers, unfortunately, have been going down in recent years. Still, it is undeniable that representation at the hearing level can improve the chances of winning.
Additional pages on this topic:
1. Do Lawyers Improve The Chances of Winning Disability?
Excerpt: There are reasons why disability lawyers and Social Security representatives in California have a higher approval rate than disability applicants at their disability hearing. For example, not many average disability applicants know anything about disability impairment listing criteria, vocational guidelines, or past work, or how social security decides that a claimant has the ability to perform other types of work.
2. Statistically, does an attorney make a substantial difference
Excerpt: "SSA's statistics...indicate that 74.9% of Title II disability claimants are represented by an attorney. Statistics for the same period indicate that the allowance rate at the hearing level for Title II disability claimants with representation is 63.6%; in contrast, the allowance rate for unrepresented Title II claimants is 40.1%." To be clear, these are old stats. However, they did illustrate that representation represented in a nearly 50 percent increase in the chances of winning at a disability hearing. And that is something that is not likely to change regardless of the year.
3. What a disability lawyer will do to prepare
Excerpt: By reviewing the medical records, the disability lawyer or representative can check to see if the evidence was evaluated properly. It may be that the claimant possesses greater physical or mental limitations than was considered to be the case by the disability examiner. If this is true, it may be that the claimant cannot return to a past job that was indicated by the disability examiner, or it may be that the claimant cannot do some type of other work that was indicated by the disability examiner.
About the Author: Tim Moore is a former Social Security Disability Examiner in North Carolina, has been interviewed by the NY Times and the LA Times on the disability system, and is an Accredited Disability
Representative (ADR) in North Carolina. For assistance on a disability application or Appeal in NC, click here.
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