(REMASTERED) 9.18.2011

0:21 And welcome to another edition of Q and A Social Security Disability Today. I am your host, Anthony Reeves, and this show is proudly brought to you by the Reef Law Firm, dedicated to representing the disabled and discriminated, the Reef Law Firm. I want to thank all of you for bringing forth your questions. We're going to try something a little new today. Hopefully you'll enjoy it, and more importantly, hopefully it will provide you with some additional sisters and answering looking at through the questions that we have to provide today. Okay, of course, the question that was asked was what does it mean when you're at the hearing level and you're informed your case is closed and that a decision has been made that good? Is it bad?

1:04 What does that mean? Well, this is what typically happens when you have a hearing before an administrative law judge. The judge renders a written decision. Once they put that written decision together, they will then send you a copy of that decision in writing. This way, I tell people all the time, this is the document that either gets you paid or which you can rely upon if you're deciding to appeal this case. Or file a new application.

1:29 So what typically will be in the decision, Well, first and foremost, there will be a couple of pages, which will be your standard cover sheet pages one, it will tell you whether it's a fully favorable, a partially favorable, or an unfavorable decision. It will tell you that you have within sixty days from the day of that decision to appeal that decision, should you desire to do so.

1:49 It will also tell you that on occasion, the Appeals Council will do a review of the decision on its own, meaning they randomly will pull decisions and they will pull them up to see whether or not they think the decision is one that needs to be reviewed again by the court, their reviewing court, and then send back. After those first three pages, if you have a representative involved, typically there will be a page on it or they lets you know whether they approve the fee contract or don't approve it. That usually happens if you've gotten a fully favorable or partially favorable Then after that you have the bulk of your decision. This is the part that lays out in detail the rationale by the judge to

2:30 render the decision. There'll be a few jurisdictional things. The very beginning in terms of how they got there, when you apply type of application, you apply how many times you got denied, the hearing itself, and then both. Then they lay into the decision where the judge actually goes through the five step sequential evaluation and gives you a breakdown as to the rationale for making their decision. Typically, if there's any issues in it, they'll put that in there as well. The very end is a kind of a summation, kind of a conclusion of how they came to their decision. Now, I tell people all the time when you get a first of all, when you call those security and they say they've made a decision and

3:12 they close the case, they're not going to tell you over the phone. I'm just gonna be blunt. Now, if you haven't gotten the decision within a few days after them telling you they mail it to you, you might want to call them back and ask them to milia another one. But the reality is they're not going to tell you the decision over the phone. The reason why is because that written decision is designed to give you a detailed breakdown of exactly the reasons why they did what they did, or the reason why the she or heat made the decision that they did. So this way, if it's an unfavorable decision, you'll see where the problem areas were in your case, so that if you're talking to your representative and you're deciding whether you want to peel it or

3:49 to start it all over again, you'll know what the rationale is. Same thing. If it's a fully favorable or a partially favorable the court is going to give a breakdown as to where they got their evidence or what evidence they relied on to make that decision. Now, I tell people all the time, just because the court has made a decision within a specific period of time doesn't mean anything. So if the judge makes it fast doesn't mean you've been denied. If the judge makes it slow doesn't mean you're going to get approved, and vice versa.

4:17 Just note that that written decision. Keep that handy so that if you decide to appeal it, or if you're looking for a representative to help you with the case, that's what they're going to rely on, because that is the document that either pays you or you can rely on to appeal. I want to thank the person who provided me this question. Who was asking me about what do I do if I think my representative is causing a delay in me getting my disability, meaning the representative has caused me delay. I've been doing this for almost ten years, and I remember within the first year of practicing, I had someone who made the comment to me, I know it, really it's worth your while that they take a while to prove me, because that means that's more

5:04 money for you. And I was mind blown when I heard that. But the employer that I was working for at the time, he really gave me a nice breakdown and it's been pretty much the foundation of how I articulate today. First and foremost, I can't speak for non attorney representatives because I'm not a non attorney reper. I'm an attorney representative. Most people fail to realize that a couple of things you need to keep in mind. First of all, we are bound by our various bar organizations to maintain and at a certain level of ethics, meaning we can't do anything to hurt your case. Meaning if we have reason to believe that there's evidence that we have in order that would get your case proved faster, we are ethically bound to do so to help, we

5:45 can't hurt your case. Secondly, one of the things I tell people all the time is that ten percent of the population causes ninety percent of the problem for everybody else. So whenever I hear somebody come up to me and say, well, you know, really your representatives is really to your benefit of we drag this along, look them and say what representatives are you talking about? Because I've never met any attorney that does that, because that's not good business practices.

6:07 Why would you do something that's going to hurt your client because guess what's going to happen when you do that. Guess what your client's gonna do. They're gonna tell everybody that they know that you did that. So that's a bad business practice. So that's the second thing that I share. Third, as the representatives, we're in a very unique position because we're in the middle. So we're dealing with the client and we're dealing with the government, and sometimes what happens, and this is why the government always encourages the clients to contact the reps first, because it's easy to put pieces of information together and not have the whole picture.

6:38 And that's why I'm very quick to tell people before you make an accusation that your representative is taking a course of action to the detriment of your case, you got to make sure you have proof, because that's a serious allegation to lay on any representatives. Fourth, keep in mind, at the end of the day, there's nothing in the Social Security regulations that require a representative to do any particular course of action. Here's what I mean by this.

7:05 I mean, if you get denied, they're going to appeal the case for you. If you've got to go to court, they're gonna go to the hearing with you. A lot of times what happens is like there'll be all these medical records and they say, my rep will get them. I say, well, keep in mind the regulation say you may of the responsibility of proving you're disabled. I know some representatives take the practice where they require the client to get the medical records and provide them to them, and then they'll provide them to Social Security administration. It just depends on the firm. The reason why I share this is because this is something particularly passionate to me, because I always say ten percent of the population causes

7:44 ninety percent of the problems for the rest of us. It's very easy when you're dealing in a process like this. It's a long process, it's a frustrating process, and it's so easy to believe that things that are occurring to your detriment. This process is inherently slow. I got to give credit to Commissioner to ask for Hey and the SOID Security Administration are doing an awesome job of trying to speed it up. And more importantly, they're working very closely with the National Organization, the Social Security Claimants Representatives as whether as well as other trade organizations to ensure that claimants are getting the most effective and the most efficient mechanism of processing their claims through I share this

8:22 with you to say this the process is slow, they're trying to speed it up. Be very careful about leveling an allegation because based on and this is usually what happens is that you have a few pieces of information and then you take that information and you make a bigger conspiracy than what it really is. Be mindful because especially if you have then a representative, if you believe your representative is doing something like that, you bring that to their attention, you're going to see a response from them that you're probably not gonna like because in es as you're basically telling them they're being unethical. No representatives like to be told that. And if they believe you believe that, they may that puts you in conflict with them.

8:58 They may be inclined with Now am I saying that? They will not? Necessarily a lot of times, and I can tell you I've done it for years. I've had clients who've had that same impression. Once I've sat down and explained to them what has going on in their case, they usually feel better. And you know why they normally feel better is because in most instances they've only got one side of the story. They've got their side, meaning they call those security. Those security told them something and instead of giving their representative the benefit of the doubt to find out the other side, they just took their sky and they ran with it. Be mindful. Most social security representatives understand one fundamental point. This is a frustrating process.

9:39 It's going to take a while. They've been to do everything they can do to help you out. They are not here to be a part of the problem. They are here to be a part of the solution. All right. Again, I want to thank you for joining me for another edition of Q and A so Security Disability Today. For those of you who have sent me free claim evaluations, I want to thank you. Please pay close attention to your spam by because a lot of times what we do is when we get those responsible, we'll email you if we can't call you, and sometimes we know that some of the emails they go into your spam So if you see something there, respond back to this way we'll know that you got it all right. Again, this is Anthony Reeves and this is again your Q and

10:15 A Social Security Disability Today.