Why Judges Don’t Like Handwritten Notes on Medical Records (REMastered from 12/27/2013)

0:27 During my court appearance, my representative wrote a note on one of my mental one of my treating notes here indicating that I met the listings, and the judge got real teed off about it and reprimanded him. And why did he get so teed off? Okay, the reality is that I really need more than that, because I doubt the judge really got teed off just because you're wrote on a note. But let me back up before I say this, because I tell people everybody's a little different.

0:54 The reality is is that and this is one of the things that I tell people when you provide medical evidence to the court, provide a clean copy. What do I mean that clean copy? Meaning don't put commentary on there? And you know, and I'll be honest, every rep has does it a little differently. If the person was able to get your disability benefits by bringing to the court's attention, and if I was a rep and I did that accidentally, and I've done that a couple of times in the past few years ago, and the judge has gotten a litt annoyed because they like clean copies. They don't need that commentary on there. And sometimes I'll do that. I've done that where I've said no, and it is usually like a highlighter, and I'm like, my apologies. It wasn't

1:32 my intent to, you know, cause any issue to the original document and so forth. It was just to bring to the court's attention those ports that I believe irrelevant. And the judge basically says, you can do that in court without highlighting something. I always tell people, because I'll get clients all the time that will provide me copies of medical evidence and they have their notes on their seeing where the doctor says this, and I'm thinking, that drives me nuts. Now that drives me nuts. You could imagine, and I'm on your side, imagine that's going to drive a judge who's sitting there looking at this evidence trying to decide whether you're disabled. Don't do that. Judges like clean copies. They like to be able to look at

2:12 something that doesn't have any obstructions on it. Let's be real, a lot of doctors don't have the best penmanship in the world. So you've got a documentation that has the doctor's notes on there, and then you have another person's notes on there as well, and be mindful if the person puts their own notes on there, and you know the judges sent there reviewing the file ahead of time.

2:33 The judge may not know that that representative was the one who put a note there, and may think it's the doctor who did. Now you've just thrown all kinds of things in confusion, so I can see whether the judge could be a wee bit annoyed. And so that's why you know it's every judge, is always tell people.

2:48 Every judge has their own qualms and quirk, just like every attorney. So the fact that they got annoyed by that doesn't surprise me too much. They shouldn't have. But in the grander scheme of things, I can totally understand why the attent