SSD Disability: Will a Disability Lawyer Pay for Your Medical Records or Make You Pay?

Here's the thing. Not all disability representatives and disability lawyers work the same way. Some will advance the cost of obtaining medical records for their clients and some won't.

Before I go on, what do I mean by "advance the cost"? I mean this: you get a disability attorney or a non-attorney representative to assist you with your claim. And in the course of moving your case through the appeal system, or getting prepared for a hearing before an administrative law judge, they send out requests for medical record updates (many people are surprised to learn that the social security administration stops getting updated medical records after the reconsideration appeal has been denied meaning that you or your representative are given the task of doing this before appearing at a hearing). In so doing, the individual representing you decides to pay for the medical records upfront, the idea being that when the case is over the representative will bill you for the costs that were incurred in obtaining the records.

That's what I mean by advance the costs. Disability lawyers and representatives who do this save their clients from a sizeble burden. After all, their clients are filing for disability, i.e. they are not working and drawing a paycheck.

Of course, this becomes a financial burden for the representative...who may or may not be reimbursed for the cost of obtaining the medical records and paying the cost upfront for his or her client. It's a risk to take for the representative. I've spoken to some reps who advance costs for records who state that they probably don't get reimbursed by their clients about 20 percent of the time.

Not surprisingly, of course, not every disability attorney and representative pays for medical records upfront. This places the financial burden of getting the case properly prepared squarely on the shoulders of the claimant, at a time when they can least afford it.

What happens if the claimant doesn't have the money to pay for the medical record updates? I guess different representatives handle this situation differently, perhaps case-by-case, but it certainly has the "potential" making the case far weaker as it heads to hearing.

What's the point of this post? If you're getting representation, one of the things you should be sure to pay attention to is the fee agreement since that details the costs of representation, including costs other than the actual fee itself, such as the cost of obtaining records, if the rep in question is not in the practice of advancing costs.

Should you take a pass on a disability lawyer who would make you pay for your own medical records upfront rather than advance the costs and bill you when the case is done with? I can't really say, because there may be some really good reps out there who don't advance costs.

But...if you're looking at two different disability reps and one advances costs and the other doesn't...which one do you think you'll choose? Which one will you be able to afford to choose?