Do You Need a Lawyer for a Social Security Disability Appeal?

The Social Security Administration (SSA) doesn't require you to have an attorney at any point during the disability determination process, but it's a smart idea to get representation. While some applicants are able to successfully appeal denials and attend hearings on their own, having an experienced disability lawyer at your side can significantly improve your chances of winning your claim—and may even shorten the time it takes for you to receive a favorable decision.

How Long Does a Disability Appeal Take With a Lawyer?

Because most applicants ("claimants") who are awarded benefits don't receive a favorable decision until after an administrative hearing, disability appeals can frequently take several years, even with a lawyer. But disability attorneys have several tools at their disposal that can help you get approved for benefits faster, making them a valuable asset to have by your side. Your representative can help speed up the disability appeal process in the following ways:

• obtaining and submitting your medical records in a timely manner
• strengthening your claim enough to qualify as a Quick Disability Determination
• maintaining communications with the SSA
• requesting a compassionate allowance for certain medical conditions
• making sure you don't miss the appeals deadlines, and
• writing a pre-hearing on-the-record request or asking for an attorney advisor opinion.

Having a lawyer isn't a guarantee that you'll be awarded benefits quickly, but your attorney can help you avoid many common mistakes that trip up disability applicants who don't have legal representation.

What Stage of Appeal Is Best to Get a Lawyer?

Few claimants hire a lawyer before they first file for disability benefits. Generally, disability attorneys are contacted by potential clients only after they've already submitted their initial application and received a denial letter. While there isn't anything inherently wrong with this approach, it's usually better to get a lawyer as early as possible after you've received a denial—and certainly before you have a disability hearing scheduled.

Reconsideration Review

If your application is denied at the initial stage, it's likely that your first appeal—called reconsideration—will be denied as well. At the reconsideration level, a different claims examiner will review your case and decide whether the original decision to deny your application was incorrect. Only about 15% of claimants nationwide are approved after reconsideration (compared with around 35% at the initial stage) so it's unlikely that you'll win at this level, with or without a lawyer, unless your health has taken a significant turn for the worse.

However, if you hire an attorney for your reconsideration appeal, they can review your initial denial letter and figure out exactly why your application was denied (for example, the claims examiner didn't have enough medical evidence to find that you have a severe impairment). Your lawyer can then add evidence in your appeal that was left off of the initial application or suggest you get a specific medical test that supports your claim, increasing your odds of success and potentially sparing you a long wait for a disability hearing.

Disability Hearing

Despite the low odds of approval at reconsideration, you'll need to go through that stage of appeal before you can request a hearing with an administrative law judge (ALJ). Disability hearings are where applicants have the best odds of getting benefits, with almost 50% of cases resulting in a favorable decision.

Most claimants only decide to hire a lawyer once their disability hearing has been scheduled. But it can take one year or more before your hearing is scheduled, and the agency is only legally obligated to notify you of the scheduled hearing 75 days before the hearing date. That leaves many months where you could have a lawyer working on your behalf to strengthen your claim or speed up the process. You can (and should) take advantage of this administrative "down time" by hiring a representative well before you receive a notice of hearing, preferably soon after you submit your hearing request.

Appeals Council

If you've already had your disability hearing and the judge issued you an unfavorable decision, you can appeal further to a branch of the SSA called the Appeals Council. At the Appeals Council, staff attorneys and appellate judges may agree to review your unfavorable decision and determine whether the judge misapplied the law or didn't consider important facts when deciding your case. If the Appeals Council finds that the judge made a "reversible error," your file will be sent back down (remanded) to the hearing level, and you'll be scheduled for another hearing to correct any mistakes.

If you want the Appeals Council to review your unfavorable decision and you didn't hire a lawyer before your hearing, now's the time. The Appeals Council only remands cases in about 10% of its requests for review, and you'll want an attorney to prepare a convincing appeals brief explaining why the judge's decision was wrong. Furthermore, you'll want to have a representative with you at your remand hearing who can argue in your favor and help the judge correct the previous decision's mistakes.

Federal Court Appeals

If the Appeals Council declines to review your unfavorable decision, you have the option to file a lawsuit in federal court. At this stage, you're no longer working within the SSA's framework of administrative appeals—you're essentially suing the agency because you don't think they followed their own rules correctly. You'll need to file a complaint in the U.S. district court serving your geographic location, and you'll have to know and comply with the federal rules of civil procedure.

It's extremely helpful to have a lawyer if you want to proceed to this stage of appeal. The federal rules of civil procedure are less forgiving than Social Security's own agency procedural requirements, and you risk having your lawsuit dismissed if you don't follow them exactly. Your attorney will be aware of the federal rules and make sure you don't miss any pleading deadlines or submit the wrong paperwork.

How Will Your Lawyer Help With a Social Security Disability (SSDI or SSI) Appeal?

Whether you're applying for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) or Supplemental Security Income (SSI), an experienced disability lawyer is a valuable source of advice. Below are five examples of the ways that having an attorney can help you win benefits at every stage of appeal.

Your Lawyer Will Gather and Assess Your Medical Records

Your medical records are the foundation of your disability case. If your records are incomplete, Social Security may have grounds to deny your claim. One of the most important services a disability attorney can perform involves gathering the proper medical records and submitting them to the SSA. Although you can request records yourself, an attorney can usually get them more quickly, and will also know when your medical records need updating.

In addition to contacting doctors and medical providers to obtain your medical records, your disability lawyer will review the records in detail. Reviewing your records is important because it lets your attorney determine early on whether your file is missing any test results or needs additional medical evidence and gives you the time you need to get these key documents. Additionally, if you have any gaps in your treatment history or your records contain inconsistent reports, your lawyer will know how to best place these "bad facts" in context.

Your Lawyer Can Help Get Doctors' Opinions

Disability lawyers will typically want to contact your treating physician, psychiatrist, or psychologist to obtain a written opinion—usually on a lengthy form—about how your functional limitations affect your ability to work. Often, doctors are more likely to respond to an attorney's request than to a patient's.

If you don't have a doctor you've gone to regularly or the doctor you've seen doesn't support your claim, your disability attorney can request that Social Security schedule a physical or mental consultative examination (on the agency's dime).

Your Lawyer Will Prepare You to Answer Questions at a Hearing

As your scheduled disability hearing date approaches, you might start to feel nervous, which is very common. Having an attorney who is very familiar with hearing procedures and who can tell you what to expect at the hearing can go a long way towards calming your fears. And because lots of claimants tend to make mistakes answering questions when they're nervous, your lawyer can practice with you the types of questions the ALJ might ask and help you prepare your answers. Being well prepared to answer the judge's questions can ease your nerves and make it less likely that you'll say something that might inadvertently hurt your case.

Your Lawyer Will Be Familiar With Your Local Appeals Judges

Another benefit of having a lawyer is that disability attorneys are generally familiar with the personalities and decision-making processes of the judges in their area. Your lawyer may have conducted hearings before the ALJ assigned to your case before and will know their "style" in advance. Knowing the individual likes and dislikes of your ALJ is a big benefit, as your attorney will know how to tailor their arguments to that particular judge.

Your Lawyer Will Know How to Question the Vocational Expert

Vocational experts, or "VEs," are independent consultants hired by Social Security to help the disability judge decide whether any jobs exist that you're able to do. During the hearing, the judge will ask the VE several questions about what type of work someone with your residual functional capacity would be able to perform. These questions are called "hypotheticals." Here's an example of a hypothetical the judge might pose to the VE:

The VE would then respond with the names, occupational codes, and estimated numbers of available jobs that would fit the judge's hypothetical question. If the VE isn't able to name any jobs that exist within the judge's hypothetical and the judge agrees that the hypothetical accurately represents your work-related limitations, your claim will be approved. But if the VE lists several jobs that exist in significant numbers and the judge thinks that you'd be physically or mentally capable of performing those jobs, your claim will be denied.

Once the judge has finished questioning the VE, your lawyer will have the opportunity to cross-examine. Here, the knowledge and experience of a disability attorney are invaluable. Your lawyer can ask their own series of hypotheticals based on your medical records to counter the VE's testimony or add further work restrictions that the judge may have overlooked. Ultimately, your lawyer will know which questions to ask that lead the VE to state that you're unable to perform any jobs at all—which is extremely difficult for claimants to do successfully on their own.

Can You Win a Disability Appeal Without a Lawyer?

Yes, you can certainly win a disability appeal without a lawyer. But unless your case is very clear cut and your evidence points strongly to your disability, you're likely better off hiring an attorney. For example, a U.S. Government Accountability Office report from 2017 found that claimants who were represented at Social Security disability hearings won their case almost three times as often as claimants who were unrepresented.

Successfully winning a disability appeal involves both knowing how to read medical records and understanding how these records fit into Social Security's definition of disability. An experienced lawyer can provide you with objective, clear-eyed advice on the pros and cons of your case and what, if anything, you'll need to do to strengthen your claim. And because most disability attorneys work on contingency (meaning they aren't paid unless you win) and offer free consultations, there's little financial risk in obtaining legal representation.

If you do decide to hire a disability attorney for your SSDI or SSI appeal, don't put off finding one until it's too late for the lawyer to be of any real help to you. You'll want to give your attorney enough time to build up your case before your next appellate level—or you'll waste the potential advantage of having a representative in speeding up the appeals process.

Finding and Hiring Social Security Disability Appeal Lawyers

The process of finding a good disability attorney can seem overwhelming, especially if you live in a major metropolitan area with many options to choose from. You might want to start with two sites that are also part of the Nolo family, Lawyers.com and Avvo.com, which provide free lawyer directories. These directories allow you to search by location and area of law, and they list detailed information about lawyers. You can visit www.lawyers.com/find-a-lawyer or www.avvo.com/find-a-lawyer to find out more.

If you'd like a free consultation, you can sign up for a free case evaluation with our partner, Premier Disability Services. Premier provides disability experts who can help you fill out your application, gather medical information, and meet Social Security's deadlines. If your case goes to a hearing, they'll also provide a lawyer in your area.

Once you've found a lawyer who is a good fit for you, actually hiring them as your representative is a fairly simple process. After the SSA receives a signed Form 1696, Appointment of Representative, your lawyer can handle all communications with the agency, including submitting a request for reconsideration or scheduling a disability hearing. Your lawyer will also ask you to complete a fee agreement, which typically states that you consent to having your representative receive 25% of your disability back pay (up to $9,200, adjusted yearly) if you win your claim.