What Do Social Security Disability Lawyers Do?

Hiring a disability lawyer or nonattorney advocate to help you get Social Security benefits (SSDI or SSI) is almost always a better idea than trying to navigate a complex system alone. Social Security disability attorneys perform a wide variety of tasks as part of their representation, including developing your medical evidence and preparing a theory of disability—the "why" you're disabled—for the claims examiners and administrative law judges who decide your case.

While you're under no obligation to hire a Social Security disability lawyer at any point during the disability determination process, SSDI claimants who have an attorney representing them are almost three times more likely to qualify for benefits than claimants without representation. If you're still on the fence about whether or not to get a lawyer, it can help to learn more about what Social Security disability attorneys can actually do for you.

What Happens When I First Call a Disability Attorney or Advocate?

When you first contact a disability lawyer or advocate, either the representative themselves or a staff member for the firm will explain to you how the disability process works. They will then conduct an initial interview to gather the basic facts of your case. The firm uses these facts to help determine if they will take your case. The interviews are usually done by phone, but you can ask to meet with someone in person.

Staff members are trained to spot cases that have a high likelihood of success. But with borderline cases, a legal professional usually reviews the file to make a final determination about whether the firm will represent you. Because disability lawyers work on contingency—meaning they don't get paid unless you win your claim—if it looks like your case is unlikely to be successful, the firm will probably decline to represent you.

Will My Lawyer File My Social Security Claim for Me?

Some SSDI attorneys won't help you file your initial disability claim because they only work on appeals. If you're just beginning the disability process, make sure you find a representative who can help you fill out the initial application. Because disability lawyers receive a fixed percentage of any past due benefits you're owed (rather than charging you for their time on an hourly basis), you won't have to worry about paying more for help with your initial filing.

How Does My Disability Lawyer Develop My Medical Evidence?

Your medical records are the backbone of your SSDI claim. Your disability attorney or a staff member for your representative's law firm will—with your written permission—request records from your medical providers and submit them to the Social Security Administration in a timely manner. Usually, your attorney will usually pay for these records for you until your case ends, at which time the law firm will bill you for the cost.

Because Social Security frequently requires documentation of particular exams or tests in order to establish disability, your representative will review your medical records to determine whether you need to undergo additional testing. This may involve asking the agency to schedule you for a consultative examination—especially if you haven't seen a doctor recently—or sending you to get the required testing done on your own. If you haven't been to a doctor who specializes in your medical condition, your lawyer might assist you in setting up an appointment with a specialist.

Your disability attorney will maintain regular contact with you in order to make sure that they have the most current records from your medical treatment. They'll periodically ask you to provide up-to-date contact information for your doctors, locations of any hospitals where you've been admitted for surgery, prescription medication dosages, and whether you've had any recent lab tests or medical imaging conducted.

In addition to requesting, reviewing, and submitting your medical evidence, your disability lawyer will also consider which doctors may be willing to write a medical source statement in support of your disability claim. This involves providing your regular doctors with a blank physical or mental functional capacity assessment form to fill out at their leisure and, when completed, checking that the doctors' opinions are supported by medical evidence and consistent with other information in your file.

How Will My Attorney Prepare Me for My Social Security Disability Hearing?

If you've been denied SSDI benefits twice and have requested a hearing with a disability judge, your attorney will reach out to prepare your testimony as the hearing date approaches. Most disability advocates speak with their clients by phone, but you can ask your representative to meet you in person if you wish.

What Happens During Pre-Hearing Prep?

Before your pre-hearing meeting or phone conference, your representative will have reviewed your file and determined what issues still need to be addressed. Make sure you have your medical records and other relevant documents handy if you need to refer to them during your meeting.

As part of your pre-hearing preparation, your attorney will review the questions about your daily activities that the judge is likely to ask you during your hearing. Examples of common hearing questions include:

• How long can you stand, in minutes or hours, before you need to sit down?
• Can you climb a flight of stairs?
• Do you need a cane or other assistive device to walk?
• Can you walk at least a block?
• How much weight can you lift in pounds?
• Can you lift a gallon of milk?
• Are you currently working part-time or full-time?
• Do you have any difficulty maintaining basic hygiene, like getting dressed or showering?
• Are you able to prepare simple meals?
• Can you do laundry?
• Are you depressed or anxious?
• Can you go grocery shopping by yourself?
• How long can you maintain focus or concentration?
• Can you follow basic instructions, like a simple recipe?

You must answer all of these questions as honestly as you can—even if they're embarrassing or you feel ashamed of the answers. If you don't, your attorney can't represent you effectively. Remember that your representative is not there to judge you, but to help you win your claim. For more information, see our article on how to answer questions at a disability hearing.

Are Meetings With My Attorney Confidential?

Anything you say to your lawyer is "privileged." This means your representative can only share information with others that you say it's okay to share. If you aren't sure why the attorney needs to know certain information, you should ask them to explain why the answer is important to your case.

Will My Representative Arrange Witnesses for Me?

Many judges will allow you to bring a witness to testify about your disability, but because witnesses can be harmful or helpful, your attorney should decide if witness testimony is necessary to win your case. Your lawyer may instead prefer that you have your friends, family members, or former employers write and submit third-party statements in support of your disability.

How Will My Disability Attorney Argue My Case?

After reviewing your medical file and conducting pre-hearing prep with you, your lawyer will use their knowledge and experience of Social Security disability rules to determine how best to win your case. Your lawyer will have reviewed your previous disability denial letter to learn the reasons the agency denied your claim so that they can explain why these issues should be resolved in your favor.

How Do Lawyers Know What Arguments Will Win?

Your attorney will develop a "theory" of why you're disabled under Social Security disability law. The "theory of disability" involves applying agency regulations to the particular facts of your case in order to draw a conclusion that you should be awarded benefits. Lawyers have several main theories they use in order to explain why a claimant is disabled:

• your condition meets a Blue Book listed impairment
• your condition equals a listed impairment
• you're unable to do your past work and the grid rules direct a disability finding, or
• your residual functional capacity rules out even the easiest, least demanding jobs.

Lawyers don't have to choose only one theory of disability. Your attorney will write a legal brief explaining the main theory of your case as well as arguing alternative theories that may be more persuasive to the judge. For example, if the judge doesn't think that you meet a medical listing but does agree that you have physical limitations keeping you from working at all, the judge can find you disabled by having a "less than sedentary" residual functional capacity.

How Will Your Lawyer Use the Listings to Argue Disability?

Listed impairments are diseases, disorders, or mental illnesses that Social Security considers especially severe. There are about 100 listed impairments in the Blue Book disability manual, each with a corresponding description of requirements that must be documented in your medical records in order to "meet a listing." If you meet the criteria in the description, you'll qualify for disability automatically.

In order to determine whether you meet a listing, your representative will first see if your illness is listed in the Blue Book. If it is, your attorney will review the requirements of the listing and compare them to the evidence in your medical records to see if they match. If your evidence doesn't exactly match the listing but seems close enough, your attorney may request a medical expert opinion to determine whether your condition may be "functionally equal" to a listed impairment.

How Will Your Lawyer Argue Disability Under a Medical-Vocational Allowance?

If your condition doesn't seem likely to meet the listing, the attorney will look to other possible theories—namely, that you should be granted benefits due to a combination of your functional limitations from your medical condition and your vocational profile. Your vocational profile refers to your age, education, employment experience, and learned skills. If your medical limitations rule out your past jobs and you can't do other work (or learn how to do it), you'll qualify for benefits under what disability lawyers call a "medical-vocational allowance."

Here are a few examples of how your attorney might argue that you should receive a medical-vocational allowance:

• You're over 55, can't do your past jobs, can't lift more than 20 pounds, and don't have transferable skills to light work.
• You're over 50, can't do your past jobs, and can perform sedentary work but have mental limitations that keep you from using your previously acquired skills at a sit-down job.
• You've spent 35 years or more performing "arduous, unskilled labor," can't perform that type of work anymore, and only have a marginal education.
• You're younger than 50 years old and can't do your past work, but aren't able to sit long enough to spend a full eight-hour day at a desk job.

Claimants 50 years of age and older generally have an easier time getting a medical-vocational allowance thanks to a special set of regulations called the "grid rules." The grid rules let Social Security grant benefits to applicants approaching full retirement age even if they can physically perform less demanding jobs provided they don't have transferable skills to adapt easily to a career change.

Disability attorneys for claimants under the age of 50 will almost always argue that their client is physically or mentally unable to work at even the simplest, least physically taxing jobs full-time. They may argue that their client's cognitive symptoms would result in too much time spent off-task for employers to tolerate, or that their need to take extra breaks to relieve pain isn't consistent with competitive employment. Judges may be receptive to these theories of disability provided that they are supported by medical evidence.

What Will Your Attorney Do at Your Disability Appeal Hearing?

During your hearing, the administrative law judge (ALJ) will go over the procedural aspects of your case with your disability lawyer and make sure all the relevant evidence is included in your file. Your attorney and the ALJ may discuss amending your alleged onset date, identifying any trial work periods, or agreeing to a closed period of disability if your condition has already significantly improved.

The ALJ will then ask you questions about why you think you're disabled. These questions should be very similar, if not identical, to those your lawyer asked you in your pre-hearing preparations. Your lawyer won't be able to answer these questions for you, but they can follow up with any relevant questions they think the judge missed.

Once the judge has finished asking you questions, they will begin posing a series of hypothetical questions to the vocational expert (VE) who will very likely be present at your hearing. The judge asks these hypotheticals to see whether somebody with a certain set of restrictions would be able to work at various jobs.

Judges tend to ask the VE several hypothetical questions, each containing a different degree of limitations. Some questions will result in the VE responding with several jobs, while others are so restrictive that the VE won't be able to name any potential jobs somebody with those restrictions could do. Here's where your lawyer can help by asking the VE follow-up questions about any proposed jobs and their requirements as well as posing their own set of hypotheticals designed to rule out all work.

What Will My Attorney Do With Bad Evidence?

It's not uncommon for claimants' medical records to contain information that is not only unhelpful but may actively hurt their case. For example, your doctor may write a medical opinion saying that you're totally fine and don't have any job restrictions. Fortunately, experienced disability lawyers are trained to handle "bad facts" in a way that can place them in context and mitigate any damage. Below are a few examples of how Social Security disability attorneys can handle different types of potentially harmful evidence.

Bad Medical Opinions

If your file includes an unhelpful medical opinion from a doctor, your attorney will ask you questions aimed at reducing the importance of the doctor's statement. For instance, your lawyer may ask you how long you had been a patient of the doctor, whether the doctor was a specialist in your illness, and whether you sought a second opinion.

Inconsistent Evidence or Statements About Daily Activities

If your records indicate you don't have a problem doing certain daily activities, like driving or completing household chores, Social Security may take this to mean that you wouldn't struggle with related tasks at work. Often, these inconsistent reports are easily resolved by your attorney asking you questions about whether you could do those tasks on a "good day" or a "bad day." You don't have to be bedridden in order to qualify for SSDI benefits, so demonstrating that you have times where you have the energy to perform "normal" activities doesn't have to harm your case.

Drug or Alcohol Abuse

If your records contain evidence about past or current drug or alcohol abuse, it's especially important for your lawyer to explain to the ALJ what you're doing to treat your addiction. That's because Social Security can deny your claim if substance abuse is material to your disability. As long as you and your attorney are upfront about your struggles with drugs or alcohol, the judge will likely appreciate your candor and may find that your substance abuse doesn't substantially contribute to your disability. But if the ALJ thinks that you're trying to avoid evidence of active addiction, or mislead them about the extent of your substance use, your case will be damaged.

What Else Do Disability Advocates Do?

In addition to the above professional services, disability attorneys can often provide moral support during what is frequently a trying time in claimants' lives. Being able to rely on your lawyer to handle communications with the Social Security Administration, make sure appeal deadlines aren't missed, and help you feel more comfortable with the entire process can be an invaluable asset that allows you to focus your attention and efforts on your health.

How to Find a Social Security Disability Lawyer

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.

When searching for a disability attorney, you may have the option between a large national firm, a smaller boutique practice local to your region, or a sole practitioner. Whichever type of representation you prefer, you should ask questions during the initial intake or consultation so that you end up with an advocate who is the right fit for you.