From WSAZ:
Attorneys representing hundreds of people fighting to keep their federal disability benefits worry those benefits may disappear for most of them if they do not have a lawyer.
Last year, the Social Security Administration ordered nearly 1,800 people to attend hearings to determine whether they should continue receiving disability checks. Many have already gone through with the hearings and are now waiting on the results.
The people are former clients of Floyd County lawyer Eric C. Conn. ...
Thursday night, some of those people gathered in Prestonsburg, where they heard from the legal team trying to help them keep their disability payments.
The prevailing theme was encouraging disability recipients who have not hired an attorney to represent them at their re-determination hearings to do so. ...
[Ned] Pillersdorf [who is handling a class action lawsuit on the terminations] estimates around 1,000 disability recipients do not have legal representation for their hearings and, as a result of not seeking counsel, will lose their hearings. ...
"The suicide chatter is way up," Pillersdorf said. "It was especially bad around Christmas. Unfortunately people have got this unfortunate response that suicide is somehow a rational response to losing their benefits. We want to reassure people their lawyers are doing everything they can to help them." ...
It would be great if the other 1,000 or so former clients of Eric Conn were to seek legal help. The problem is that at this point there wouldn't be nearly enough volunteer attorneys to represent them all. By this point, it's almost too late. Virtually all of these cases are now scheduled for hearings.
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