The final regulations to require that those who represent Social Security claimants use Social Security's electronic services has cleared the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and should appear in the Federal Register in the near future. There was some change in the regulations at OMB but we will probably never know what was changed. This proposal was originally linked to changes that would have recognized entities such as law firms as representing claimants. Those proposed changes were confused and unworkable. The appearance is that because its proposal was trashed by attorneys, Social Security has just decided to do nothing.
People talk about reducing the regulatory burden on the American public. It is hard to imagine anything more absurdly burdensome than Social Security's bizarre policies on attorney fees. These policies burden claimants as well as attorneys. They make it difficult for a claimant to move from one attorney to another. Imagine a claimant in Buffalo who hires an attorney for their Social Security disability claim and not long thereafter moves to Raleigh. The attorney in Buffalo withdraws from the case and waives any fee. I pick up the case and move forward to a successful conclusion. Under Social Security's policies, my fee is cut in half. Why? Would you take on the case if you were me? What is the person moving from Buffalo to Raleigh supposed to do? What value is being protected by this policy?
10 comments:
Would you take on the case if you were me?
Of course...you still have a chance (about 60%) of earning up to $3000 for approximately 2 hours of work. You'd be crazy not to take that client.
No, it's not as sweet as getting up to $6000, but it's still a great gig.
I'm not seeing my fees cut in half under this circumstance if the prior attorney has withdrawn and waived.
I'm thinking 9:31 has never actually done this work if he thinks only two hours would be involved. A rep who only put in that much time, in the case Charles described, would be guilty of malpractice or fraud.
Two hours would be tight if the case was completely ready for hearing and all that was needed was meeting the client and attending the hearing.
Anon at 9:31, you shouldn't meddle in areas you don't know anything about. The least amount of time any good rep puts in to their case would be at least 6 hours, IMHO.
For what it's worth, I'm not seeing any fees cut in half in the situation you describe, Mr. Hall, but I am seeing an extremely inordinate amount of my fees being accidentally released to the claimant, and PCs being extremely slow in generating an "inadvertent release" letter so that my clients will actually pay me back. This is a much more egregious problem, IMO.
Ditto to Anon 10:08. I have seen a number of fees being inadvertently released to claimants, once even after the claimant and I received notice that the fee was withheld (?!), and I have yet to be successful chasing a client for fees once they are paid all their retro. In most cases the "inadvertent release" letter only comes out after I have contacted the DO or the PC about my fee. You would think that SSA would do what they could to avoid the hassles of charging claimants with and trying to collect overpayments by getting the withholding and fee payment right in the first place by paying a little more attention. I know the DO's are overwhelmed; our congressional liaison told me that our DO is one of the worst if not the worst in the country, but this smacks of carelessness or poor training/supervision.
Mr. Hall: that provision applies only to co-representatives, defined as being appointed at the same time, not serially appointed reps.
Regarding inadvertant release, if it's the government's fault, then they should just withhold the fee from the next monthly payment(s) to that claimant. If the claimant has already spent the large sum of backpay and shows that the total withholding would cause a hardship, they could request a partial withholding (like a garnishment). It should not be up to the representative to fix a mistake made by the SSA.
The simplest way to end SSA's "burdensome" policies on attorney fees is simply for Congress to remove SSA from the attorney fee process altogether.
Let the attorney and claimant set their own fee, and deal with it (like they do in almost every other area of law) privately without SSA even being involved. If the claimant has a problem with their attorney, take it to the bar association or the courts, again like every other field of law.
Congress created this mess literally out of nothing, so they should fix it...
Awwwww poor attorneys might have to practice real law to get by :(
Agree with previous post. The reps need to stop crying! No one cares what you think.
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