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Social Security has issued an amended section in its POMS manual dealing with disclosures of information to attorneys and others representing claimants before the agency. I see nothing really new here but it certainly deserves close scrutiny. The section still says “Entities may not be appointed as representatives.” This causes severe problems for law firms representing claimants. I don’t think the agency appreciates how difficult the problems are. Perhaps they do and are happy to cause the problems. At least they realize that it’s normal for attorneys to have legal assistants and paralegals working with them.
11 comments:
Dude. All that is being asked is that you have a headline representative. As you know we can pay the entity on their behalf.
By the by, you might wish to spread amongst your profession colleagues that programming AI bots to call the #800 and FO GI lines has gone over like a lead balloon.
I don’t think you understand that sending a million duplicate 1696s isn’t helpful.
When they go unprocessed for months and you can't get the field office on the phone, what might you suggest be done? Does the twiddling of thumbs suffice?
Doesnt matter if we send 1 or 100 1696s its not like you are going to process any of them
It's actually very helpful and it's necessary. If we need to escalate something to the area director or regional office, the first thing they will ask is how many attempts we made to get listed as the rep. The field offices tell us not to fax more than once, and the regional offices tell us to make multiple attempts.
Maybe if you sent them in properly filled out the first time they'd get processed faster. Then sending in the same improperly completed form 50 times hoping someone will just not care enough to actually follow policy and process it is certainly the strategy of competent and ethical legal counsel.
If you have a law degree and charge people money for your services, and you're sending in altered or digitally signed 827s, you should be disbarred. If SSA employees were allowed to report bad reps to the BAR, there would be a lot of people losing their law license. But they aren't, so they just have to wade through piles of incomplete and redundant and incorrect forms submitted by attorneys who make a fortune off making SSA and their claimants do most of the work.
Until there is accountability for these bad reps who are flooding SSA with their nonsense, expect people at SSA to keep hating the profession, and not being excited to do your job for you.
Unfortunately, getting a grossly understaffed field office to add representation is the hardest part of practice these days. If only we could do this ourselves! And, it slows the case. You can not see just how long a local is holding a case before it has gone to a DDS, or what stage a case is in at DDS. If you can track it there you can not put records in the case or talk to the examiner. My work arounds are this. 1) File that 1696 over and over and up the chain, ask for manager assistance, send to regional, etc. 2) Have client call with or without us on phone. 3) If client is getting DDS questionnaires with a bar code, call the examiner and supervisor and ask them to also push the local to perform this simple task. Use the bar code to upload your 1696 and fee agreement so they cannot ignore it. 4) Contact a senator or Congressman. Any and all of these approaches have worked. All would be unnecessary if the local offices could prioritize this task. But, the pushback from anyone you get on the phone and just plain lies are ridiculous. My clients are told things like..."we don't have to add your attorney, they can't do anything for you until a hearing anyway".... or "we have 90 days to respond," or we never got any paperwork..... While I understand the understaffing issue, this work has to be done and there has to be accountability.
These claims are more often than not utter disasters. The atty offices need to learn when properly attests a claim and what is required regarding an 827. NEVER send in an electronically signed 827; these are NOT. Yet they're sent in over and over and over again. Give your client a heads up that they should answer their phone. A 1696 is worthless when the claim is unattested. Do a better job of helping clients will out the 3368. Fantasy land job histories and regularly terrible medical histories are constantly compiled. Get a sense of your client's financial situation. Don't file for SSI if they have zero chance of getting SSI.
It's almost as if you want your client to lose initially, or for the claim to take forever, so you can potentially get more backpay. It's a shame.
False. The guide on the AR webpage specifically states not to submit duplicates as it leads to delays.
The problem with 1696s isn't that reps are not filling them out correctly. The problem probably isn't the fault of the local office staff. The problem is the system is not set up properly. Having these things processed by all the different offices by people doing many things at once is the likely problem. The answer would be centralized intake where people have narrow tasks and that way they would all be done the same way, efficiently and properly. What we have now are a bunch of fiefdoms who insist on doing things there own way. One office tells you this, another something different. But, centralized intake might take away some local office jobs ------ perhaps that is why we don't have it.
Please listen to @9:53
"A 1696 is worthless when the claim is unattested. Do a better job of helping clients will out the 3368. Fantasy land job histories and regularly terrible medical histories are constantly compiled. Get a sense of your client's financial situation. Don't file for SSI if they have zero chance of getting SSI."
My office gets status requests and the claimant is dead. The Rep doesn't even know they're dead (yes, yes we know about retro bens to the survivors). Also, please stop with the "client does not recall work history" or "unaware of workers' compensation receipt." AOD is always January 1st [insert random year here] with work immediately after? Yeah, right.
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