Do Attorneys Speed Up Claims Process?

[hurryupnwait]

This is from a post made on another forum. I have an attorney and it seems that my claim with him is following this pattern.

"To get back to the original question as to whether getting an attorney will speed up the claims process, I will say that in most cases, yes it does. Let me explain.

Current laws and regulations prohibit an attorney from charging more than a very nominal fee unless the claim for benefits is in appellate status. What this means is that if your claim is granted on the first go round your lawyer has essentially represented you for free. Let's just say that lawyers don't like to represent you for free.

So what many, if not most, lawyers do is to try to get the matter under appeal. They want the Regional Office to render a decision as quickly as possible so they do everything they can to encourage a quick decision even if all of the evidence is not of record. They don't want your claim granted at this point, they want it denied so they will have something to disagree with which let's them go "on the clock" as they say. Now they can start running a tab on you. That's why many lawyers start trying to waive all of your rights from the beginning in an effort to coax a quick decision out of VA. This is what I meant when I said that a lawyer will often speed up the claims process, but it isn't a speeding up that is to your advantage.

It's after the lawyer get's a Notice of Disagreement filed that they start dragging out the process. At this point they are essentially running up their bill. They tend to do very little actual work but they do send a litany of form letters to VA appearing to be claiming just about every benefit VA has to offer in all manner of legalese language. Not because they actually think you are entitled to any of this (heck, most don't have any idea one way or the other), but they hope to so bamboozle the non-legal claims processors at VA to the point that somewhere along the way they won't dot an i or cross a t or otherwise commit some due process error. At this point they will more often than not again waive your rights and demand that your claim be sent to BVA without any further action at the Regional Office.

So why do they do this? Two reasons.

First, should BVA actually grant your appeal they will get a cut out of your backpay. By this time there is usually a nice little bit of retroactive pay built up. Unfortunately in more cases than not your claim would have been granted anyway even without the lawyer, but this way the lawyer gets to share in your good fortune.

Second, even if your claim is not granted, if the lawyer has managed to accomplish his earlier goal of getting the Regional Office to miss something or otherwise make some mistake that results in BVA remanding the appeal to correct this mistake, the lawyer can collect a fee directly from the government under the Equal Access to Justice Act. This means that he collects whether you ever do or not. Unfortunately many of these remands by BVA are for shortcomings that were manipulated into happening by the actions of the lawyer.

In conclusion, until you have exhausted the claims process within VA itself and are ready to appeal a BVA decision to the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claim, you should stay away from lawyers. A much better bet is to find a good VSO who knows the VA claims process and who isn't trying to earn a fee off of you, and let that person help you "

Any comments?

Paul

Edited March 29, 2009 by hurryupnwait

[purple]

I think it's ridiculous to hire an attorney who want actually want your claim denied & knowing that all of your evidence isn't submitted, correctly the first time. What a waste of time & money. Sounds like a scam and boarderline fraud.

[gp747]

my experience with vso's has been abysmal,i have no use for them ,they have never helped me in any way. i had to do every thing my self.

[hurryupnwait]

my experience with vso's has been abysmal,i have no use for them ,they have never helped me in any way. i had to do every thing my self.

I guess there might be some very capable VSO's around, but I did not find one. I too had to do most of the work myself. That is why I hired an attorney.

This post about attorneys was an eye opener for me. I just received a denial on my appeal from the RO yesterday after a little more than 4 months, the attorney sent in very minimal evidence, his strategy must be to get to the BVA as soon as possible. The last time I was at the BVA, it took 21 months to get a remand, then it was at the AMC for 28 months and finally granted a low ball amount. That is 49 months at BVA and AMC, not sure if I want to do that again.

Paul

[Pete53]

Well allowing attorneys has seemed to have changed how the VA does business. I still think that we should all not have rights denied by self serving bureaucrats

[john999]

If you get a good lawyer by the time you claim gets to the BVA or beyond it will be in good shape and not contain fatal errors. If you have a claim that is complicated and/or is going to result in mega retro pay then a lawyer is your best bet unless you can do it yourself. When you hire a lawyer who knows the VA you have a second pair of eyes to look at your claim objectively.

[peacecindia]

VA issued a SSOC on March 5, 2009 in my claim that

has not been sent to me yet. My new attorney gave me the

heads up. I'm wondering how long before

VA mails the SSOC to me? The attorney requested a 60 day extension-

after he gets my Cfile on the SSOC that has not been sent yet.

Does it take 6 weeks or more for VA to physically mail a SSOC to a veteran?

It appears so...

Having an attorney to catch the ball when VA bounces it-- spares me the grief and uncertainty of chasing the ball into the nether regions.

Cindy

Edited April 18, 2009 by peacecindia