Why You Need a Lawyer for Your SSDI Appeal
We often meet with people who need disability but wonder if you really need a lawyer for your SSDI appeal. It makes sense: you want to save money and time. And if you can do it yourself, why not?
Fortunately an SSDI attorney works for you and can ultimately help you win (and save) the money you really need. In this video, Memphis SSDI attorney Darrell Castle explains.
If you’ve applied for SSDI and been denied, contact us today to get started with a free conversation.
Video Transcript: Why You Need a Lawyer for Your SSDI Appeal
Hello, this is Darrell Castle. I’m an attorney licensed to practice law in the state of Tennessee. And in this video, I want to try to explain why you need an attorney for your Social Security Disability case.
Let’s say that you filed an application for Social Security Disability Insurance, and (as virtually everyone is) you’re turned down the first time you apply.
Well, that is a good explanation for why you really need a lawyer on an appeal. If you really want to get disability, and you feel like you’re qualified:
- you’re truly disabled
- and you have a doctor who’s willing to back you up on that
(In other words, your doctor supports your application for disability.)
Still, a vast majority of times, you’ll be denied on your first application, the one you do yourself.
So you can hire an attorney to represent you on appeal for a very small amount of money. Nothing comes from your current, ongoing disability benefits. Only from the past-due benefits, and then only a small percentage of the past due benefits. And it’s limited to a total recovery of about six thousand dollars.
In other words, even if the percentage exceeds $6000, your attorney is limited to that much money. So the attorney is absolutely necessary for you to have success in your disability application, and the cost is very little. It’s kind of a no-brainer.
Why is an attorney really necessary?
Well, because you’re going to have to do an appeal of your disability hearing that brings the doctor statement in line with what the disability statute actually requires.
Doctors write their reports. They’re well-meaning, but they’re not lawyers, and they don’t know how to match their report with what the disability statute says. A lawyer does know that, so he can work with the doctor to make his medical report—not change the report—but make it line up with the statute, so that it reads correctly in the statutory languages.
You need all that, and you can get it for very little cost.
So when you’re denied disability, you’ve got 60 days to file an appeal, folks. Sixty days from the time you get that denial letter. So you need to get an attorney and file an appeal, folks.
You do that within sixty days, you’ll probably be successful.