What to Expect at a Social Security Disability Hearing

The hearing before the Administrative Law Judge is the most important step in the whole Social Security Disability process. It is the only point that you will get to actually personally appear before the person who will make the decision as to whether you will be able to receive disability payments. The decisions at the other levels are made by people who review documents and possibly talk to you over the phone.
 
The Judge is not bound by the earlier decisions made at the initial and reconsideration levels. In other words, he or she makes a new decision based upon the evidence presented at the hearing. The Judge will have reviewed all the medical and vocational records in the prior decisions but his job is to make a new decision based upon his observation of Ms. Jones, listening to her testimony and review of the record.

The hearing itself is not an adversary style hearing like criminal or civil trials. There is no prosecutor appearing on behalf of the SSA trying to prove a claimant is not disabled. The Administrative Law Judge's role is to make a fair inquiry into the health problems of Ms. Jones. The Judges are uniformly polite and compassionate in conducting these hearings.

The hearings offer the client the opportunity to tell another human being how their health problems have effected their lives and ability to earn a living. No one knows any better how their health has effected their ability to work than the person involved.

The hearings are reasonably informal in that the strict rules of evidence that apply in criminal or civil court do not apply. For example, hearsay is permissible in a disability hearing. You can tell the Judge what her doctor had told her about her back problems and his opinion about her ability to return to work.

Most of the Administrative Law Judges let the representative handling the case do the majority of the questioning of the claimant. The Judge will ask questions during the hearing or at the end of the claimant's presentation to cover areas that he has questions about. The Judge is interested in hearing evidence regarding the type of work you performed. The Judge will want to know the physical requirements of your past jobs such as amount of weight lifted, how much sitting, standing and walking is required based upon the disability claimed. Your vocational background is important because the Judge neesds to determine if the skills from your past jobs could be transferred to enable you to obtain other less demanding jobs.

The SSA has a fairly elaborate schedule within its "Grid" system of Medical-Vocational Guidelines which it uses to determine if a claimant should be considered to be disabled.   One such factor it applies is to determine the transferability of skills from one type of work to another. For example, a person who was a manual laborer in construction might have very few transferable job skills as compared to a school teacher. The more transferable the job skills you possess, the more difficult it is for her to obtain disability benefits.

The Judge is also interested in your educational background regarding how far you went in school and any special training you may have received. Claimants with greater educational backgrounds have more ability to obtain other work outside their past jobs than those with limited educations.

The Court will also consider your age. The SSA takes the position that younger persons are more likely than older persons to be able to locate jobs. The SSA has divided up the working population into the following categories:

Advanced age: 55 and over
Individuals approaching advanced age: 50 to 54
Younger individuals: 18 to 49

Finally, the Judge examines the health problems of the claimant. You will have to describe how your problems have effected your daily life, the symptoms you have, such as the level of pain that you have to endure, when such pain occurs, limitations on movement, any side effects of any medication such as impaired concentration or memory problems etc. The Judge has wide latitude in how he or she gathers health related information.

The Judge does not usually announce the decision at the end of the hearing. You will receive a written detailed decision in the mail from the Judge. Usually these decisions are received in about four weeks from the hearing, however due to the Judge's case load and the complexity of the decision, this time frame can vary widely between cases.

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