Description: This is a passage about ssi login. You should pay a lot of attention to both the questions your judge poses to the vocational expert and the answers offered by the vocational witness. You look at your judge’s approval rate record and ask your attorney for an unbiased opinion about the strengths and weaknesses in your medical record.
This is Jonathan Ginsberg. I’m a social security disability attorney, today I’d like to answer the question, what are some signs that I’ve won my case at a hearing? I will tell you that I get this question more than anything else on my website.
People will send me an email or make a comment describing what happened at their hearing in their medical condition, it’s very frustrating because I have no way to know because obviously I wasn’t at the hearing, I’m clearly not the best person, your attorney would be the best person to ask, they were there, they would have a better idea of what the evidence showed, what the judge was like, the judge’s temperament and how the vocational expert questioning went.
I’m not the best person to ask, people will still ask me, I try to give them an answer, I try to be positive if they’ve got a significant medical problem, a lot of times based on the medical problem, it seems that a person’s mother is likely to have won.
But I went through and made a list of some of the factors about whether somebody won or not, I realized that judges can be difficult to read, a lot of them are very careful about not showing which way they’re leaning or you may have a judge who is a nice person, a friendly person but it’s not going to approve you.
It can be very difficult to read judges, I’ve learned a long time ago, don’t try to assume that the judge is going to approve based on what the judge says or does or nods at the hearing, there are other factors that come into play, these are the things I look for.
The biggest thing is when the judge asks a question of vocational witness, the answer is that there are no jobs, if the judge asks only one question of vocational witness, the question includes a lot of limitations and the vocational witness’s answer is that there are no jobs, that’s a good chance that you’ve won, because the judge has put all the limitations that he or she has identified for you into that question for this hypothetical person.
The judge has asked the vocational witness, the vocational witness says no, there is no other evidence there that would say you could work or you’re not disabled, that’s a good sign, if the judge asks the vocational witness three or four questions .
The first one may be based on the state agency or Social Security’s internal doctors functional capacity evaluation, it probably will show that there are jobs you can do, but if the rest of the questions yield the result that there are no jobs, that’s probably a good sign as well, because judges are concerned about being reviewed by the Appeals Council.
They will always ask a question or someone will ask a question that yields a result that there are jobs and the rest of them yield a result that there are not jobs, the judge and his decision or her decision will try to differentiate those different questions and show that he or she found that you have significant limitations not mild limitations.
When all the evidence in your file discusses job reliability, that’s a good sign, disability is about how you function at work or whether you’d be able to function at work as a better way to put it, if you have a strong medical record and your doctor has gone on record to say that you would not be reliable, you’d miss excessive days from work, you have to take unscheduled breaks or you would need to be lie down or be off task for 20% of the day, that’s the only medical record in the file even though some of the consultative evaluation says you’ve got some different problems.
If there is no contrary evidence, the judge is going to have to work hard to deny your claim, under current law the judge could rely on the state agency medical opinion to deny your case, if you have a treating physician and a consultative doctor saying something different, they saw you or the internal associated doctor, that’s a good sign that you’re going to win your case.
If the judge asks no questions at all, that usually means that your case is either weak or it’s strong, the reason for that is that the judge could deny your case at a different stage of the five-step sequential evaluation process, the judge decides that you don’t have a severe impairment which I think is step two or three, he or she could deny your case.
I think it’s step three, but bottom line is if the judge decides you’ve got a non severe impairment, he or she is going to deny your case or if the medical record is so overwhelmingly in your favor that the judge doesn’t have to ask the vocational witness questions, because you’ve proved that you meet a listing, then you’re going to win your case.
I don’t like to tell people that if a judge asks no questions, that means you won, but certainly if you have a decent medical record in your case which is relatively strong, no questions typically is a good sign, but don’t forget that if a judge asks no questions, he could completely find you not incredible and he could deny your case as well, but that’s probably less likely to happen, be aware of that.
I would also look at the judge’s record of approving cases, you can go to disability judges.com, there are other websites but that’s one I use, if you see that the average in the hearing office is 43% your judge is 65%, things went well at the hearing, you could probably assume that things went well for you as well.
On the other hand if the judge approves 17% of cases, the judge asked a lot of tough questions of you, most of the vocational witness questions got the answer that there were plenty of jobs that such a hypothetical person could do, this is probably not a good sign.
Look for judges with the approval rates of the various judges and compare to the judges at hearing office, if the judge has a higher average approval rate and your medical record is strong, you’re going to be in good shape, those are some of the things I look at, but I would caution you and I would encourage you to talk to your lawyer, because I cannot know whether you have a shot at winning.
With all due respect, you’re describing what you perceived to be, the strengths and weaknesses of your case without looking at them at record, it is no way for me to know that, I can’t answer the question appropriately, your lawyer is a better person to do that.
I look at what I’m talking to my own clients, I gave you some of the things, I hope that you find this helpful and giving you some reassurance, because this is a long process, I know how frustrating it can be to wait two or three years to get to a hearing and then only to find that the judge you’ve got doesn’t improve anybody.
I hope that that doesn’t happen to you, I hope that you’ve got a fair judge and you’ve got good medical records and that you win your case, I hope that you found this helpful, if you like this article, please give me a thumbs up, leave me a comment, I enjoy reading the comments, I find it very helpful to gives me ideas.
Visit my website at SSD answers.com, I’ve got a sign up there for a secret to earning disability survival kit, you can find some useful information there at SSD interest.com slash blog, I put a lot of free stuff there, if you have any questions or a case evaluation, you’ve not gone to here and you’re starting the process, please reach out to me, I will be happy to do that for you as well.
My name is Jonathan Ginsberg, I wish you all the best, thanks a lot, if you’d like to know more about how to win your social security disability case, I’d like to invite you to download my secrets to getting approved early survival kit, I’m making the survival kit available at no cost.
I encourage you to grab your copy now, some of the topics I cover include how you can know if you have a case, if it’s at the right time for you to file your claim, nine common mistakes that can doom your case, the three must have arguments you use to win your case and a topic that every disability client wants to know, how to avoid trick questions from the judge.
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