Over the past couple of years, I have noticed that more lawyers are getting into the Social Security disability business. More specifically I am seeing TV ads and web sites for several national law firms that tout the number of cases they have handled and their promise to work hard on your behalf.
Most of these national law firms do not have offices in the Atlanta area – they process their files at their main location and they use either contract lawyers to try their cases or a lawyer will fly in a few times per month to appear at hearings. Other national firms have a small local office to handle intake with a staff lawyer to try the cases.
I have met a number of these staff lawyers for the national firms – some seem to be quite capable and others not so much. However most of these large firms use call centers with trained intake personnel to field phone calls from prospective clients.
My observation has been that the intake folks at some of the national law firms will say just about anything to convince a client to sign up. More specifically, I am hearing from my own clients that the national firms are promising that they can somehow speed up the process and get to a hearing faster.
As my colleague Tomasz Stasiuk points out on his Colorado Social Security disability blog:
One thing a lawyer cannot do for you is make Social Security move faster than it wants to. No one can force SSA to make a decision before it is ready. The reason Social Security cases take so long is that there an enormous backlog of cases waiting to get through the system.
Tomasz eloquently disproves the myth that Lawyer A can get your case to a hearing faster than Lawyer B in his blog post entitled Are Lawyers Slowing Down Social Security disability cases? I encourage you to read Tomasz’ insights.
What does this have to do with firing your lawyer?
Imagine you have been waiting for 14 months to get your hearing. You talk to your lawyer or his staff periodically but they cannot tell you when a hearing will be scheduled. You see TV commercial after TV commercial from national Social Security firms and after a while you call to ask if they might be able to speed up the process. “Of course,” says the call screener. Come in and sign some papers and we’ll get your hearing scheduled right away.”
What they are not telling your is this:
First, ethical lawyers who have roots in our community do not steal cases from other lawyers. I get calls from frustrated claimants who are already represented and I always advise those potential clients not to blame their lawyer for the delays and to call their lawyer’s office right away. I also call or email the current lawyer to let him know that he has a client who is calling around.
This professional courtesy is generally extended to me by my colleagues who live here but not by the national law firms.
Second, as discussed above, there is absolutely nothing that any private lawyer can do to speed up your case. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying, plain and simple.
Third, they are probably not telling you that if you fire Lawyer A and hire Lawyer B, you may end up paying more legal fees than you would if you remained with your first lawyer. Social Security lawyers generally accept cases under contingency fee contracts, which means that you do not pay anything unless the lawyer is successful in collecting past due benefits. However, this is not the same as saying that the lawyer will work for free. Contingency fee contract almost always provide that in the event of termination, the lawyer has the right to petition the Social Security Administration for a fee based on time and effort actually expended on your behalf.
Judges routinely approve fee petitions that are supported by time records.
Let me give you two examples of why changing lawyers should only be done if there is a real problem.
Case 1 involves a claimant that I know nothing about other than that I saw her in a hearing office recently. She had recently moved to Atlanta from out of state and had come to her hearing without a lawyer. The hearing assistant asked her why and she explained that she could not find a lawyer to take her case because she had previously terminated two other lawyers, at least one of whom spent over a year working on her case. Now she needed a lawyer to appear with her at her hearing but everyone she spoke to declined because there would be two other lawyers claiming fees and that the judge would not be likely to award more than a few hundred dollars for appearing at a hearing. I’m not sure what happened at her hearing, but when she came out after representing herself she was in tears.
Case 2 involves a claimant that I represented for over 18 months. I received a hearing notice and I acknowledged that I would appear, and my secretary spoke to my client regularly and we updated medical records until literally the day before the hearing. Although my client did not show up for his pre-hearing conference, I prepared the case for trial and traveled down to the hearing office.
When I got there, I saw that another lawyer’s name from a national firm was associated with my case. I got an updated case file disc and I saw that my client had apparently hired the national law firm the day after we got our hearing notice. My client did not tell me about this, nor did he tell my secretary despite ongoing conversations. I decided to call the lawyer who signed the retainer agreement and I spoke to him (he was in his main office and had a contract lawyer assigned to appear at the hearing). He was apologetic and claimed that my client never told him that he was represented.
While I don’t doubt his claim, he certainly should have seen my name in the file and he should have called me. But he did not. And I figure that I am entitled to a fee for time expended since I literally did work on this case through the date of the hearing. I have not gotten a ruling on the fee petition but if my claimed fee is awarded, my client will end up paying more than the $6,000 he would have paid to me under my fee agreement.
Obviously there are times when a lawyer is not performing to your satisfaction and you should consider terminating his services and hiring another lawyer. However, you should proceed very slowly and carefully before taking this step and you should always make every effort to salvage your relationship with your current lawyer before seeking greener pastures.