Can you determine if you have won your case based on what happens at your Georgia Social Security disability hearing?
As I discuss in this video, disability judges almost never announce their decisions at the conclusion of your hearing but if you pay close attention to the questions that the judge asks the vocational witness you may be able to pick up on clues.
Disability judges use vocational consultants as expert witnesses in most SSDI or SSI hearings. Remember that the main issue in your case has to do with whether the judge believes that you could reliably perform the tasks of a simple, entry level job. Since your judge is not an expert in job placement and job retention matters, he/she will ask a vocational expert to help evaluate the vocational implications of your medical problems.
After listening to testimony from you, the judge will ask the vocational expert a series of questions with different assumptions about your capacity.
For example question #1 may ask the vocational expert (VE) to assume that you can never climb ladders, ropes or scaffolds, while question #2 may ask the vocational expert to assume that you can occasionally climb ladders, ropes and scaffolds, and questions #3 may ask the VE to assume that you can frequently climb ladders, ropes and scaffolds.
The VE will identify specific jobs or “no jobs” based on the judge’s hypothetical questions. Each question may include multiple limitations.
Sometimes you can deduce what the judge is thinking based on the questions he/she asks and the responses he/she gets. In other cases we won’t have any way of knowing and we’ll have to wait for the actual hearing decision.