Vocational Expert at Your Social Security Disability Hearing

What do you do if you find out there will be a vocational expert at your hearing? The first thing you might want to consider is getting a lawyer. A VE's job at the hearing is to give his opinion of your prior work and functional requirements of those jobs. The VE will then be given a hypothetical of what your limitations are from the judge. The VE will then give his or her opinion on whether given those limitations you could perform prior work. The VE will also be asked his or her opinion if there is any other work an individual could do based on those limitations. If the VE says there is other work he will then give the number of jobs available in the economy in both the local area and nationally. Seems simple enough so why should you have a lawyer? The lawyer will be given a chance to present his own hypothetical of your limitations based on the medical evidence that may be more restrictive than that given by ALJ. A lawyer can also challenge the VE's opinion and cross examine the VE to show the jobs the VE says you could perform you actually can not perform. See my website page on Social Security Disability hearings for more.