Saturday, February 27, 2010

How to Choose the Right Social Security Disability Lawyer for You.

For some of you choosing a Social Security disability lawyer might simply come down to first website you find or commercial you see on TV. Some people are looking for a large disability firm, while others prefer the personal touch of a smaller firm. In terms of importance to give yourself the best chance to win your SSD or SSI claim one of the most important decisions you can make is, whether or not to get a lawyer to help you with your claim. If you have decided that you want a disability attorney for your SSDI claim, then you will have to determine who to hire. To make this decision, you should consider what is important to you. One thing you should know is that many of the biggest Social Security disability representative companies out there are not lawyers. So if you want to be represented by a lawyer you may first want to check if the company you are considering is actually a law firm or if they are a disability advocate company. Is it important to you to be able to speak to the lawyer or representative who will be handling your case during the long process? This is important to many people and yet it can be very difficult to find a Social Security Disability lawyer or law firm, in this field, where you can actually talk to your lawyer if you need to. This is one of the biggest complaints of claimants that are represented. Social Security Disability lawyers are extremely busy and have many clients; however you should have the right to speak your lawyer on important issues about your case. This does not mean that you should have access to speaking to your lawyer directly whenever you want, calling to often will actually prevent your lawyer from being able to spend the time your case and other cases need. If you have something important to speak your lawyer about and if you call and the person who answers cannot address your question to your satisfaction, you should be able to leave your name and number for your attorney and expect a callback. I get a lot of e-mails from my website and not getting callbacks appears to be a bigger problem with large firms and non-attorney companies then it is with small to medium-sized law firms. This is a very general statement and not true in all cases, because I have certainly received e-mails from people who do not receive callbacks from small law firms as well. The toughest question to answer for you is, how do you know if you will be able to have contact with your lawyer once you sign the paperwork to be represented? There is no easy answer, but you could try calling the lawyer or firm you are interested in and tell them you are considering hiring them, but that you would like to speak to the attorney that would be handling your case first. If you can't get a lawyer to call you back even before you sign-up this should give you some idea of your accessibility to the lawyer or representative if you were to hire them. If the lawyer does callback, you can simply ask them if he or she is the lawyer who will be the one handling your claim and if you can expect to see him or her if you have to go to a SSD or SSI hearing. It is not uncommon for the lawyer who is available at the time to call you back even if that is not the lawyer that is going to handle your case, but they should be able to tell you which lawyer is your main representative. There will always be people who just want to sign up with the biggest most well known non-attorney companies or law firms. There are also those who prefer to be treated as an individual and not as a number. You can learn a lot by reading the non-attorney companies or lawyers writings on the web. Is the website or pages very generic and bland with no real answers? Do the website or pages appear to be written by someone who knows what they are talking about, and appears to care about their readers by providing real helpful information? When you are reading website information about Social Security disability law is the author of that information easily known or do they appear to be hiding who they really are? Many websites that show up very high in search engine results have almost no useful information because they are written by companies that specialize in high rankings and have little or no actual knowledge of Social Security Disability law. Most law firm websites and non-attorney websites are written by third parties as I described. So if you are trying to get a feel for a particular lawyer or representative try to find something they have written which can sometimes give you some insight into the type of person they are. I hope this post helps you if you have decided to hire a lawyer for your Social Security disability claim by giving you some ideas as to how to find the right fit for you. If you want more information on how to find a lawyer for Social Security Disability visit my page on the topic.