As I’ve frequently stated in my writings on my blog and website, my main goal in starting my own disability practice is to improve the quality of representation provided to disability claimants via increased and improved communication. This is instrumental in educating clients about what types of actions they should take or avoid. It is equally instrumental in guiding the representative on what types of arguments and strategies they should be crafting.
Unfortunately, there are many firms that believe that such personalized service is incompatible with a business model centered on high case volumes and low operating costs. Many such firms thus transfer much of their client communication responsibilities away from their actual disability representative/attorneys and instead delegate them to their paralegal staff.
In my opinion, this sacrifice is unnecessary. While there is no replacement for communicating with claimants early and often, there are ways to streamline such communications and make them more practical for high-volume practices.
Take, for example, an issue that comes up frequently over the course of many disability claims: a claimant who has returned to work. Social Security’s rules governing work attempts are fairly nuanced, and therefore the questions and advice provided to such claimants must be equally nuanced. In a small disability practice like my own, all such communication would be done directly with a knowledgeable attorney. At a large volume practice, however, the attorneys’ schedules are much tighter. When I previously worked at one such firm, a frequent problem with this situation was that our paralegal staff didn’t obtain enough pertinent information about the claimant’s work attempt for me to have any idea how to advise them until I was finally able to reach the client, often needing to revisit the case once again since the client didnt always have all the requisite details.
The solution I came up with for this problem was to create a web-based dynamic script and form for a paralegal staffmember to complete when encountering such an issue. This script uses progressive disclosure logic that both anticipates a multitude of scenarios, without overburdening the user with irrelevant questions. A sample is available here. This script program enables even a novice paralegal to collect only the relevant information from the claimant (which will allow the attorney to later assess the practicality of unsuccessful work attempt or closed period arguments on their own timetable), and pass along information that is tailored according to the claimant’s responses. The program is further able to anticipate situations in which the paralegal should ask for paystubs, special situations where a work attempt lasts between three and six months, and differentiate between work that is above SGA (and thus requires more detailed questions) or below SGA.
