Our Disability Advocates Get It Done

 

When a disability claim reaches the hearing level of the Appeals process, the claimant has already experienced two denials and a long waiting period to get scheduled for a hearing with an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ). A hearing is very often the claimant’s best chance of getting approved.

One of our Advocates was traveling by plane to a hearing in Peoria, Illinois. She landed in Chicago during a blustering snowstorm and was rushing to make her connection when she found out that the flight was cancelled because of the storm. She knew she couldn’t make it to her claimant in Peoria in time for the hearing.

This was not good. It takes months to get a hearing scheduled, and months more to reschedule if anything goes wrong – like a delay because of a snowstorm. Our Advocate did not want her claimant to miss the hearing because she couldn’t get there to represent her. She immediately called her claimant and explained what had happened, and that she was going to call the ALJ assigned to the case to see if there was a chance he would conduct the hearing by phone.

The ALJ agreed, but did not want to do the hearing on a cell phone. He needed a private phone line that he could call in on.

Our Advocate immediately sought out airline personnel asking if there were any private phone lines the airline could offer. They could not, but they suggested checking in with the airline’s private club. The club had a conference room with a private phone line that she could rent for $70 an hour, which is what she did.

Our Advocate took a chance. It was unusual, but, she successfully arranged for a phone hearing just in time.

There is never any cost to claimants for our expenses in representing a case. Our greater concern is the cost of time to our claimants. We know they can’t afford to wait. That’s why our airport-stranded Advocate did what she could to find a way for the hearing to happen for her claimant. At Freedom Disability, our Advocates get it done.