Is your lawyer holding up your Social Security Disability hearing?
I doubt it very much.
A Social Security Disability attorney has very little control over when your hearing goes before the Administrative Law Judge.
So much for those lawyers who advertise that they can get you a fast hearing date for your Disability case.
Each State is different and even regions within a State will differ for time frames.
Here is how it works in Central Illinois.
The initial application will be evaluated and denied or approved within 3 months.
The reconsideration level will take 3 months.
If a Request for Hearing is necessary, it will take approximately 9 months for the hearing to be scheduled.
Why does it take so long?
There are a large amount of applications and not enough workers to review them all.
There are only a certain amount of Administrative Law Judges in each hearing office.
Lawyers cannot request that your case be scheduled ahead of another case.
The Hearing office is in charge of setting the dates.
The Hearing office calls the attorney and tells them these are the hearing dates for your cases.
The Social Security lawyer cannot request a certain judge or to change judges.
The only thing a lawyer may do is request that a hearing be speeded up because of hardship.
Hardship means that you are being evicted or are in some dire circumstances.
Once again the Social Security hearing office makes the final call on these requests.
Questions about your Social Security Disability case? Feel free to contact Illinois Social Security Disability Dirk May at 309-827-4371.