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saywhat? - Thanks for sharing. I feel for you. It seems we do have much in common. It sounds like you are hard on yourself, and I'm glad that you know that.
The law firm representing me is one of those nationwide firms like Binder and Binder. I hope you will have a better experience than I am having. My firm is Heard and Smith. If the day comes when I feel I can say something nice about them, I will. As it stands, I am very leery about these big firms. The lovely man you see on the TV commercial who says "Nobody intimidates our clients - Nobody!" Well, I would be very interested to hear whether you ever . . . ever . . . get a chance to talk to him. Trust me - you won't.
That doesn't mean Binder and Binder won't do as good a job as anyone else will. They are the biggest law firm in the business of representing claims for SSDI. As one on-line article that I read said: They have it down to a science.
The federal government regulates the fees that lawyers can charge for representing a claimant before the SSA. They get 25% of your back pay - dated back to the date you became disabled. It is capped at $6000. Every firm I called, called me back - real promptly . . . even on Sundays. Every one of them said "We only charge you 25% and we don't charge you unless we win. They say that so boastfully. Well - guess what - that is all they can do. Every firm charges you the same.
It is no longer profitable for local attorneys to handle SSDI claims from the get go. That's why these huge national companies came into existence. Binder and Binder, like other big firms in the SSDI business, handles thousands and thousands of claims a year. (You see why it is unlikely that either one of the two Binder brothers is going to even hear of your name.) One good thing is that these big firms have departments to handle every aspect of the work. There will be a department with clerks whose job it is to bug the doctors and hospitals who have medical records needed for the case. I think that is a good thing. Unfortunately, when I saw the copy of the list I gave them, the clerk hadn't written down every provider I named. Also, doctor's names were misspelled.
From what I read, the clerks who work for these mega-law firms are sort of working in sweatshop conditions. They are part of a processing mill. So, you can expect them to make mistakes, which, hopefully, will not affect the outcome of your case.
When I complained about mistakes, the manager of the clerks working on claims at the stage mine is at told me I could get out of the contract if I was unhappy. I was just reading that Binder and Binder makes it very hard for you to fire them, if you are unhappy. If you fire them, which you can do, they will want payment for the work they have already done for you. Sounds fair - doesn't it. Well, firms tend to claim they have done an awful lot of work, regardless of how little time they have been working on your claim.
I never like to undermine anyone's faith in a doctor, or a lawyer, or any professional where trust has been placed. I don't for one minute think that the firm you have chosen is going to be any worse than mine. It's just that I am finding my relationship with the law firm to be way different from what I had guessed, based on how sweet and kind the "intake paralegal" was. I'm sure that person gets a commission for every new client they land. The one who called me spent hours telling me about her broken marriage and wanting to hear all the sad things that had happened to me in life. She gave me her "personal cell phone number" and her "personal e-mail address" with an invitation to contact her anytime. Yeah, right! I tried. Forget about it. I felt like such a sucker that I was so charmed by all the rapt attention paid to me by her. She even told me she specializes in doing intake on potential clients with disability based on psych diagnoses. I am probably going public with more than I should, but feel this is how we help each other know what we are up against.
The other side of it is that, if I had know what the reality of what I was going to get from the law firm was and tried to do it on my own, I'ld probably still be mulling it over. One thing about these big firms: they are real good at getting the ball rolling. Maybe that's what I needed most.
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