What the lawyers said is curious.

My situation during my SSDI application was a bit different. I applied almost immediately after being terminated from my job. I did apply with the help of an SSDI specialist lawyer. I received approval for SSDI five months after submitting my initial application. My termination from my job was not because of bad performance, but because they simply couldn't hold my job for me any longer. At that time, I had been hospitalized yet again and in IOP. They had held my job for long periods over 3 1/2 years of intermittent hospitalizations and PHPs/IOPs (with me attempting to return to work maybe four, five, or six times.) I forget. Almost the whole time, I was on short, then long-term private disability through my employer (except for one period of some months when I managed to be back to work full-time). I remained on partial long-term private disability even when working part-time at my job (I got paid for the part-time work by my employer and the remainder of the 40 hours by the private disability insurance through my employer). After my termination, I remained on private long-term disability through that job, up until I was approved for SSDI. The expiration date for the private disability coverage was coincidentally, a month or so after my SSDI acceptance. That was lucky. However, I had to repay the private disability insurance provider the money I was paid by them for the months paid as "back pay" by SSDI. That was a little painful since my monthly payments from private disability were significantly higher than my monthly SSDI payments.

My point? I was only officially unemployed for 5 months before getting SSDI approval. Not years. However, I had clocked almost 3 years on partial to full-time private disability, but was still officially employed during that period.

I don't know if rules have changed, in regards to SSDI approval. I got mine during the Obama administration. Now during the Trump administration, I have heard that getting and keeping SSDI is (or will be) harder.