A hearing memorandum should be written for every Social Security disability hearing, and submitted well in advance of the the hearing. I have previously written about the hearing memorandum in Maine and in New Hampshire. The exhortation to submit concise pre-hearing briefs is among the best practices for claimants' representatives recently compiled by the ALJs.

We taking the first ten days in July to list ten top reasons to write a hearing brief. Look for a reason a day through the 10th of July.

Reason #1   Be a Professional

Do your job as a lawyer. Just getting the medical records, a medical source statement, and attending the hearing with the client is not enough. Your opening statement to the judge could be forgotten by the time the next hearing starts.

A Social Security disability claim may have 10, 20 or 30 thousand dollars or more of back benefits. The future benefits are tens of thousand of dollars even for a claim with a low PIA. So for a case with a value of over $50,000 why wouldn't you write a hearing memorandum?

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