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How It Started: “The Firm”
I started this firm back in 2012. It started out as a second career for me after being in a very close-knit family business that had nothing to do with the practice of law. I started out in this firm from the ground up, so I really got to know this area of law from a very hands-on perspective, traveling across different states, handling hearings, getting to know the judges in the different states, getting to know the way the technical rules work, getting to know the plights of the clients. After I got a feel for that, did that for a couple years, I wanted to open my own firm and handle things my way, in a way that I saw best fit to help clients. I started the firm as a solo practitioner back in 2010 and gradually grew the firm to a point where I added an associate who later became a partner, which is Brett Fulton, who worked with me, learned under my guidance, and him and I really, really grew the firm together to the point that it’s at today. We really try to give a family feel to our firm where we’re delivering clients a personal experience to the best of our abilities. It’s a very grueling type of practice, and I would not advise any client to go the route alone without competent counsel. Brett and I both feel that, given my experience, Brett’s experience, we can provide the clients the best opportunity with a favorable outcome for their case.
Meet the Attorneys
Gary: I have three kids. I have a 21-year-old son who’s a rising senior at UNC Chapel Hill. I have another son who’s 18, and he’s graduating high school this year, and he is most likely going to be a rising freshman at App State, and then I have a young daughter who’s 8 who’s going to be a rising third-grader next year.
Brett: I joined the Navy in 1992 and served for four years. I was a boatswain mate. Some people might know what that is; most people have no idea what it is, but it was a great experience. I was on the United States ship Peleliu, and I enjoyed that a great deal. I feel like I grew up when I was there and learned a lot of the habits that I still kind of use today in all apsects of my life. Decided to go to law school after I finished school. I was married at the time. My wife and I were married while I was still in the Navy. And I worked as a prosecutor and as a defense attorney for many years and I think I kind of honed some of my trial skills and my ability to spot issues, which I think that’s a lot of what we do now in order to win Social Security disability claims. You have to identify issues that are winning issues. It’s not just throwing everything against the wall. It’s trying to highlight what are the winning issues in this particular claim and I feel like that’s a strength I developed being more of a trial attorney than I am now and been doing this work since probably 2019 and enjoy it a great deal. I enjoy helping people and enjoy that aspect.
Of course sometimes, you know, people are disappointed or frustrated throughout the process, and that’s though to take. When you help people and when you get to that finish line with people, that’s a great reward. So I like that part a great deal. As far as my family, as I said, my wife and I were married back in August of 1984. We lived in California, which is where I was when I was in the Navy; Arizona, now North Carolina, and I enjoy it here a lot. We have three children. I have two daughters who both live in California and work in big corporations, something that’s not really my cup of tea, but they seem to enjoy it. My son is a senior in college and he’s probably going to follow his mom’s footstep in working in marketing after he graduates.
Gary's Background
I went to undergraduate at Florida State University and studied business marketing. From there, I went and worked for a couple years, decided I wanted to go to law school and ended up going to law school in New Orleans at Tulane University Law School, studied there for three years, practiced law for a number of years, and then as I said earlier, I was involved in the family business for a number of years. So I have a very wide, diverse background both in business and both in law.
What Strengths Do You Each Bring to the Table?
Gary: I think that Brett and I complement each other very, very well. I think we’re both sound, very, very sound technically and analytically as attorneys. From a business standpoint, Brett and I really complement each other very well. I guide the personnel decisions and put the wheels in play for different types of marketing and business growth, and Brett is very, very strong operationally and technically from a software and case management practice.
Brett: I agree. A business relationship is just like any other relationship. You got to have give and take, and you got to have people that complement each other. I agree with Gary. I think we have the same perspective on some things. I think we have the opposite perspective on some things, and then I think we have similar perspectives on some things. I feel like sometimes that creates discussion and maybe a little bit of disagreement in how to handle something. Ultimately, having those kind of conversations I think makes the services that we provide for our clients, and the environment that we’re trying to create in our business, I think it makes it better because we don’t just have one idea. I have my idea on how to do things, and Gary has his idea.
Sometimes we’re lockstep, and then, other times, we have two different ideas. We have to figure out why is it different, and how do we make it work out. I think it really strengthens everything that we do.
What Makes Your Firm (Disability Attorney Services) Different?
I really try to strive to make the philosophy of our firm to give the clients a family feel as best we can. I try to put ourselves and our firm – and I stress to our paralegals and staff members that people who apply for disability are not coming to us in a good position in their life. They’re struggling. They’re oftentimes losing their house. They don’t have any finances. They can’t put food on the table. They’re either a one-person income family or a two-person income family that cuts down to one. That other person sometimes will become the caretaker, and then there’s no income. The clients are losing everything that they own, so I really try to stress that to my staff members to put themselves in the position of our clients, try to be understanding, try to be caring, and try to put their cases in the absolute best position to obtain a favorable outcome.
From a legal standpoint, there’s many, many different ways that we structure cases to make the case a stronger case from a legal standpoint. It’s too difficult to go into in this type of conversation, but there’s legal strategies that we employ as attorneys, certain ways that we fill out paperwork, certain ways that we have clients fill out paperwork, certain arguments and memos that we write to the judges based on different legal theories to win cases. I think what the average individual does not understand who is applying for disability is there’s more than one way to get approved for Social Security Disability, especially when you’re talking about different age categories. There’s different rules to get approved for people under 50 and different rules for people that are over 50. Again, it’s a very in-depth legal process that only skilled attorneys truly understand.
Disability Claims for Veterans
We’re not specifically handling the VA claims, but it is a little surprising to me that a lot of veterans don’t know that they can also file the Social Security Disability Insurance claim. Typically, any veteran that’s getting at least 50% VA disability or more is not going to be eligible for the supplemental security income type claim because their assets are just going to be too high. That money is going to be too much, but they would qualify for the disability insurance. The key indicator or the key thing is getting that claim filed as soon as possible. A lot of times, people are out of the service for a while. They don’t really think about it, and then it gets more difficult over time to reach further back to get those claims approved.
How Can I Pay for a Disability Lawyer?
We get paid on a contingent fee basis, so if there is no win in the claim at any one of those three stages, the initial application, the reconsideration, or the administrative law judge hearing phase, if we don’t get a win at one of those stages, there’s no cost and there’s no fee. It’s a no risk proposition for the client. Of course, they’re already dealing with the difficulty in trying to work and so forth, but this doesn’t add anything to that. Now, if we do get a favorable determination, our fee comes from the back benefits that the claimant or client is entitled to. Our fee is 25% of that up to a cap. The cap moves based on how Social Security is doing things. Currently, right now, in the spring of 2024, that cap is 7,200. It’s going to move up at the end of the year to 9,200. Whichever one of those numbers ends up being lower is what our fee is. If we get a favorable decision, we will pass on some of our medical record costs, which generally range from somewhere maybe about $50 on the low end to maybe 150-$200 on the high end.
How Long Does a Claim Take?
What we tell clients is, generally, at the initial application phase, you’re looking at probably six to nine months is the average timeframe. It could be as long as a year or more depending on the number of circumstances, volume, and the particular office that you file in is one thing. SSA or the Social Security Administration has started to move claims around the country so that there aren’t those kind of backlogs, but it still happens at some places where just human interaction with the claims has to happen at some level. They get slowed down, but six to nine months is probably about the average. At the first stage or initial application, if you get denied there, you can appeal and move to the reconsideration phase. Generally, we see that as a bit of a shorter timeframe. It’s a review of the same information, same type of evaluation. Four to six months maybe is the typical timeframe there. Then when you move to the administrative law judge phase, again, has somewhat dependent on how the scheduling works. SSA is trying to move claims around the country, especially with phone and video hearings, to filter out any kind of backlogs in any particular office, but I think the range that we see right now is probably in that four-to-six-month range to get from request for hearing to the actual hearing being completed.
Does the Judge Make a Difference in My Case?
The way that I like to explain it to clients when they ask me this question is that, if you take an example of 100 cases, there are going to be out of those 100 cases basically 10 cases that every judge will approve. There are basically going to be another 10 cases that every judge will deny, and then you’re left with about 80 cases in the middle. Depending on the judge, depending on the skill of the attorney, depending on the medical records that have been submitted to back up the client’s claim, you can get different results depending on the judge, depending on the attorney, and again, that’s where that I feel that my skill as an attorney, Brett’s skill as an attorney, and our acumen put our clients in the best position to win cases no matter who the judge is.
How are Mental & Physical Disability Cases Different?
People can be disabled for a number of different reasons. Sometimes you can see the disability that the person is dealing with on a daily basis; you can see the limp in their leg or you can see the hunch in their back or you can see the pain that they are in and them wincing, and then you have a boatload of cases of individuals who are struggling mentally, oftentimes with anxiety, depression. They might look normal on the outside but on the inside they are truly struggling. The standard to get approved for a mental impairment case is that the individual must not be able to maintain the intensity, focus, persistence, attendance and pace of full-time work. There again there are ways that skilled attorneys are able to prove this. For example, you can prove that someone is only comfortable with mental impairment cases in the comforts of their own home. If someone is only able to work from home, they are disabled. For an individual to be declared disabled by a judge, that judge must find that that individual cannot work in the work place, out in the field. If they can only work at home or limited to their own environment because of their mental impairments, they are in fact disabled.
Relative to physical impairment cases, an individual who’s under 50 must have the ability to lift and carry 10 pounds on a frequent basis and at least be able to sit six out of 8 hours in a workday. If someone is over 50 and they have engaged in a physical type job, jobs such as school teachers, bus drivers, line workers, any type of job that requires standing and walking for long periods of the work day, if that individual after the age of 50 is limited to a job where they would have to be sitting for 6 to 8 hours a day and lifting less than 10 pounds, they are disabled. If someone is under 50, the standard is a little bit more difficult but then again with skilled attorneys like Brett and I, that individual has to not be able to do even a sedentary type job; they have to be “less than sedentary”. Less than sedentary doesn’t mean that someone’s laid up in a hospital bed in a comma; it just means that they must not be able to sit for 6 out 8 hours in a workday and they must not be able to lift up to 10 pounds on a frequent basis. Again, skilled attorneys like Brett and I know how to maneuver legal arguments, write memos, craft arguments to judges to persuade the judge to look at the case from a different angle. Again, that’s a skilled acumen that skilled attorneys know how to craft.
What Should I Do If I'm Not Sure My Claim is Valid?
The way that I like to explain it is that if someone has diagnosed medical conditions that are preventing them from working. Work is not defined as not working at all and having zero income. Work is defined as making less than roughly 1300 to $1400 a month. The number changes every year, but it’s not the amount of hours someone is working. It’s based on the amount of money that they are bringing in from their work-related activity. If someone is making under the threshold and they’re either not able to work full-time or they can’t work at all, then I absolutely would advise a consultation with an attorney. Our firm’s philosophy is to provide free consultations to anyone who might think that they have a viable case. Oftentimes, people think that their case is not viable, but in reality, it’s a very, very viable case. Again, I think another thing that folks don’t understand is that, if someone has a good solid work history, that usually goes a very, very long way towards convincing a judge that this person is disabled, so there’s a number of different avenues. Again, a number of different avenues and methods for Brett and I to discern if a case is viable or not.
Common Industries for Disability Claims
Every time I think I’ve seen it all we get a client in that has a new issue. Of course, there are a lot of types of jobs that are physical, and you see a lot of people from the warehouse type jobs, the more heavy industry type jobs where people’s bodies just wear out over time, a lot of the blue-collar workers. However, people fall off of ladders. People are stricken with disease or other conditions that would otherwise interrupt their career, and they don’t have any health conditions. There was nothing at work that happened or people get in accidents or whatever it is. We do see a lot of manual labor type jobs, especially with people that are starting to rise in age, late 40s, early to mid-50s, but yeah, people get hurt all the time, unfortunately.
How Long Can You Receive Disability Income?
The SSI, Supplemental Security Income claim is a financial needs-based claim. It typically has a cap. I believe, in 2024, that cap is around $955 a month, and that can run through your entire life. If you maintain that medical approval, then that could run for your entire life. There are different rules, again, on qualifying for that full amount. If you qualified for the full amount, that’s what you’d be able to receive, and potentially, for the rest of your life, you’d be able to receive it. The disability insurance or SSDI claim, that one’s a little bit more complex because it’s a function of what you’ve paid into the system, and the underlying claim, whenever it begins, there’s a five-month waiting period. If you get approved, say, in January of 2020, then the first five months of 2020 are a waiting period. There’s a lot of folks in the representative business, the different trade groups and so forth that are working very hard with Congress to try and get that waiting period removed, but for right now, it’s still in place. Then those payments begin, and they would run through retirement age. Once you reach full retirement age, if you maintain that disability, you would transfer or be switched over to Social Security retirement benefits.
How Long Do You Have to File a Disabilty Claim?
One of the toughest things that we see is sometimes people just wait too long, and if you wait too long, sometimes you run out of the ability to get that claim filed, especially with the Social Security Disability Insurance claim because there’s a time limit on some of those claims being filed. Sometimes it’s difficult if you wait too long. You have to really try and reach back and find records, and it can be difficult. There’s not really a timeframe per se. I mean, we see a lot of people, especially working people, maybe blue-collar workers that are starting to get up in years. You see people in their late 40s, early to mid-50s. Your body a lot of times just starts to give out, and you can’t do the more physical labor. We see a lot of people that are trying to work, and they just can’t do it. Sometimes those people might go out on some type of short or long-term disability benefit through their employer and then come to us to do the Social Security Disability claim, which you can do both. We see a lot of veterans that don’t know when they filed their VA claim that they can also file a Social Security Disability Insurance claim, and those are usually very strong claims and, obviously, can be very helpful to a veteran that doesn’t have any way to earn. A disabled veteran doesn’t have any way to earn any money anymore.
Sometimes it’s people with issues, maybe mental health issues that have just developed and enhanced over time, or maybe there’s some sort of trigger event that just changes their life, that they’ve been dealing with something. Then all of a sudden this trigger happens, and it just changes their life. Yeah, we handle all of those things and do the best that we can to put that case together to show, hey, this is the trajectory that this person was on, and this is why the trajectory changed because of this condition.
What Kinds of People Can You Help?
We have people from children. There are minor SSI or Supplemental Security Income claims that we handle. Those aren’t really the majority of the type of claims we handle, but we do handle some of those claims and then from 18-year-olds filing as adults up through retirement age. That’s the window as far as the age. Of course, life circumstances and the type of people that we work with are as varied as the type of people that are in our country. Sometimes we handle claims where it’s just physical disability, and a lot of times, quite frankly, I think those are easier for decision-makers to understand. If you’ve got a shoulder that’s not functioning, or a hand that’s not functioning, or you’re missing part of your body, those are very easy things to see. The mental health cases I think are more challenging for a lot of different reasons, harder to see conditions, but certainly still types of conditions that really affect people a great deal and take people out of the workplace on a regular basis, and then sometimes it’s mixed. Sometimes it’s people that are dealing with both physical and mental health related issues. Again, the gamut from all the way on either end we handle.
What happens after a Claim Denial?
After the administrative law judge, if there’s a denial there then there’s a 2 step appeal process. You can go to the appeals council first and if that’s unsuccessful, there’s also a federal court appeal and we handle both of those types of appeals. And the goal with these appeals is to get the matter sent back or get that claim sent back to the administrative law judge so we’ll brief those cases and identify what we think are the errors in the cases, and we find a reasonably good success rate on getting cases sent back for hearing, and then of course every chance you have at a hearing is another chance to win a claim so while we know it’s frustrating for our clients that they have to wait more time, it’s still another chance to win that claim, so we find that as effective means to continuing these claims.
The Disability Claims Process
Mr. Brown and I try and run this business as sort of a small business operation. We want our clients to know that they have access to us and that we make sure that we are on top of everything. The way we do our intakes when we are initially talking to potential clients, typically that’s our intake specialist, Alex and/or me, talking to those individuals, vetting their claims to make a determination if it’s a claim, number 1 that we think we can win because we don’t want to take on claims that we won’t think we can win, and then number 2 we want to make sure that there is a good fit for the client with us and us with the client. So once we bring those folks on then we’ll send out, typically send out paperwork to them electronically to get completed, and we get that information back and we’ll file their claim or file their appeal electronically. Then we have to wait for the social security administration to go through their start up and vetting process, they have a system that they go through. Once that claim gets active or that appeal gets active, then we have case managers that will manage those claims and work them through the system, either at the lower levels, the initial application and reconsideration stage, to get them through those, and then at the administrative law judge hearing phase, again we have people that help manage those claims, make sure the clients understand what the process is and make sure that we’re adding the relevant and important medical records because that’s really ultimately what these approvals are based on.
At the lower levels, we try to move them as quick as we can because we find that the success rate is much higher from a percentage standpoint at the administrative law judge phase so we want to get there really as fast as we can so we try to push those claims through at the lower levels. Just like any other firm or any individual that’s managing their own claim sometimes we’re at the mercy of the social security administration of course but we do have some methods that we use and we have some very determined employees that help us get those things moving as fast as possible.
Can You Get Benefits Retroactively?
The short answer to that question is yes, there’s what they call a closed period of disability where if someone has been out of work for at least one year and then they have returned to work and have made medical improvement, they can go back and get retroactive benefits for that year that they were out of work. That period might’ve been a year. It might’ve been 14 months; it might’ve been 16 months; it might’ve been two years or three years as long as they have one continuous period of 12 months not working. In Social Security speak and Social Security words, work is definied as making less than a certain amount of money. It’s not the number of hours someone’s working; it’s the amount of money that they made. So at this point in time, that is called what they called substantial gainful activity, and if someone is making less than the number, the substantial gainful activity varies from year to year. At this point in time, I think it’s $1,380 a month. So if there’s been a continous period of at least 12 months where that person had been making less than $1,380, they can go back and get or at least try to get disabilty benefits for that year period.
What are the Different Types of Disability Claims?
There’s essentially two types of claims. There’s the Social Security Disability Insurance, which a lot of people call the SSD or SSDI type claim, and that is based on your work history. The bar or the barrier to entry to file that claim is based on your work history, and a potential payout on that type of claim is also based on your work history, what you’ve paid into the Social Security system. The other type of claim, the Supplemental Security Income claim or SSI claim is a financial needs-based claim, so the barrier to entry, I guess, on that one is having a demonstrable financial need. Then, if and when you’re approved on that type of claim, there’s restrictors on how many assets you can have. It’s a more limited type of claim. Each one of them have the same process as far as the five-step evaluation to get approved.
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