When you’ve suffered a serious injury or experienced the onset of severe illness, your condition can be disabling, preventing you from working and earning the wages necessary to care for yourself. That can leave you in a dire financial predicament and riddled with worry about how you’re going to make ends meet. Fortunately, you might be able to qualify for Social Security disability benefits.
But the process of pursuing disability benefits has changed over the last several years. Whereas disability hearings used to occur in-person in years past, now many of them occur over a virtual platform. That can make it easier for you, since you won’t have to travel to get to your hearing and you won’t feel the pressure of an in-person hearing, you still need to adequately prepare if you hope to secure the disability benefits you need. Therefore, you’ll want to make sure you avoid making some key mistakes in your remote hearing that could devastate your claim.
Mistakes to avoid in your virtual disability hearing
You shouldn’t expect for your hearing to go well if you walk into it without adequate preparation. So, as you build your claim and ready yourself for your hearing, you should avoid making the following mistakes, any one of which could upend your virtual hearing:
- Failing to test your technology: It’s incredibly stressful to try to enter a virtual meeting only to find that your computer doesn’t have the proper software installed to allow you to enter the meeting. You especially don’t want this to happen when you’re trying to enter your disability hearing, as failing to test your technology could prevent you from presenting the evidence needed to support your case.
- Neglecting to prep your witnesses: The witnesses you call to testify on your behalf need to be ready to speak to your condition and how it impacts your ability to live a normal life, keeping in mind the specific requirements you have to show for your condition. So, talk to them about their testimony so that you know what they intend to say and how you can craft your questions to elicit the answers you want. Also, make sure they have the right technology and that they know what to expect form a virtual hearing. If you don’t, then their testimony may not be as compelling as you hope.
- Mishandling exhibits: You’re going to have documentary evidence to submit at your disability hearing. At the very least, this will include your medical records. But if you’re going into a virtual hearing, then you need to ensure that these records are submitted well ahead of time since you won’t have the opportunity to physically hand them to the administrative law judge during your hearing. So, be sure that you have the administrative law judge’s contact information so that you can send them your exhibits ahead of time. It’s also a good idea to confirm with them that they’ve received what you sent them prior to your hearing.
Fight to secure disability benefits in the age of virtual hearings
There are a lot of other mistakes you can make leading up to your disability hearing. That’s why it’s imperative that you know how to competently navigate the process. With that understanding, you can gather persuasive evidence and craft compelling legal arguments that position you for success. If you want to learn more about how to do that, then consider fully discussing the matter with your disability attorney.