What Is the Hearing Level of a Social Security Claim?

So the hearing level of a social security claim comes after your initial application. Then you got denied there. Then you applied for reconsideration of the initial application. And now you’re going to go to an administrative law court. And the person that hears that is an ALJ, which is an administrative law judge. And so obviously my opinion is that you should have an attorney representing you at all three levels including going to the appeals council if you lost at trial. And the reason for that is because we’re going to be arguing before a judge as to why you should qualify for social security. I think it’s even better at an initial level as well to have a lawyer because they know that if you get denied, the lawyer is going to appeal it. So it’s going to end up before a judge if they deny it and I think it makes them take your application more seriously. That’s my opinion. So you go to trial, we present the medical records, we might provide qualifying questions to your doctor, expert opinions, and then we have a hearing and then the ALJ, the administrative law judge, makes a decision.