Originally Posted by Direwolf

I've been pursuing my claim's since 2003, which includes 7 consecutive denials until prevailing against SSA in federal court this past winter, with notification from the federal judge coming my way in July!

The federal judge didn't even mention the ALJ giving more weight to the SSA hack in his ruling, in fact he turned him over on a ridiculous technicality pertaining to some silly job description thing. If not for that, it appears he'd have upheld the ALJ's original decision, which was just a black outrage.

My three RFC's were highly detailed, and completely supportive of my claim, I recall them being at least seven pages each. The neurologist charged me $500.00 for his contribution, the other two were simply done with no charge beyond the office visit required to deliver them into the doctors hands.

My attorney at that time did an awful job, he failed to obtain my full medical files, even after three face to face meetings in which it was explained to him that he did not have all of my files, and he assured me that he would obtain them. He also failed to brief me on the importance of the RFC's, I only found out about them 60 days out from the hearing(the neurologist books appointments 6-months out), I literally handed two of them over to the attorney in the hearing room, the day of the hearing! This did not sit well with the ALJ(Gaffney out of MLPS MN)who very obviously had made up his mind about my case well before I had entered his hearing room.

So RFC's are complicated, the attorneys love them, but they are absolutely no assurance of victory, and in my case they were completely ignored, which obviously was devastating. Despite overwhelming evidence supporting my claim, the ALJ chose to ignore them, he even went as far as stating in his decision that my doctors were lying! An absolute black outrage....

My advice is to obtain the RFC, but more importantly check out your ALJ's record, and don't allow your attorney to destroy your case through incompetence, you really have to watch them closely, they will lie to you over and over and over again, you just have to be intensively involved, YOU must physically verify that they have all of your records, they will deceive you on this count. You have to look at it from the attorneys perspective, they only can earn a max of about $6,000, and most of them will only prepare for your case a week or two out from the hearing, if that! My first attorney gave the strong impression of having not prepared at all, showing up at the hearing office with a a few notes scribbled on the cover of a palm sized notepad, she didn't even know my first name...