Ballerina: Every circumstance is different. For those with little or no backpay, that can actually find a good attorney, they won't pay out hardly any fee anyway. Other than a legally capped fee, there is no downside to using an attorney that I can think of other than having a personal issue with the legal profession. When the legal fee is the objection, as I've repeatedly said, there are non-profit legal services as well.

Please explain once and for all what your objections are to getting professional legal help?

For those with a psych component to their application or a mental disability claim, for those that are so ill that they're barely functioning in their daily lives, for those in denial of the true extent of their disability, for those that don't have family resources to fall back on, exploring extra legal help early on makes sense.

Just because someone's view is different than yours, doesn't make theirs automatically "uninformed" or incorrect. **