Law Firm Forces Rewrite of Social Security Attorneys’ Fee Rules

The Social Security Administration must change its procedures for paying attorneys’ fees in disability benefit disputes to allow payments to law firms and payments for work done by lawyers who later join the government, the First Circuit held.

The administration’s requirement that attorneys’ fees be paid to individual attorneys and not to law firms is arbitrary and frustrates the statutory mandate to provide a reasonable legal fee for representing Social Security disability claimants, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit said in a July 16 opinion.

The fact that only individual attorneys can serve as representatives in the ...