Do I have any recourse against my disability lawyer or some type of appeal for just my back pay. I filed in Dec 2015 went to adm. law judge in 2018 and approved. However, the Adm. Law Judge only had the evaluation of a doctor I had seen at the behest of my atty in 2018. When I hired him I obtained and gave my atty. copies of my medical records and all my other SS paperwork, which included an evaluation by my doctor I had been seeing for 25 years, At the end of the hearing the Judge said he would approve with an onset date of Dec 2018 which I knew meant he was trying to beat me out of my back pay. My atty. and I went to discuss it and he said the judge was just being a $$%^. I said what about the evaluation my doctor submitted back in 2016? He said "Oh, was that in there, I didn't see that." He told me if I didin't take it the judge was gonna deny me and I would spend another 2 years fighting for it in appeals. I know it's been a while but that really hurt me financially when I lost that and now he is sending me a bill for the doctor he hired for $300 after he lost the back pay by not speaking up. Any recourse?

Hi. My expertise is limited to Social Security benefits, so I don't know if you have any recourse against your attorney. You can appeal the determination of an administrative law judge (ALJ), but you must normally do so within 60 days of the date you are notified of the ALJ's determination. If it's been longer than that since you received your approval notice, then you'd need to prove that you have good cause for filing a late appeal. The next step of appeal after a hearing is an appeals council review. For more information, refer to the following Social Security publication: https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-70-10281.pdf.

Best, Jerry