Reply to Board of Veterans Appeals (Attorney Advisor)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Why does OPM allow these jobs to be classified as attorney positions to begin with? It’s claims reviewing. This work used to be done by paralegals. Did the work change, or did the agencies just decide they could hire faster using excepted attorney positions?[/quote]

The work did not change. Even today, non-attorneys reviewers still review VA claims and make the initial decision as to whether to pay the claim. If a claimant is dissatisfied with the initial decision, he or she can appeal to BVA, where an attorney and judge will review it. The attorney reviewers at BVA perform the same work as the non-attorneys reviewers.[/quote]

and, essentially, the "judges" do the same thing as well, except they conduct hearings and of course they are the ones signing decisions.  but its still file review. [/quote]

You don’t seem to understand how many different agencies have a very similar set-up for administrative rulings with initial rulings made by specialists and appeals going to attorneys. Much of the law is file review, especially in administrative jobs in the federal government. The file is where the evidence is.

BVA files are extensive and the medical records are repetitive and depressing and the quota is a challenge for some. But the basics of admin law run across the fed gvt executive branch agencies. [/quote]

I disagree.

Yes, many agencies utilize an administrative process, but rarely do attorneys and non-attorneys perform the same duties. SSA is the only other agency that utilizes a similar mass scale adjudication process as VA. In the context of SSA disability, non-attorneys initially adjudicate disability claims. If the claimant is dissatisfied with the initial decision, he or she can appeal to an SSA ALJ. SSA ALJs do not write their own decisions. Rather, their decisions are written by staff members known as "decision writers," who can be either attorneys or non-attorneys (both attorneys and paralegals perform the same duties). If a claimant is dissatisfied with the SSA ALJ's decision, he or she can appeal to the Appeals Council, where their claims are also reviewed by analysts, who sometimes are attorneys (but not always). Like SSA, VA attorneys review the same files as non-attorneys and render decisions using extensive boilerplate language. I agree that VA disability claims have more extensive records than SSA disability records, but its debatable whether VA disability adjudication is real legal work. I mean, no one goes to law school for the opportunity to copy and paste boilerplate language into three decisions a week.[/quote]

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