Reply to Board of Veterans Appeals (Attorney Advisor)

Forum Index » Jobs and Careers

Reply to "Board of Veterans Appeals (Attorney Advisor)"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

Even if you get lucky and are assigned to a kind hearted judge, there is no guarantee that you'll be able to stay with that judge forever. Management moves attorneys around from time to time. Like the poster above, I too have seen several career GS-14 attorneys with decades of outstanding evaluations get their careers destroyed after they were reassigned to one of the really, really terrible judges - the ones you are referring to. One's success or failure shouldn't be wholly dependent on the luck of the draw or the graces of a judge.

Additionally, one's experience at the Board is also highly dependent on whether one is assigned to a judge with high denial rate or high grant rate. Attorneys who are assigned to judges with high denial rates regularly have to draft decisions that are long, detailed, and well-reasoned, to ensure that the denials are defensible in federal court. Many of these attorneys have to work in excess of 40 hours a week to meet the quota. In contrast, attorneys who are assigned to judges with high grant rates, generally have no problem meeting or even exceeding the quota, as they can write conclusory decisions that are typically no longer than three pages (as VA disability claims are non-adversarial, the government cannot appeal decisions granting benefits). I don't think that kind of disparity is fair.[/quote]

Very true.  Even some of the judges who are decent people can still be difficult bosses, because they demand nearly law-review levels decisions anytime you're denying anything.  The Board's own data from a few years back confirmed two important facts that are obvious to anyone who's worked there 15+ years - the number of issues per case, and the number of documents per case have both risen dramatically.  This means writing decisions has gotten harder, because there's a bigger file to review and more issues to address.  So what has been management's response?  Increase the quota (or attempt to increase it)!  Heck, it took management 10+ years to even start factoring in issue count when considering whether you've met quota.  Management talks all the time about "employee engagement" and all the usual buzzwords, but it's just talk.  They really don't care.  [/quote]

How does your judge have time to review all these law review level decisions? [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics