How the Judge Determines Disability

It is important that you understand some basic points about how the Administrative Law Judge goes about determining whether someone is disabled. This process is complicated and technical, and it doesn’t necessarily involve common sense. For example, most people think that if they cannot get a job because of their medical problems, this must prove that they are disabled. But inability to get a job proves nothing.

A disability determination is a “hypothetical” determination. That is, it has very little to do with the real world. It has nothing to do with the fact that employers won’t hire you because of your medical problems. The Social Security Administration looks only at whether you are capable of doing jobs, not whether you’d be hired. Thus, you may have to prove that you are unable to do jobs that you would never be hired for in a million years.

In some cases, the medical findings about your condition alone will cause the judge to find you disabled. However, in the majority of cases your attorney will have to prove two things: First, that your medical impairments prevent you from performing any job you’ve done in the past 15 years; and second, that there aren’t many other jobs you are capable of doing considering your age, education and work experience.

Think about all the jobs you’ve had in the past 15 years, and pick out the easiest one. You have to prove that you cannot do that easiest job—you have to prove this even if you’re dead certain you’d never be hired for that job again, and even if the company where you worked no longer exists or if the job is not available for some other reason.

Proving the second thing—that considering your age, education and work experience you’re unable to do many other jobs—is even more complicated and opposed to common sense. In many cases you have to prove that you’re incapable of doing jobs that you know you’d never actually be hired for.

A lot of people have heard the language “totally and permanently disabled.” This phrase, which comes from workers’ compensation cases, does not apply in Social Security disability and SSI disability cases. For Social Security, you don’t have to be “permanently” disabled; you only have to be disabled for 12 months. Although you have to be totally disabled in the sense that you are unable to perform jobs existing in significant numbers in the economy, this doesn’t mean that you have to be unable to do anything. In fact, very few people who go in front of an Administrative Law Judge are unable to do anything at all.