Information about Veterans' Benefit Claims...
Veterans' benefits include many types of financial, medical, educational, and vocational assistance. Because my practice is limited to disability claims, I can only accept cases that involve cash disability benefits. Of those claims, only service-connected disability claims are likely to produce sufficient benefits to allow for payment of a reasonable attorney fee.
Veterans' disability benefit claims differ substantially from other types of governmental disability claims because the Veterans Administration has an affirmative obligation to assist the veteran with the establishment of his or her claim. This responsibility rests primarily with the Regional Office that processes your initial claim. The obligation to assist the veteran involves assistance in completion of forms, medical evaluation, vocational evaluation, and recovery of records. The VA claims adjudication process is not considered to be an adversarial proceeding or process; i.e., the government is not considered to be your adversary, but is there to help you obtain all the benefits to which you are entitled. If this sounds a bit like the proverbial "fox guarding the hen-house", well, what can I say!
Prior to June 20, 2007, lawyers were prohibited from charging a fee for representing a veteran until the Board of Veterans' Appeals (BVA) had issued a final decision on your claim. This prohibition did not apply to the reopening of a claim after the BVA has issued it first final decision. Effective June 20, 2007, lawyers may now represent veterans when the veteran files his initial notice of disagreement with a decision of the Regional Office.
This website cannot begin to address all the issues involved in veterans' appeals. A vast amount of information available from the Department of Veterans Affairs and other websites listed below.
Department of Veterans Affairs http://www.va.gov/
Veterans of Foreign Wars http://www.vfw.org/
Disabled American Veterans http://www.dav.org/
AMVETS http://www.amvets.org/
National Personnel Records Center (St. Louis) http://www.archives.gov/st-louis/
Florida Department of Veterans' Affairs http://www.floridavets.org/
National Veterans Legal Services Program http://www.nvlsp.org/ ("Self-Help Guides" available on this site)
The Veterans Consortium Pro Bono Program http://www.vetsprobono.org/
National Organization of Veterans Advocates http://www.VetAdvocates.com/