Beware the Helpful

I am disgusted by opportunists who borrow respect for the law, then charge people significant sums in exchange for little or no service. Beware.

Today I went with two friends to a nearby Social Security Administration office to discuss a disability claim. My friends had applied online, but not at the Social Security website. The official Social Security website for disability applications is https://secure.ssa.gov/iClaim/dib.

In using a different site, by accident my friends nearly engaged the services of a law firm. Please know this. If you are applying for disability, there is very little a lawyer can do to assist you in submitting an initial claim. By that I mean, they might stand beside you looking forbidding while the claims representative assists you. That’s it.

The result will be that a new claims representative might become nervous. An experienced claims representative might become annoyed. Neither result will work in your favor.

In the case of my friends, this law firm provided a completed Form SSA-827, “Authorization to Disclose Information to the Social Security Administration” and Form SSA-1696, the form to appoint a representative. How nice. The SSA-827 was completed online by the applicant, so the cost to the legal firm was printing and postage.

For this service, the law firm was prepared to charge my friends 25 percent of any resulting disability award or $6,000. For a pittance of ink and a postage stamp. And one neatly folded, pre-addressed manila envelope to spring the trap.

This law firm is nearly five hours away, offers nothing of value, and would never meet my friends to check on their wellbeing. Six thousand dollars.

I congratulate the claims representative at the SSA Office. She pleasantly went through the packet, discarded the needless paperwork, set an appointment to meet with a disability claims representative, and told us “Well done.” We could tell she was as bothered by this as we were.

It was apparent that this happens much more often than we think. It’s not illegal. Neither is getting your windshield involuntarily cleaned on a street corner. Both activities are annoying, but whoever is “helping” people file for disability is carefully collecting signatures that will put the force of law behind their eventual invoices. Rather than being illegal, it is despicable and detestable.

Know your rights. Know the processes to submit claims. Don’t let people you care about get taken. And thank the next government employee you meet. They’re trying to do their best. Despite some of the rest of us.