The Process and Cost of Paying Attorneys

While SSA has been paying attorney fees for over 30 years, the payment process itself is inefficient, and the costs of the process are not known. Approving and paying attorney fees is a complex process that involves many steps; a number of staff in different units and locations; and various information systems that are not linked and that, therefore, require considerable manual intervention. We recently received information on the basis for SSA’s 6.3 percent user fee calculation and have only begun to analyze the assumptions the agency used to compute it. In order to comply with the Ticket to Work Act, SSA is currently in the process of developing a methodology to capture the current costs of administering the attorney fee provisions. Thus far, the work group has identified four components associated with the cost of administering attorney fees: (1) the time that SSA field office staff spend informing claimants that they are entitled to legal representation when filing an appeal; (2) the time it takes an ALJ to review and approve the fee; (3) the charges incurred by SSA’s Office of Systems to program systems to track attorney fee cases and related computing time to generate a payment file/tape for Treasury to use to pay the attorney; and (4) the process for calculating the attorney fee, entering relevant attorney and other key data into SSA’s information systems, and certifying related amounts for payment. Possible Changes to the Way the User Fee Is Charged

Attorneys have expressed concern about the length of time it takes SSA to process their fees and have questioned the appropriateness of charging a user fee for a service that takes so long. When considering one or both of these changes, certain policy and administrative implications would need to be addressed. Timeliness of Payments to Attorneys

According to the National Organization of Social Security Claimants’ Representatives (NOSSCR),6 individual attorneys, and SSA officials, SSA often has trouble making timely payments to attorneys. Further Efficiencies Are Possible

Aside from the delays that are outside its control, SSA is aware that there are steps it could take to make the process more efficient. According to SSA, these enhancements would automate the steps in order for systems to recognize attorney fee agreement cases, compute and withhold the 6.3 percent user fee, pay the actual attorney fee, and release the remainder of the past-due benefits immediately to the beneficiary.9 If SSA were to make the proposed system enhancements to process attorney fees, it may be advisable to revisit requirements for how quickly the agency could be expected to process an attorney fee. Changes Being Considered for Paying Attorney Fees

Attorneys, NOSSCR, and advocates have discussed various changes related to attorney fees: issuing joint checks for past-due benefits to both the attorney and the beneficiary, raising the $4,000 limit on attorney fees allowable under the fee agreement process, and extending the statutory withholding of attorney fees to the SSI program. In addition, a number of administrative issues dealing with the implementation of joint checks would need to be addressed.
Why GAO Did This Study

GAO discussed issues involving the Social Security Administration's (SSA) process for paying attorneys representing applicants for disability benefits, focusing on three areas of the attorney payment process: (1) the process itself, including the costs of processing the payments; (2) possible changes to the way the user fee is charged; and (3) changes being considered for the attorney fee payment process overall.

What GAO Found

GAO noted that: (1) while SSA has been paying attorney fees from beneficiaries' past-due benefits for over 30 years, the payment process remains inefficient, and little historical data are available to help GAO analyze proposed changes; (2) under the current procedures, the inefficiencies in processing fee payments to attorneys result from using a number of different staff in different units and various information systems that are not linked, and are not designed to calculate and process all aspects of the attorney fee payment, thus necessitating manual calculations; (3) the Ticket to Work Act includes a provision that requires SSA to charge an assessment to recover the costs of this service; (4) GAO has only begun to analyze the estimate that was used as a basis for the user fee, and SSA does not know the actual cost it incurs in processing attorney fees; (5) however, the agency is developing a methodology to better capture these costs; (6) SSA has trouble with making timely payments to attorneys, and some have questioned the appropriateness of charging a user fee for a service that takes so long; (7) a recent legislative proposal calls for eliminating the user fee if SSA does not pay the attorney within 30 days; (8) in many cases, it will be difficult for SSA to meet these timeframes; (9) attorneys need to realize that, while it is possible for SSA to improve the efficiency of the process it uses to pay them, some factors that delay their payments are outside SSA's control and are unlikely to change at this time; (10) three possible changes to the attorney fee payment process include whether: (a) joint checks for past-due benefits should be issued to the beneficiary and the attorney; (b) the dollar limit on certain attorney fees should be raised; and (c) SSA's attorney fee payment process should be expanded to the Supplemental Security Income program; (11) these changes would have both policy and administrative implications that need to be considered; (12) some of the changes could increase attorney representation for disability applicants, according to attorneys GAO spoke with; (13) however, not everyone agrees with this premise; (14) moreover, there are some drawbacks to these changes; and (15) SSA indicated it may need to make significant modifications to its information systems to issue joint checks or pay attorneys who represent SSI recipients.