Summary: Often when applicants are found eligible for Disability Insurance (DI) benefits, the Social Security Administration (SSA) pays attorneys representing them directly from the beneficiaries' past-due benefits. Complaints about the time it takes SSA to pay the attorneys and recent legislative changes to the attorney payment process that include collecting a user fee for paying the attorneys have raised questions about whether additional changes are needed. A recent legislative proposal calls for eliminating this user fee if SSA does not pay attorneys within 30 days, but it may sometimes be difficult for SSA to meet this deadline. Three possible changes to the attorney fee payment process include whether (1) joint checks for past-due benefits should be issued to the beneficiary and the attorney, (2) the dollar limit on certain attorney fees should be raised, and (3) SSA's attorney fee payment process should be expanded to the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. These changes would have policy and administrative implications that need to be considered. Some of the changes could increase attorney representation for disability applicants and they have some drawbacks. For example, issuing joint checks to the beneficiary and the attorney might delay payments to the beneficiary and might increase the chance that attorneys would shortchange beneficiaries. SSA indicated that it might need to make significant modifications to its information systems to issue joint checks or pay attorneys who represent SSI recipients.
