The most frequent question I'm asked is "How long will I wait for a Social Security hearing?" Today, I want to give a tool through the Social Security website on how you can answer that question. We'll start out with a Google search and type in "ALJ disposition data." You can see it starts to populate. The very top file should be public data file and this is Social Security's website.
170 Hearing Offices in the United States
Now, the easiest way to answer the question is to click this button labeled "average wait time until hearing held report." Click that, come down to the bottom, and you'll find an alphabetized list of hearing offices. If you go to the very bottom of this screen you'll see that there are 170 entries, indicating there are 170 hearing offices in the country. Fortunately, we can type in our hearing office here and we learn that in Denver, where Rocky Mountain Disability Law Group is situated, it takes approximately 11 months between the time an applicant requests, submits a request for a hearing, the hearing is held, and the decision is issued and the case is closed.
Search by city or location
Now, you can type in any city. You can type in Alberquerque and it will populate there. You can type in Atlanta where we have another office under Southern Disability Law Group, and you'll see that it takes approximately 15 months. Now another mechanism is to simply go to the "hearing office workload data," which has slightly more information. Again, if we type in Denver's website we learn that there are...that since September 28, 2013, through the end of November, Denver has received 1,113 applications for hearing or request for hearings; the office has closed 996 cases; not necessarily these 1,113, but just 996 cases; and that there are 6293 cases pending at that office; and that their average wait time or processing time from beginning to end is 359 days.
If you have any other questions, please search through our website through our blog entries, I'm sure you'll find some useful information there. Have a great day.
Contact us today to learn more about how we can help ensure you receive the benefits you are entitled to. Please call (303) 534-1958 or complete a contact form on our website.
Joe Whitcomb
