A NOTE FROM THE PRESIDENT

A NOTE

FROM THE PRESIDENT

Note from the President: Q1 2023 As usual, it’s been another busy time for NADR! On November 9, the NADR Legislative Committee met with senior SSA staff to discuss many of the issues that are most important to our members. Please see page 4 for a summary of that meeting. On December 15, we met with OHO staff to discuss the continued modification of the CSU. SSA previously announced they are moving the actual scheduling back to the local hearing offices, but the big update is they are ready to go live with the online submission portal in February 2023. Please watch your emails for more information as we get it. As announced earlier, NADR and NOSSCR have been working together the last few months on several projects that will benefit representatives and claimants alike. The biggest of which is eliminating the 5-month waiting period for SSDI claims. Other joint projects are free medical records for every disability claimant (and representative) and permanent use of electronic signatures. Stay tunes for updates! On November 1, 2022, NADR rolled out the Delayed Fees Project submission process. Getting this project going has been a yearlong process and in its first few months, it has seen a lot of success. Several fees that you have submitted have already been paid and many more are on the way to resolution. To date, we’ve submitted 358 fees that were over 9 months post approval and 194 of them have already been paid. To put it in more perspective, $1,164,518.08 has been reported and $719,189.13 has been paid to advocates. If you have fees over 9 months old and are tired of banging your head against the wall, download the submission spreadsheet from the NADR Website and submit it to Feeissues@NADR.org. Speaking of fees, the new fee cap is finally here! If you haven’t updated your fee agreement to reflect the new cap of $7,200, please do so now. If you are using the 1693 Fee Agreement and haven’t downloaded the newest one, you can find it here Fee Agreement for Representation before the Social Security Administration (ssa.gov) Our next in person event is the NADR Annual Law Conference in Denver, CO April 2-5, 2023. In the meantime, take advantage of our other monthly educational opportunities between NADR Connect, NADR Mastermind and our Webinar Series. Here’s to a happy New Year and I look forward to seeing everyone in Denver! Michael Wener, ADR NADR President