Lessons Learned for Vets
Lessons Learned for Vets
Understanding VA Disability Appeals: A Veteran Attorney's Insider Guide with Chris McGhee
What happens when your VA disability claim gets denied? For many veterans, this rejection feels deeply personal. But as Chris McGhee explains, denial is often just the beginning of a journey toward proper recognition of service-connected conditions.
In this informative conversation, Chris McGhee, a retired Air Force veteran who transformed from aircraft maintainer to VA disability attorney, shares insights from both sides of the claims process. Having navigated his own disability claim with limited success initially, Chris now helps fellow veterans secure the benefits they've earned through his practice, Falcon Forward Law Group.
Chris demystifies the appeals process by addressing common misconceptions and explaining why claims get denied. From inexperienced examiners to simple bureaucratic errors, he reveals how the system sometimes fails veterans despite their legitimate conditions. Rather than accepting these denials, veterans should understand their appeal rights and the immense difference proper representation can make.
We cover the significant differences between disability rating levels. Beyond just monthly compensation, McGhee explains how crossing certain thresholds (especially 50% and 100%) unlocks life-changing benefits including concurrent receipt for retirees, healthcare for non-service-connected conditions, education benefits for family members and state-level tax exemptions. His breakdown of "VA math" helps veterans understand why their multiple ratings don't simply add up as expected.
Perhaps most valuable is Chris' advice about medical documentation while in service. Drawing from his own experience of rarely seeking treatment for migraines throughout his career, he emphasizes how even a single documented medical visit can establish that crucial in-service event needed for future claims. This perspective highlights the delicate balance service members face between protecting their careers and creating evidence for future disability claims.
If you're navigating the complex VA disability system, considering an appeal, or preparing to transition from military service, this episode provides essential guidance from someone who truly understands the journey. Subscribe to Lessons Learned for Vets for more insights that can help smooth your military transition journey.
You can connect with Chris McGhee on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/cmcghee358/
You can learn more about Chris McGhee's legal practice at https://www.fafo-law.com/
Welcome to the Lessons Learned for Vets podcast, your military transition debrief. I'm your host, lori Norris, and I've helped thousands of military service members successfully transition out of the military since 2005. Thanks for tuning in to hear the after action reports and real stories of your fellow veterans, who are here to help guide, educate and inform you as you navigate your own military transition. By the way, if you find value from today's episode, please share it with others, leave us a review and post about us on social media. On today's episode of the Lessons Learned from Vets podcast, I am welcoming back.
Speaker 1:Let's see third time guest Chris McGee. As you might remember, chris is a retired Air Force veteran whose career was focused in aircraft maintenance, though he held several roles after retiring in 2018, in 2019, he moved to Maine and enrolled in law school. After completing his Juris Doctorate in 2022 and his Master of Laws degree in 2023, he started working as a veteran's disability attorney and last year he launched his own practice Falcon Forward Law Group. And last year he launched his own practice Falcon Forward Law Group. He also hosts the 20 Years Done podcast that focuses on maintenance culture, and he is the highly paid volunteer producer of this show. So we talk a lot about the importance of filing disability claims on this show, but Chris is going to give you some important information on what to do if your claim does not go as expected. So welcome back, chris.
Speaker 2:Thank you, lori. I appreciate the invite for the third episode. It's amazing how much each of my episodes are radically different almost to the one before it, because of all the transformations that are kind of going on on the show.
Speaker 1:I think that's why we have to keep having you back, is because everything keeps changing for you, and I think that's why we have to keep having you back is because everything keeps changing for you and I think that's very cool.
Speaker 1:So I you know I know you have it listed on your linkedin as the podcast producer for the lessons learned from that's podcast but many people may not know that one of the only reasons we have been able to continue going this this season is because of you, and I just want to publicly thank you for you volunteering Literally. He didn't even get voluntold, he volunteered to take on the editing, so I really appreciate you.
Speaker 2:So I appreciate you and so I'm going to I'm going to hand the ball back to you because when we were talking in Atlanta, you said that like this show and teaching and reaching out and like broadening people's horizons is one of the things that gives you the most amount of fulfillment, and you were saying that because of the logistics of getting it audio engineered and all that stuff, you couldn't do something that brought you a lot of joy and stuff. And so don't sell yourself short. I do this because I want to empower you to do something to make everything better. So right back at you.
Speaker 1:Well, I love it. We are, we are friends, we have. I've met your fiance, we have hung out in Atlanta together and I'm excited that we get to keep working together. So, until you fire me as my volunteer producer, I really appreciate you. So, all right, I want to talk about this because it's really important. We've talked, like you said, we talk a lot about filing your disability claim, but I just want to know, like, what made you decide? I know why. We've heard the story of why you decided to become a lawyer. It was something you'd always wanted to do and I think it's pretty cool that after a 20 year maintenance career, you made this change. But why va disability appeals?
Speaker 2:so, first of all, I mean a it's because something I was familiar with, because I had my own challenges with my va disability process as well. Um, I think every veteran goes through this process, or actually I think every veteran should go through this process, but not every veteran does. But I think every veteran should go through this process, but not every veteran does. But I was uninformed when I went through it initially and I was told some things by a VSO that was not true. Obviously, now I know much more about the process and so I was not accurately rated and I just didn't really know what the process should have looked like. I didn't know the evidentiary requirement, I didn't know anything, and so I was underrated. When I had retired from the Air Force and when I went to law school, I redid my claim on my own and succeeded. And then I interned at a VA disability firm and I, you know, I understood all of the lived experience, I understood all of the jargon, I understood all of the rank and all these sorts of things. I just needed to get that last little piece of the puzzle for what is the VA process? In order to kind of be well ahead of any of my peers that would have been, you know, first year attorneys and really it was as terrible as it sounds.
Speaker 2:Covid was probably the biggest motivator to move into this space because prior to COVID, va disability attorneys were called traveling attorneys. So the veteran would be, let's say, in Phoenix and the attorney would actually have to fly to Phoenix, stay in a hotel, have a rental car, the per diem, represent their client at the local VA regional and then they would fly up to Washington and have another client and they were traveling four or five days a week and then coming home on the weekends and doing a lot of their work on the road. And you know, it's a non-traditional student and a retiree with kids and a dog like none of that was feasible for me. So I was like I'm just not going to do that. I'm interested in this area of law, maybe I can help some people on the side, but I'd never want to travel that much.
Speaker 2:And then COVID hit and this massive VA backlog was going to just, you know, explode if they didn't shift. And they always had like telehearing, but it was never the primary in veterans benefits, veterans disability sort of hearings. But with COVID we switched to it and now it's essentially video first, and with the Appeals Modernization Act there's, you know, a lot more avenues to go prior to the board of veterans appeals. You can kind of handle things at the regional level, which is almost all paperwork, maybe some phone calls. So essentially, this particular area of law morphed into a very family unfriendly sort of model, to one that for me was very conducive to not only this area of law but also me standing at my own firm.
Speaker 1:And you know, like you said, you have the lived experience of having been through it yourself and so you have that, that benefit as well. So you and I talked a little bit about some of the things that cause those claims to get denied, Like can you take us through some of those big reasons and really like what people can do to prevent that from happening as they're navigating this process for the first time?
Speaker 2:do to prevent that from happening, as they're navigating this process for the first time. So I think one of the best pieces of advice I can give right at the outset isn't even necessarily with the claims process. It's for the veteran to basically reframe what their expectations are for this encounter. I've talked to a few people and I've heard from some people they say my friend's at 100% and I should be at 100% too because I'm way worse off than him. So that's like a fundamental misframing of what this should look like. Because, first of all, there's a lot of sorts of conditions that are invisible. Certainly mental health is some, and endocrinological and things like that. But also you know how these things are rated, are decided by federal law. The 38 CFR that just says this is a percentage for this. In my case, like I have a bad back from work is one of my lowest rated conditions, even though it has the biggest impact on my life. But that's just the way the kind of the regulations are written. So I think you know when we get frustrated with the claims process, the first thing I recommend is really look at what are our expectations and what I tell my clients is. My goal is not to get you 100%. My goal is to get you as accurately rated for each of your service-connected or conditions that should be service-connected. And if you get 100%, great. And I'm always kind of keeping an eye on that because of all the benefits associated with 100%. But if we set the goal is I want to get to 100%, you're going to be disappointed. You're going to be frustrated over and over and over again. It should be. I have this condition. I believe it's service connected. I think there's a connection here. I want to get evidence for it and we kind of seek that out and I want to get rated in accordance with the 38 CFR. If we get that, then hopefully we'd have a good outcome. But then if we do everything right which is something I've certainly learned over the last two years the VA makes a lot of mistakes. That's why there are attorneys, that's why there are appeal processes there are.
Speaker 2:I don't assign malice to any of this bureaucratic process. It's just I think the volume of things going through the VA create these sorts of errors, the sorts of errors that you see is maybe it's an examiner that has been a doctor for 20 years, but they've been a VA examiner doing these specific measurements or evaluations for less than a year, so they're not familiar with what is the connection between the symptoms I'm taking off down here in the bottom and the overall rating I'm assigning of this condition up at the top, and if there's a disconnect between those two, that can often frustrate the veteran or the claimant's claim. There's a new adjudicator at the VA and I've never worked at the VA, but some of the things I've seen suggest that there might be not enough experienced supervisors compared to a lot of people that are doing adjudicating. In the last six months I've just seen a huge uptick in the VA making very simple errors on things like effective dates. They began their claim in November of 2023. They continuously pursued it, finally got all the evidence the VA needed. Then the VA assigns an effective date of June 2025, even though we have all this history and that's money lost to the veteran and then we have to go back and keep doing the claim.
Speaker 2:So, as far as back to your question is what are the things that frustrate the veterans outside of their expectations is really? The VA just sometimes drops the ball and as a veteran, I've gotten the letter saying we denied you. That's what I got in 2018, after my retirement, and I read it and I couldn't see the CMP exam. I think that's also something that is very frustrating for veterans. As a VA accredited attorney, I can go into my VA remote desktop and I can pull up each one of my clients full files and I can read the CMP exam, the compensation and pension exam, word for word to see if there's any errors, to see if there's any mismatch between the symptoms and the overall rating. To see if there's any errors, to see if there's any mismatch between the symptoms and the overall rating, to see if there's any logical fallacies, to see if they were, you know, conclusory general. They were not specific to this veteran and veterans don't have access to that.
Speaker 2:They can submit a Freedom of Information Act request. But, for example, I personally had a C&P exam this January and I did not think that my examiner did a very good job, even though I went in. She said what do you do for a living? I said, well, I'm a VA disability attorney, so you probably don't need to explain to me this process. I'm very familiar with it. And then she proceeded to do a very poor exam, which is absolutely wild to me that you would do that to somebody that knows what a poor exam is. And so I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for that exam because I was anticipating getting a denial and I wanted to see what the examiner said. I want to be able to argue for myself and I can't see myself in the system because I don't represent myself. It's complicated, but it's the lack of information and it's the lack of experience. I think that really frustrates the process.
Speaker 2:And then I think the added piece I think I mentioned this in the previous episode is when I think, as a veteran, when you get a denial, you are not service connected for X, even though you know and I'm not saying maybe being exposed to this might've caused it.
Speaker 2:You had a flap come down on your head and you've had neck problems ever since you know and then they deny you. I think some veterans take that as they're saying you're malingering or they're calling you a liar or they're calling you a fraud, and I think there's a lot of emotional stuff that kind of gets wrapped in up in that as well and it makes them feel that they're either being cheated or something along those lines and I think all of that really wraps up into a very sort of complex and nuanced relationship between veterans and the VA through the claims process so it sounds like first of all you've got to go into the situation informed and also you can't take it personal, but you also don't need to necessarily stop at the denial right oh yeah, so like um, I'm not sure what the numbers are for denials at the regional office, but it's.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't have a job if there weren't any denials that were not like legitimate. So I got denied. A lot of people get denied. I think that's a symptom of the initial claim sort of ecosystem of organizations that are there to help of the initial claim, sort of ecosystem of organizations that are there to help. But in that denial you have a specific time period, depending on what it is a claim for and all those sorts of things to appeal. And if you can appeal then you should be able to maintain your effective date. So you may not be getting paid in the near term, but if you maintain that appeal then you'll be able to essentially get back paid all the way back to when you made your initial claim or in some cases, back to when you left the service. If you made a claim within a year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think about. I've been pretty open about my daughter's surgery last year and I'm still fighting the insurance company who paid a spinal surgeon $2,000 and said yeah, we're done, that's all we have to pay them. I'm still fighting that to this day. Obviously, I want to fight it because if they don't pay it, I'm going to have to pay it, but also just because it's just we know that insurance companies aren't there for us and I know that an insurance company and the VA are very different. But it's almost as though they just hope I'm going to go away.
Speaker 1:They keep dragging their feet, hoping that I'm just going to quit and I'm not, because I think that it's ridiculous about the way they've gone about this process. I mean, they approved it as a procedure and but then they were like, well, but we're not really going to pay it and so it's just been. I feel like that's very correlating a corollary to me, because it is one of those things where oftentimes we get that no and we just stop, and I think that I wanted to make sure that people heard from you, because I don't want them to necessarily feel like, well, they said no, this is all I've got, because they do make mistakes, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think there's also elements of shame and imposter syndrome. You know, you know I was in aircraft maintenance for 20 years. It's not that we were actively discouraged from going to medical, but if you went to medical now you're off the line and you're given to rock like not derogatory, you're like house mouse. You know there's, you know I was in maintenance, so there's lots of profanity mixed in with these sorts of names. But it's, it's a you're lesser, you're not supporting the mission.
Speaker 2:There's this cultural incentive not to seek out, nevermind the fact that I work night shift and trying to go to a medical point at two in the afternoon when I got off at nine o'clock in the morning, that's like asking somebody to go to a medical point at 2 am, like who's going to be interested in doing that when you're already sleep deprived.
Speaker 2:But I think there's also the I didn't deploy, I wasn't in combat.
Speaker 2:You just see veterans with, you know amputations, things like that, and you feel that they're more deserving than you. And I think that framing is also works to the benefit of the VA, because even if people submit that claim carrying that imposter syndrome or that shame or that anything else, and they get a denial. They go okay, well, they spotted me, I shouldn't be doing this at all and they kind of wave off. And I think part of it is also framing like it's an entitlement and also recognize that most of the time when you were injured it was not something that you chose to engage in. Or, you know, in the case of injuries at work, there's no workers' compensation, there's no ability to sue for negligence, there's no legal many legal avenues available to veterans and service members for redress for injuries, except for the VA disability process, members for redress for injuries except for the VA disability process. So it's really incumbent for them to utilize it and, you know, I would argue, work with an attorney to make sure that you are doing it in an effective manner.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you and I were recently on a call because you're working on an appeal for somebody that I know and we were doing an introduction and you were talking about VA math and I got a little lost in it. But can you walk us through what that means and just the benefits and the financial differences between someone who is, say, a 20% disability and 100%?
Speaker 2:someone who is, say, a 20% disability and a hundred percent, yeah. So VA math right off the bat is another way. It kind of feels like veterans are being cheated by the VA and it's I think it's just really stems from. This is how the VA does math and you know, I'm a veteran and I'm subjected to this math and now that I understand it I don't necessarily disagree with it, but a lot of veterans will go.
Speaker 2:I don't understand, chris. I'm 50%, 30%, 30%, 30%, 20% and like seven, 10%. That adds up to 180%. But the VA says I'm only at like 80% or 90%, like I'm being cheated or what's going on here? Or what percentage do I need to get?
Speaker 2:So the easiest way to explain it is you know, 100% is a whole pie. So if you have a 50%, a 30%, a 30%, for example, so right off the bat you take 50%, you cut that pie in half. You're now 50% rated. What's left over is 50% of that pie. Now you take 30% of that 50%, so that's 15%, and now you add that to it and essentially it brings you up to 65%. And now you take 15%. You take 30% of the remaining 35%. And I'm not that good at percentages of math, but maybe this is like 10%. This brings us right around 75% and if you're at 75% it rounds up to 80% and that's essentially how the VA math works.
Speaker 2:So the bigger your individual ratings for conditions, the bigger chunks you're sort of taking and the easier it is. But no one gets to. I mean I guess someone probably does. Most people don't get to a true a hundred percent, they're just getting to 95%, and getting to 95% kind of pushes them up to a hundred percent. So that's also where, like those small disabilities like arthritis in the hands or finger sprains that limit your range of motion in the fingers, like each one of those are like 10%. And if you have like five or six fingers that got crushed or something or you just like developed a really bad hand conditions in service from doing lots of manual labor, then each one of those can be 10%. So that could get you from 90% to 95% and push you up to 100 hundred percent and you're like I would never would have thought my fingers would have would have done this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, what's the difference? Like so, if someone is, they got their, their disability back and it was, you know, 25%, and they feel like you know, listening to you there, there probably was more they maybe should pursue it. Like, what are the benefits of going from 25 or 30% or whatever it is to to that a hundred?
Speaker 2:So each of the and not each percentage, like so it's always by 10%, so 10, 20, 30 percentiles. Each one kind of has their own sorts of benefits and as you move up in those percentages, the more of those benefits kind of become available to the veteran. Like for example, I think it's above 10% or 20%, then you might qualify for VA VR&E, that's vocational readiness and employment. I think it's what it's called now, so it's not so much about rehabilitation, it's just employment.
Speaker 2:So it's not so much about rehabilitation, it's just employment. So it's more of a focus on employment outcomes. But you would have to point to if you're 20%, you'd have to point to how your disability impacts your ability to be employed with what you're currently doing. So in my case I got back conditions and neck conditions, shoulder conditions, knee conditions, hip conditions, foot conditions. So if I go hey, I can't really work on jets anymore because exhibit A through G, you know then they go okay, well, can you sit and can you do these sorts of things. That's also why I'm an attorney now, because you know, I don't know how these guys do aircraft maintenance up into their 60s, but amazing and more power to them. So in the case of 10%, 20% might be able to point to how your service connection conditions stop you from being employed based on your skillset, in case you'd have to move into another area. But then you kind of move up towards 50%.
Speaker 2:If you're a retiree you've served more than 20 years in most cases you can get something called concurrent receipt. So if you retire and you're getting less than 50% VA disability rating, then what happens is what you're paid as VA disability essentially is offset out of your military retirement and it becomes tax-free. So you're gaining maybe $100, $150 a month over your retirement pension as just like what's coming from the VA is tax-free. But if you get over 50% then you get something called concurrent receipt, in which case you get your full VA disability and then you get your 20-year plus military pension and that is taxed normally but the VA disability is coming in again. So instead of making an extra $100 or $200 of tax savings for your pension, you're getting at 50%. I think it's something like, off the top of my head, like $1,100 to $1,400 a month and that's a massive difference. And then as you kind of move up 60%, 70%, you kind of get I'm not familiar with all the medical stuff you get access to. Now.
Speaker 2:Non-service connected conditions can be treated by the VA. That's great. If you have like sleep apnea, that's maybe not service connected, because then you can get supplies for it which are very expensive Diabetes treatment and things like that. If it's not service connected, that can certainly be expensive to include, like medications, injectable medications that are very expensive right now. Prescriptions for the VA at a certain percentage become free. So in some cases I see my TRICARE doctor and I get you know I get seen. And then I just take that information and I submit it to my VA primary care provider and say, hey, I'd like to get my prescription for you guys for free. And then you know if we do an appointment we do an appointment, otherwise I can essentially move that prescription over and have that management there and then at a hundred percent.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of things that open up, especially if you're something called 100% permanent in total, which is essentially the VA has looked at all your conditions. There's no indication that are going to improve or they're temporary. A good example of like temporary is if you got like a knee surgery and you're convalescing afterwards, that wouldn't certainly qualify as permanent in total. But if after that surgery you still can't bend your knee much and there's no indication that with any physical therapy your range of motion is going to improve, that would likely be seen as permanent. And then, once you reach 100% combined, then you're considered 100% permanent in total and you're unlocking federal benefits like education benefits for your spouse or your kids, dependence education assistance and many states have benefits for 100% permanent total veterans to include property tax reductions, vehicle registration tax exemptions and things like that.
Speaker 2:Or some states also offer tuition waivers for states in state tuition as well. Whenever a client of mine reaches 100% which I've had quite a few, a few last year and a few this year is, hey, go to your state website, let's start figuring out what other benefits are available to you and let's make sure we maximize those benefits for you.
Speaker 1:Okay, excellent. Thank you for taking me through that, because I knew it was a big difference. Financially. We can all look that up, but I knew there were other things that opened up to you as you rose higher on that disability percentage. So what's something that you wish every veteran knew or understood about? How to effectively advocate for themselves in this process.
Speaker 2:So this is a. This is probably more specific to a service member, but I think so. What I'll say is this system is through no fault of its own. It's really set up for service members to be engaged with it, but completely ignorant of it. And so I say that as I was in the military for 20 years and I didn't understand how utterly important it was to go to the doctor for a condition.
Speaker 2:A good example is I had migraine headaches throughout most of my career. I think it started around 2004 and I would have you know I would get nauseous, I would get the vice in the head, I would have light sensitivity, I would have to go into a dark room and lay down. I was fortunate because if I can fall asleep, it goes away, but I'm really kind of lethargic afterwards. A doctor about. I actually in 2010, I was in NCO Academy and I and I would get like the I can't. They're like ocular or something where I would get a blind spot in my vision, but it's like not in my eye you can really tell. It's like the signal to your brain is not getting the eye input and for me, that was always a precursor to a really bad migraine coming in like 30 minutes to an hour and a half and I went back to my dorm room and quickly tried to go to sleep and I managed to sleep for about 15 minutes and kind of avoided it. But I never went to the doctor until I was in the last year of my career. I got a migraine. I was like I should go and see someone and get something for this and I went and I said I have a really bad migraine and I kind of signed into the medical appointment and they prescribed me something but they never wrote down migraines right, so they never put it in there. But the prescription said this medication is for migraines.
Speaker 2:And when I went through my initial claims process as a as a master sergeant maintainer that didn't know about the VA disability process, I was told by that volunteer VSO oh, if I see something in your medical records three times, then we'll write it down and we'll claim it. There is no three-time requirement. The only thing a VA disability claim requires is an in-service event, a current diagnosis or symptoms and a medical nexus between those two things your current and that in-service event. And obviously, if I'm still in the military, the nexus between my current symptoms and that in-service event is instantaneous because I haven't actually left the service and I didn't know that this one time that I claimed or that I went to the doctor for migraines and got this prescription for migraine medication was enough to qualify as my in-service event, that it showed in that moment I had migraines. And so there's so many things that I wish I could go back and see a doctor about, but I can't Now.
Speaker 2:There's other ways to get it. You can maybe get, you know, civilian healthcare treatment records that you might've sought outside TRICARE or something like that. You can get statements from coworkers. You know there's one where there's a statement from a commanding officer when they were deployed. Yes, he snored every single night. You know, we heard him stop breathing, like that's useful for showing sleep apnea. Or even, you know, missing work letter of reprimand because you overslept multiple times. That's still evidence. But it's not nearly as good as going to see the doctor and going I am tired all the time and they do a sleep study and then they capture your hourly apnea incidents Right, and then we know, yes, at this moment in time in service they had sleep apnea.
Speaker 2:So one of the things I wish every veteran but, more importantly every service member understood was just go to see the doctor.
Speaker 2:But I will also caveat that with I was in the military with my bad back and I was at like my 17 year mark and that in me the specter of the medical evaluation board was hanging over my head and I was real scared to go to get treatment for fear of getting medically retired from the military at 18, 19 years. And if I didn't make it to 20 years then I would no longer be able to get that concurrent receipt that I talked about earlier because that requires going past 20 years. So I was looking at losing hundreds of thousands of dollars of pension over my lifetime. So I also recognize you're walking a very narrow beam when to see the doctor in order to capture this in-service event, but also recognizing that each time you do that it exposes you depending on sometimes the winds of the administration that might shift every four years of what you kind of go and and and now is a career impacting condition that wasn't before do you only work with appeals or do you help people with their claims their initial claims as well?
Speaker 2:so when, when I started this firm, uh, I had one client, right, uh, and so I'm very lucky that I have a good veteran network and obviously I served. So I would say probably a quarter of my clients now are people I served with. Another quarter probably people that met me through the podcast, um, another quarter probably from reddit, which is outrageous. Every time I I post my opinions on what's going right or what's going wrong within the DOD or the Air Force, everybody sees that I'm a retired F-16 crew chief, slash VA disability attorney and I get like three or four leads from just posting on Reddit commenting, and then the last quarter is through LinkedIn actually is typically through that. So when I started the firm, I had one client. I'm sorry, lori, what was the question? I know I'm in the ballpark, but what's the question.
Speaker 1:I asked if you helped with like active service members who are filing their first claim.
Speaker 2:So when I first started my practice because I had no clients I was just taking on so I as a as an attorney, I am barred by law from being compensated for an initial claim period. When I say initial claim I mean like a 526 easy. That's the initial claim. They've kind of loosened it up a little bit. If you're reopening a prior claim that was essentially denied, if you want to reopen it with new evidence, they've essentially said that's like a quasi appeal, so I can actually get compensated for that. But when I started my practice cause I had one client and I had I didn't have a lot of work to do. One client who's in a holding pattern for an appeal requires literally no work at all whatsoever. And so I was taking on clients with initial claims and I was helping them for free, knowing that I wouldn't get paid, because my idea was, if they're denied then I'm already their attorney, so I can be ready to do an appeal. If they succeed on their claims and I don't get paid, I still help the veteran reach an outcome that they needed. They're going to more likely to refer people to me, they're more likely to give testimonials and also I'm just helping people and I have time and I have the skillset, but now I'm up to I think I'm up to about 40 clients and so my time available for initial claims is a little bit less. If I'm helping them with an appeal and an initial claim is going to be kind of a part of that, it might support that appeal, then certainly I'll do it. For clients that I currently have, I'll counsel them on initial claims. I'll help them with initial claims. If they're not comfortable doing it, I'll submit it on their behalf.
Speaker 2:I think there's some attorneys out there that kind of discourage that because there's actually a financial detriment to me. So essentially, if I'm helping someone with an appeal, they're at 90% and I'm in a holding pattern waiting for a decision and then they submit new claims and on those new claims they get to 100%. Then essentially the fee structure for most VA disability attorneys we get a percentage of their back pay from their effective date up until this decision or something. Pay from their effective date up until you know this decision or something. So if I help them with an initial claim and they end up getting up to a hundred percent, well, that essentially now stops where the back pay calculation is, because you get a hundred percent at that point. So that's a financial detriment to me, but I I would.
Speaker 2:I kind of don't care. I would rather like if I was in, if the roles were reversed and I was a veteran with an attorney. I would feel like we are not on the same team if they're not willing to help me with an initial claim for a condition that I have, and so I think that's just bad business and that's bad relationships. And so if a client wants to submit an initial claim, all I say is make sure you talk to me first, because we want to make sure that it's not going to conflict with the current appeal, that it's not going to open you up to you know them looking at these other things, that it's not going to introduce evidence that maybe you know the, the CMP examiner is, is less experienced, that now we're concerned about vulnerabilities, for your current conditions might be downgraded and all those sorts of things. So that's what I counsel them on and we kind of weigh the pros and cons. But ultimately it's up to the client's decision what they want to submit.
Speaker 1:Okay, can you share a success story, something that you know, something that stuck with you and where they kind of overcame the odds in the appeals process?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it was a client fairly early in my career this was before I started my own firm. I was helping them and they had made a claim a mental health claim that was being denied and being denied, and being denied, and I think it had been denied. It was going on six or seven years and and I sat down and talked to them and they were describing so. They were in the Navy in the late sixties, early seventies, and I did not serve in the Navy and I did not serve in the Navy in the early sixties or late sixties, early seventies. But I promise you, the Navy of 2020 is radically different from the Navy of 1970. And in this case, there was some claims of racial tension and and and racial, racially motivated negative behavior from supervisors and team members. And you know I went through. I went through their their service treatment records, which was very difficult because in 1970, it was all handwritten, it was very scribbly and I just found just tons of evidence of starting in February of this year. They had bruises and they were looking one of their wrists evaluated for being broken and they had noted that he seemed having nervous trouble, because that was like the term for anxiety back in the 70s. Their eyes were darting around and he seemed skittish around people and all these sorts of things. You're like, oh, this is the manifestations of trauma, both physical and mental. And this did this is nowhere in the medical record prior.
Speaker 2:And so when we did the hearing, you know, I talked to him and I asked what was going on. He gave me lots and lots of information. We went to the hearing. It was like let's talk through this and describe everything. And then when I drafted up the post-hearing memo it's like I can I was pointing to page and I hit medical records were real dense, uh, and it was paid. You know, on this page. You know nervous trouble on this page, defensive wounds on the arms, you know all these sorts of things. And uh, they ended up, um, getting a hundred percent and uh, which was very fortuitous because his, his spouse at the time she was going through some medical things as well and so, like that surge of money and that monthly income was absolutely life-changing for him.
Speaker 2:And you know they were looking at some other financial things and I was really, really worried about him. So I was checking on him a lot. But it was, it was worried about him. So I was checking on him a lot, but it was. It was, you know, I was not representing them in my own firm, so I wasn't getting a percentage of this back pay, it was just my salary position at the firm I worked at before.
Speaker 2:But the just knowing that through my skill set and my work and digging through it and making the argument and listening to them, making them feel seen and heard you know the spouse she told me, you know the husband's like I think Chris really cares about us, and it was both both wonderful and very sad at the same time that they felt that nobody had cared, you know. And so just knowing that now they're on you know, a financial stability and their home is secure and they don't have to worry about all these things, healthcare is taken care of I can't like, uh, I would, I would feel bad about being paid for that, as weird as it sounds like it's a big deal so that that among many um, I've had quite a few of my clients get 100 and they're always so appreciative and so surprised um, and it's just good to know that they are. It's one less thing they have to worry about and I kind of took that off their plate and worked through it with them and helped them. So I really love what I do.
Speaker 1:Well, and I have experienced that firsthand, as I said, like I know that I know someone who's working with you and like the level of attention and care you put into what you do is incredible, and I know that you and I kind of share the same. You know, like we put out good stuff and we hope that someday that good stuff will come back to us, and if it doesn't, it doesn't. If it at least we helped change somebody's life and make it better. And so I appreciate you and what you're doing, and I think that that story really showcases exactly what you put into what you do. So thank you.
Speaker 1:When should someone consider hiring an attorney for help?
Speaker 2:I mean. So I would say, as soon as you get a VA decision letter, even if you're like that's good enough, I would at least consult with an attorney, because one of the things you need to recognize is it's almost like people go off like vibe oh, I feel like I'm about 50% and this decision added up to 50%, so I'm I'm happy with that, even though it denied you for your neck or it denied you for something else. I would reach out most of the time you have. Within a year of a decision, you have to file an appeal. But I would not wait that year because if you reach out to an attorney on the 364 day mark, a, documents may not be able to be finalized in time for that appeal and B, there might need to be evidence gathered in order to have a successful appeal. So I always recommend, as soon as you get a decision letter, whether it's what you wanted or not, I would reach out to an attorney. And I don't know about other attorneys, I assume probably I do. All my consultations are free, um, it can be done over the phone or over zoom, but um, and I'm happy to talk through. It's very helpful when some of my potential clients. They they have the decision letter. Either they they upload it to me through my secure website or they kind of read it to me, uh, during the consultation. Uh, that's very helpful to know exactly why it was denied. But if you get a denial letter or if you get any decision letter, I would reach out to an attorney. But honestly, if you've submitted a claim, it's probably not a bad idea to reach out to an attorney anyway, because if you submitted a claim, you know you're going to get a decision and then you should essentially shop around.
Speaker 2:Because what I would also say is one of the things I love about running my own firm is all my clients have my phone, my phone number in my email. They call me directly. Also, they keep my link through Calendly. If they want to set up a conference call or they want to set up a video conference, they can. Because it's my my keep my calendar very sort of disciplined.
Speaker 2:So if I'm no, I'm going to go grocery shopping on a Tuesday at 2 PM. I blocked off on my calendar to include travel so I never have to worry about a client kind of missing me because of that. Yeah, so I think shopping around to attorneys I encourage clients go to different attorneys and kind of talk to them and kind of get a feel for what is my access to you going to be. What is you know? Can I ask you questions about things that are maybe adjacent to this, or benefits or things like that or or anything else? Things that I was very adamant about when I worked at the previous firm in this was I'm going to call the clients directly because I need to be able to talk to them and I need them to be able to talk to me. So that's kind of the cornerstone of my practice.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, if someone's interested. How can somebody get in touch with you and learn more about what you do in your firm if they want to discuss their appeal?
Speaker 2:So the best way to kind of get a feel for myself is go to my website, wwwfafo-lawcom. Um, it has my bio on it. It kind of talks about um, my contingency fee and I've I've poked around with a few other v because I built the website myself. So if you think the website's good, also let me know that too. I was teaching myself how to make websites. It was very wild because my first hack at it looked like a 1990s website with lots of text when I was still developing it in December of 2023. And then I was like this doesn't look good, this looks like a 1990s website. So then I kept working on the design and style, so that entire website was all done by me, all the pictures and things, and so if you go to fafo-lawcom, you can put the top right corner to contact us. You can essentially submit an intake form kind of describe your military service, what conditions you have, maybe where you serve, in case there's presumptive conditions available to you, and that gets sent right to my email and I typically will review that intake form within 24 hours and then send an email to set up a consultation and then they can talk to me directly. You can get me on Zoom or you can get me over the phone, whatever's more convenient, and then we'll kind of talk through Also my website. I have here's my contingency fee structure.
Speaker 2:Like I'm very upfront about that and I kind of, like I said, I kind of looked at other websites and I didn't see it and I don't know about you. But I get really frustrated when people are trying to sell me something and they don't tell me what the cost is going to be. Like even if I go on Facebook marketplace and somebody is looking to sell a car and they have all these descriptions and they never tell me what the price is. I just walk away, like if I walked into a grocery store and there was not a price on any of the shelves and I would just show up at the register and go. I don't know how much this is and I've and I've had all this invested in it. Oh, and it turns out this is $5,000 of groceries. Well, I just wasted my time.
Speaker 2:So I'm of the mindset of if we're upfront about what it's going to be, and also it's easier for me to be up front because the va says a reasonable fee for for this is between 20 and 33 and a third percent. Why keep mine at 20? So when when I am transparent in my fees, it's also because it's the lowest end of the spectrum that the va kind of determines is reasonable. So it's a lot easier for me to kind of broadcast that and not have to worry about people getting surprised by it later on. So that's the best way to kind of figure me out. And also, obviously, if you listen to the 20 Years Done podcast from episode one and I just published episode 106 on yesterday like you'll get a real good idea about what I'm like and you'll probably know right off the bat if you want me to represent you or not. It'd be my guess.
Speaker 1:And you also have three episodes that you've done of the show for when you were in school.
Speaker 1:So I've been on your show on 20 years done, because I've done 20 years as well in this, in this business. So there you go. So okay. So it's F A, f, o, dash-o-lawcom. I'll put that link in the show notes, I'll put your LinkedIn URL also in the show notes and I say reach out, because you never know, right, it's a conversation, doesn't cost you anything to have a conversation. So okay. Now, last time you were here was season three, right, I think two years ago.
Speaker 2:It was.
Speaker 1:And you were working really hard on some advocacy around the maintainer culture in the Air Force and the correlation between that and very high suicide rates in the career and very high suicide rates in the career and I know that you've made some progress. I know you and I hung out last year and you gave me an update, but I'd like to hear kind of where you're at in that process of what's happened since we last talked on the show in 2023.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so a lot of bad news.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So my progress has stalled and so also, like I, you know, again three episodes on your podcast. I've been on other podcasts, plus I have my own podcast, plus I have the website. So I'm of the, I I'm of the mindset of I'm going to be as transparent as possible and I think also part of the transition experience is also going. This was a failure. So in in that vein, um, essentially the, the very quick version of it and, if you want to get more detail, I think it was in the season three episode with me we kind of did a much deeper dive on what it is I was getting at. I served in aircraft manned for 20 years. I knew a lot of people that had committed suicide, and so I thought there was probably a correlation between this occupation and the stress associated with it and the lifestyle and suicide rates, kind of correlating certain occupations and everybody I tell that to like oh, it makes perfect sense. Certain high stress careers are going to have higher suicide rates compared to lower stress career fields, and so I started a journey in 2019 to get suicide rates by military occupation code, first in the Air Force and later in the broader DOD, culminating in my successful lobbying for federal legislation the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act that called for the DOD commission a report of suicides, disaggregated by year and disaggregated by service-specific military occupation code, going back from 9-11 to 2001 until present day, and to give that report to Congress in order for them to A have oversight and B see if there needs to be some sort of changes in DOD. That report was seven months late and the report that came out didn't comport with the law. It was not disaggregated by service-specific military occupation code and it did not disaggregate by year. And so what happened was we lumped these communities instead of their granular, nuanced culture. We lumped them into these sort of convenient career field piles, sometimes across service, which, as I'm sure you know, you've worked with people of all military branches culture within each of these military services, sometimes locations, career fields. They are so diverse and so different that if you were to lump them all together, you wouldn't actually be able to discern what any problems were if you put them all in a giant pile. And then, if you put that giant pile across a decade or some crazy amount of time, it'd be even harder to see, and so, unfortunately, the way the law was written it was DOD is going to give this report to Congress. And so when the DOD and again, this is not Chris McGee's interpretation the executive summary of that said we are not going to disaggregate by year and it said we're not going to disaggregate by service specific occupation code. So it wasn't even that Chris read it and went, hey, they didn't do what they were supposed to do. They said we're not going to do what the law tells us to do. But the problem is is it was a law from DOD to Congress and Chris McGee is nobody in that connection. So the only person that can say, hey, this isn't correct is Congress.
Speaker 2:And so that's where I kind of ran into a bit of a roadblock of that's where, in my opinion, politics kind of came into this. It's the what is the political cost of drilling down on this and what is the political benefit. And unfortunately I am not a politician Actually I would say fortunately, I don't want to say unfortunately, I'm not a politician, fortunately I'm not a politician. And so I kind of went very hard with the sponsor of the bill and that didn't quite land the way I had hoped. And so essentially what I've determined is is I got a law written to get the exact data I'm trying to get, and that law was ignored and nobody seems to care, and so I can't unless Chris McGee becomes a president I can't think of any other position I would be in in order to effectuate this sort of data, and so it is something that I continue to sit with.
Speaker 2:You know I call it a failure.
Speaker 2:Many I'm sure you don't call it a failure, right, many people wouldn't call it a failure.
Speaker 2:But I think part of the transition process and something I've been advocating for is the wins and the losses and kind of learning to take those lumps and kind of move on with it.
Speaker 2:If anything, I think it's energized me a little bit more for my VA disability, because now I can get good outcomes for my clients, even if I can't get broad systemic things. I'm a firm believer that that revolution doesn't happen without incremental evolution leading up to that revolution, and I thought I was at a revolutionary step and maybe I was just in the evolutionary stage too. So part of it is I'm very disappointed in the process. I have lost a bit of faith in the system to be just, and that's something that as a veteran I kind of sit with to really digest that my service in some way enabled a system that I believe was unjust and unfair, and so that's soul searching that I do and continue to do. But I think it is important that not every story has a happy ending, and maybe one of your listeners might have some data or might have another approach. So I haven't given up, but I am essentially out of avenues right now.
Speaker 1:But I am essentially out of avenues right now. Any contacts people that you'd like to talk to that maybe a listener could connect you with Someone who could help you get the information further.
Speaker 2:After there was a maintainer suicide in March of 2024, when this report was laid, I called every single House and Senate Armed Service Committee member's office over two days and asked them what they're doing to get the report out, and I got a reply from a single representative and it was a form letter describing what they do for veterans. None of it had to do with what I was asking about. So, uh, I don't know who else could help, is the answer. Um, I had somebody reach out to me yesterday saying, oh, we could talk to this general. It's like okay, but I've been.
Speaker 2:I got a law passed at Congress and that was ignored like anything below. That I just don't know. But doesn't mean I'm not open to the possibility of some sort of end around. So I'm always interested in the data and I think someday the data will come out. Like I said, I had some real narrow preliminary data and it was absolutely atrocious A what the Air Force knew when it knew and how bad the data was. We're talking. Suicide rates for maintainers in 2014 were 300% over the Air Force average.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And aircraft maintainers, as you know, is a very large career field, so it's not like you have a small population. That's skewing the numbers high. You have one of the largest career field populations. It also has a 300% higher rate. I think the answer is nobody wants the information to get out because it's bad. I think is the answer.
Speaker 1:So what about media contacts?
Speaker 2:So local media was very helpful. National media has been a little more standoffish. I've made contact with some veteran national veteran advocates but haven't really gone. Any that hasn't like led to anything fruition. I did a podcast a few ago with a doctor of communications talking about veteran media, and essentially it's the what we came to the conclusion of is because veterans represent such a small percentage of the population, the media appetite around veteran issues is also similarly small, because it's either veterans or their family members, and so the more noise there is in national media, the harder it is going to be for such a minority population to pierce that noise, to get attention to such issues, and so I think one of the unfortunate byproducts of our national media cycle is issues like this, I think, are just not important enough for a national audience, and I think that's really unfortunate.
Speaker 1:That is a very sad statement. So well, you know you're always welcome here and I know you're always working on your show to spread the word, and if there's anything that anyone out there that's listening thinks they can do to help Chris, please reach out to him. His contact info will be in the show notes so you can reach out to him via LinkedIn or his website. So, chris, thanks for what you did and what you continue to do, and I appreciate what you've done for me this year and what you're doing for some of the people that I know, and just want to say thanks for sharing all that with us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for having me back on. I appreciate also like you're referring clients to me, you're amplifying my firm, like it's all much appreciated. And again I feel honored to be able to empower you to continue doing your show Like that is the easiest, easiest decision I made over the last year, for sure.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you. It's much appreciated phase of your career. If you learned something valuable today, share it, subscribe to our podcast and our YouTube channel, leave us a review and write a post on social media about the lessons that helped you today from this episode.