Vocational Experts

If your Social Security disability hearing will involve a vocational expert, your Ocala disability attorney may decide to brief you on the role of the vocational expert (VE) in your case and his or her duties in court. Their testimony serves several purposes, but vocational experts should not overstep certain boundaries.

Duties of the Vocational Expert

A vocational expert testifies at a Social Security disability hearing before the administrative law judge (ALJ) in order to provide him or her with vocational information that will assist any decisions regarding your ability to perform work despite impairment. The ALJ will ask the VE certain questions, such as:

• Is the claimant capable of performing past relevant work?
• If the claimant is not capable of performing past relevant work, is the claimant capable of transferring his or her skills to some other type of work?

What sort of skills and exertion levels did the claimant’s past work require?

What sort of skills and exertion levels do employers generally expect of employees in that position?

If the vocational expert answers that you do indeed demonstrate any skills or capability, he or she will need to list those skills and explain the jobs you might be able to perform, also adding information about the state of those jobs in the economy at large. Your Ocala disability attorney will also have a chance to address the vocational expert’s testimony and your ability to perform work.

Restrictions

Vocational experts need to keep in mind that they are there to provide information that is as complete as possible, but should not be offering up any unsolicited information or opinions, especially about your medical evaluations or disability status. VEs are also not supposed to state whether or not they think you could compete for a job with an unimpaired person, whether they think you might get hired for a job, or how they think you might perform in comparison to someone with no impairments.

Disability hearings can seem intimidating, but they don’t have to be. Speak with a qualified Ocala disability attorney at the CJ Henry Law Firm, PLLC at (352) 304-5300 to learn more about the role of vocational experts in your Social Security disability claim.